Category Archives: Skill development

The Practice Rant

Discipline, Performance, Skill development, Tactics, TechniquesBy Lauren Sergy July 14, 2016

The secret isn’t innate confidence. It isn’t a good slide deck, either. It’s not positive, pre-show affirmations. It’s not killer quotes, “life changing” stories, or hilarious content. It definitely isn’t picturing your audience in their underwear.* The above all play a part in great presentations (with the exception of the underwear visualization), but they…

What’s the difference? Toastmasters vs. Speech Coaching

Skill developmentBy Lauren Sergy April 20, 2016

What’s the difference between Toastmasters and a public speaking coach? Good question. Finding the right type of learning method and environment is important if you want to make headway with your speaking, and it’s confusing to sift through the different options. Full disclosure: I’m a public speaking coach and trainer (in case that wasn’t…

Resolutions, resolutions

Skill developmentBy Lauren Sergy January 6, 2016

Note: This is a longer post than usual, but it will give you a jump start on making your 2016 “Become a better speaker” resolution reality! Whether you love or hate New Year’s Resolutions, they have most certainly filtered past your field of awareness at least once over the past few weeks. And most…

Quality of voice

Skill developmentBy Lauren Sergy September 15, 2015

There’s been a lot of flap in gender politics over the quality of voices. Many have vehemently said that we shouldn’t judge someone based on how they sound. I agree with this. We shouldn’t. But expecting people to not make these judgements is about as unrealistic as the old cliche about not judging a book by…

Feel the Churn

Creating, Skill developmentBy Lauren Sergy August 26, 2015

One of the glories of the Internet is that we have access to an incredible store of talks by a huge range of speakers. Between social media sharing and search engines, exceptional, mind-shifting talks flit across our radar on a regular basis. This same access can make us feel that people out there are crafting…

The case for rhetoric

Arguing, Skill development, TechniquesBy Lauren Sergy June 15, 2015

Oustide of miming, rhetoric could be one of the most maligned arts out there. It’s derision has become built into our language: “That argument is purely rhetorical.” “It’s all just rhetoric.” “Rhetorically speaking…” The funny thing is that most of us don’t actually understand what the word means. We toss it around to mean arguing…