How often do we forget to smile. We are so caught up in our thoughts that we miss the opportunity to engage with those around us be they customers, colleagues, clients or complete strangers. Today, when I arrived at the Business Design Centre in Islington London, the venue for the presentation skills workshop I am…

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Fear of public speaking is the number one reason why people avoid having to stand up and speak in public. The good news is that this is a natural reaction and that it can be conquered and that nervous energy turned into a resource. I have posted elsewhere on this site about this topic but…

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Why do so many business presenters continue to fill their slides with words and not images?  We all complain when we are bombarded by such slides, usually read monotonously, by the presenter. Ring any bells?    Now ask yourself, how often are you guilty of repeating this annoying behaviour? I think that there are two…

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Fear of Public Speaking

Don’t let your fear of public speaking hold you back Last week I ran one of my open workshops in London and I had six fantastic participants, and despite their professional experience, every one of them wanted to learn how to minimize their nerves. The fear of public speaking is a common and often paralysing condition.…

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We all know that practice is the best way to perfect our skills. The problem is that most of us think that we are too busy to practice so we just “wing it” and hope for the best. I see many people on my courses who started using this approach but have been put off…

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This past weekend I watched more than 30 performers take to the stage and try to engage the audience. A few excelled whereas many did no. So what is the difference that makes the difference? The Wickham Festival is a folk based music festival and has a wide range of acts from relatively obscure solo…

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In this post I’d like to share a simple and powerful model that the confident presenters I modelled use to “get in state” prior to their presentations. As an NLP Master Practitioner, modelling excellence is a key tool for me. When I was training in the USA, we were given a project to model the…

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