Training the speaking voice
In her work with clients, our voice and speech coach Sharon Wyeth often works with people who are soft-spoken. As she introduces her voice and speech students to breathing techniques that strengthen...
View ArticlePresentation Skills: Adjust your level of detail
You’re preparing a presentation and the question comes up, “How much detail should I include?” The answer is, “Just enough,” and that’s not a cop out, because there are so many different...
View ArticleThe #1 Sales Skill
Client facing skills (also known as sales skills and interpersonal skills) are essentially the skills of a very good conversationalist. Good conversations can lead to connection, mutual respect, and...
View ArticleSims Wyeth & Co. offers Training the Speaking Voice
Client facing skills are the skills of a dynamic and purposeful conversationalist. The medium of conversation is the voice, and as Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, or at least a large...
View ArticleStage Fright: Nervous about not being nervous
Last week I woke up in the middle of the night nervous that I was not nervous about a speech I had to make. The thought that I was giving a speech in a few hours floated between my ears and in an...
View ArticleShock and awe work in presentations
I recently got a letter from a lawyer threatening to sue me because I had mistakenly used a copyrighted image in a blog. The letter was not a cease and desist letter. It was a shock and awe letter, so...
View ArticlePublic Speaking: From the State of the Union to the Campaign Trail
Should you choose to take it, the road to success, high office, and power leads us all to the frightening slopes of public speaking—the number one fear in America. Since the last election, we’ve seen...
View ArticlePublic Speaking is like splitting wood
When I was 12 years old, I went to a canoe camp in northern Quebec. Thanks Mom and Dad. It was great. We paddled for thirty days straight, pitching camp every night, foraging and cutting our own...
View ArticlePublic Speaking: The Big Fat Issue
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.” — Teddy Roosevelt Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican...
View ArticleCommunication Skills: Why our leaders disappoint us
Let’s begin with the bald truth: we draw our leaders from a pool of imperfect beings. Millions of years of evolution have yet to yield The Perfect Leader. We all come from imperfect families, have...
View ArticlePublic Speaking: How you come across
Jim Fyfe is a friend of mine and a very funny man. He has been an actor, a comedian and is now an educator. In his younger days, he was asked to judge a contest for students of architecture who were...
View ArticleWhat good is stage fright?
I have a theory that the first purpose of public speech is to warn a community of imminent danger. For instance, in the animal world, vervet monkeys have three distinct cries for eagle, snake and...
View ArticlePublic Speaking: A masterful performance
I give the ClassAct Award for the best thank you speech at the Oscars to Christopher Plummer. The man is 82 years young. No wincing in pain as he rose from his seat. No creaky knees up the steps to...
View ArticleBecoming a great presenter
Is it possible for anyone to become a great presenter? Let’s define our terms. Anyone is a college graduate in the western world between the ages of 21 and 65. Let’s define “possible” as an 80% chance...
View ArticlePresentation Skills: Tell, Sell, Solve
There are some circumstances in which we can tell an audience what to do, some where we must sell them (or convince) them to do something, and then there are those times when we do not have the...
View ArticleGot stage fright?
Speaking with stage fright is like driving with the emergency brake partially on. Your whole body trembles, your mouth gets hot and dry, you can smell the smoke rising from your armpits, and you can’t...
View ArticleIt’s a Trap: A public speaking mistake
I had a new client to meet in New York City, so to beat traffic, I left home early and arrived by 7AM, which left me three hours until the meeting. To kill time, I went to The Harvard Club for...
View ArticleWhat to Do to Reduce Stage Fright, by Ryan Rivera, guest blogger
I am pleased to introduce Ryan Rivera, who is a guy with extreme compassion for anyone who suffers from stage fright and public speaking anxiety. Stage fright stops many of us from advancing in our...
View ArticlePublic Speaking: The curse of charm
Not one, but two of my clients are in trouble because they each have a super-abundance of charm. Accomplished, handsome raconteurs, they hold forth in meetings with panache, tossing off confetti...
View ArticleEffective communicating: Not just the facts
Albums on which all songs sound more or less the same are boring. Speaking voices that lack variety in pitch, volume, and rhythm are boring. Watching grass grow and paint dry is boring. And so is...
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