Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Communication skills”
It’s not your imagination. Zoom or virtual presentations do suck both figuratively and literally. They sap energy and magnify flaws. Presenting online is challenging. What might you do to improve? Understand the challenges, adapt your presentation delivery, and enhance your skills.
Your Intended Message is the podcast about how we communicate – mistakes we can avoid and how we can communicate more effectively.
Think about the last time you had a message go wrong. You didn’t know why. The receiver of your message didn’t get it or they reacted weirdly and you had no idea what their problem was. That’s the challenges that this podcast will address. Every week, I’ll interview experts on different aspects of communication skills.
What’s a negative trigger word? That’s a word or phrase that derails your message by sending your audience off on a tangent. That might be an intellectual tangent or an emotional tangent. It’s the emotional tangents that are most destructive because it’s almost impossible to get your audience back after you trigger their emotional tangent.
The chat encourages people to think. What could be a higher form of engagement than that? The chat offers you as the meeting leader or presenter benefits that you can’t enjoy in a live presentation. You will tend to get a higher percentage of your audience actively contributing because there are those who prefer not to speak up but find it easier to write a short chat. It feels safer to chat then to speak.
You control the message you send, and you can make it more successful when you understand the filters and adapt your message to successfully pass through the filters unchanged.
These are the challenges you face with your intended message.
Use rhetorical questions during your presentation to better engage your audience. This technique is simple and powerful. It’s surprising that more speakers don’t make better use of this technique.
This works especially well, when delivering detailed technical information. That means this is an effective technique for engineers, scientists, economists, IT experts, and other technical specialists.
Toastmasters can help you improve your presentation skills. Toastmasters has helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world improve their presentation, public speaking, and communication skills.
Telling stories in y
our presentation
The best speakers are storytellers. Tell stories to engage your listeners and make your point. Stories can help build trust with your listeners. If the story is funny – that is a bonus. Don’t tell a story just because you find it funny. That does not serve your purpose.
Fully engage your audience with your stories by putting them in the story. Help them see and feel the circumstances personally.
Imagine how your audience feels when they experience your story as opposed to simply hearing it.
When you tell stories in your presentations you will sell more, persuade more effectively and enjoy greater results from your presentations. You’ll also feel better about speaking because story telling is more comforting than giving a speech.
Most of us would rather tell stories than give a speech. Ask someone to choose between telling a story or giving a speech guess what they will pick. While public speaking gets high rating as a fear, storytelling does not.
Include stories in your presentation because it helps you deliver your message. Follow this simple formula to make stories work for you.
