When you head into your presentation or speech, two-thirds of your audience is predisposed to not listen to you. Whoa. That’s a pretty rough statistic to have to beat – which is why it’s absolutely critical you nail the beginning of your speech. I’ve addressed the importance of your appearance and non-verbals, but what comes […]
I’ve addressed the topic of filler words a few times and for good reason! They are everywhere and they absolutely kill your message. They distract and detract – all while making us look less than intelligent. They do nothing for us and yet, so many of us are attached to using them! Having helped countless […]
Try throwing a ball with your right and left hand simultaneously with equal force. Now try to talk and listen at the same time. Unless your powers of coordination are extraordinary, both of these tasks will be awkward if not totally ineffective. Some neuroscientists go so far as to say our brains are incapable of […]
It’s Olympic season – which means we’ll no doubt see some amazing feats done by incredible individuals. Miracles happen every Olympics, and the 1980 Winter Olympics will go down in history as one of the greatest examples of this. When the United States Olympic hockey team glided onto the ice to face the Soviets in […]
“We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This phrase—“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—remains timeless in large part because it’s so simple. It’s as poetic as […]
You hear them every day: they’re sort of … like … totally … sort of, I mean … Um, uh … ya know … the wishy-washy kinds of words that people unconsciously use to punctuate their speech, both at work and in social situations. The thing is, good speakers avoid filler words like the plague, […]
There was fascinating article written by Andrew Jacobs years ago for the New York Times entitled, “Novice Newscasters Get Voice Therapy.” In the article, Jacobs exposes the extensive training some broadcast journalists have to go through to get their delivery just right. Jacobs writes, “…those new to the medium say that delivering words in a […]
Featured in Fast Company If you want to be remembered, do the opposite of what’s expected. And don’t waste time doing it. Here’s a fact that most speakers—even experienced ones—tend to forget, even if they know it’s true: People internalize the first things they hear much more quickly and effectively than whatever follows it. Your […]
Every 17 seconds, someone, somewhere in the world, is watching a TED talk. If you have access to the Internet, it’s likely you either heard of one or watched one. Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) is the cool, modern lecture series on a variety of topics delivered by practitioners worldwide. They inform, entertain, and often […]
I’m often amazed how many poor communicators spend hours honing their scripts, seeking to choose exactly the right words, only to pay no attention whatsoever to the visual judgments that audiences are making about them every time they get up to speak. Like it or not, without fail or exception, your audience is judging you. […]
Communication is a tool that has the power to be your best friend or worst enemy. So often we fail to really say what we mean to communicate. Poor word choices, spoken in the wrong order, with inappropriate contexts, can get us into trouble. We need to be careful when we choose our words but […]
When Jobs first introduced the iPod, he didn’t strictly talk about the hardware and software. He talked about the prospect of having a thousand songs in your pocket. Very simple language. Very clear tones. Very emotional language. A thousand songs in your pocket? What an awe-inspiring concept for people at the time. That’s a veritable […]
Every time you step up to a dais: • one-third of your audience views you favorably; • one-third of your audience finds you unfavorable; and • one-third of your audience is quickly waiting to make up their minds by hearing your first few sentences When you consider this, 2/3 of your audience is predisposed to […]
Chuck Garcia