However organised or disorganised you are, I’m guessing you see some value of having a designated place for everything: towels in a cupboard, books on the bookshelf, cutlery in the cutlery drawer.

Easier to find and easier to put away.

How hard could that be without those designated spaces? It’s the same when it comes to sharing your expertise through speaking.

Our brains like to store things, to file them away, so that when we learn something new about a familiar topic, it knows where to store it. If it’s a new topic, our brain needs to create a new storage container.

When you use a simple structure for your talk you’re helping your audience to use appropriate containers to classify what they learn from you. Without that structure, what are the chances of them retaining or retrieving the important parts when they’re scattered among everything else going on in their brain?

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When you’re speaking in public, are you more likely to wing it or fully prepare?
I’ve seen several speakers come unstuck due, as they admitted, to lack of preparation.

Even if you’re usually able to wing it successfully, when sometimes extra nerves caused by a different situation, a change of circumstances or whatever kick in their usual style of winging it, speaking off the cuff or from the heart – however you like to describe it – failed them.

There’s no need to fully script your talk – unless you want to - and I would never advocate learning by heart, but having a plan and a simple structure gives you something to fall back on.

Know your key message, your key points, your opening and closing lines. It can be that simple.

Know those 4 things, keep to time and go for it – if that’s your preferred style.

For help with a simple structure, check out my 10 Top Tips

Rachel Maunder is a communication skills and...

What’s your warm-up routine before you deliver your talk?

Do you even have a routine?

If the idea is new to you, here are just some of the things you might want to include:

1. Make sure your voice and facial muscles are warmed up and working well. It’s surprising how they can let you down if you don’t look after them. Making faces at yourself in the mirror and slide up and down the musical scale will help.
2. Move! As close to the start of the event as possible, make sure you move in some way, to get your blood flowing and your mind awake.
3. And breathe! As the time for your presentation approaches, keep focused on your breathing. Take some deep breaths to clear your mind of any anxiety and to calm any symptoms of nerves

For help with putting together your warm-up routine, do get in touch to arrange a chat.

You can book direct with the link below.

https://calendly.com/storycoach/30min 

Rachel Maunder is a communication skills and speaker coach...

It’s probably no longer a shocking secret that you have just 7 seconds in which to make an impression and this applies to any scenario in which you are in front of someone new. Whether you’ve just walked into a room for an interview, been introduced to a prospective client or just taken centre stage to give your stunning presentation, the 7 seconds still applies.

No doubt we can all think of an example where we did change our mind for the better about someone who didn’t do so well in that 7 second test but in my experience, but why take the risk?

Why not make every effort to prepare that stunning preparation so that it’s stunningly good rather than stunningly poor?

Plan, prepare, practise are the well known alliterative maxims for a good presentation and I would add poise, presence and being pithy.

There are many more but let’s focus on those for now.

Plan

Plan what you want to say ahead of time. Choosing to wing it or letting the words come to...

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have found it a real challenge to produce a professional profile, or bio.

• Where do I start?
• What should I say, (without sounding too cocky and yet still getting across my expertise?)
• How can I make it sound interesting?
• How can I adapt it to fit different requirements or length, purpose, etc?

These were just some of the questions that went through my mind, and probably yours too.

I’d been advised to pre-prepare 3 different length bios that I could ‘use for any occasion’ but everyone seemed to want something different – a different angle, a different length, for a different audience or a different purpose so even when I’d created 3 different length versions of my ‘standard bio’ they still didn’t always fit the bill.

And yet I know that a good bio is important. It creates interest in you and what you’re about to speak about. If your bio isn’t compelling people may well assume...

Standing up in front of a group of prospective clients and/or potential collaborators is such a useful thing to do, and yet so many business owners shy away from it or worse still, do it badly. 

Having a well-constructed 15-minute presentation up your sleeve allows you to say ‘yes’ at the drop of a hat when an opportunity to present your business comes up, perhaps at a networking meeting or at a professional seminar.  

Speaking about your business gives you an opportunity to present yourself as an expert in your field and will ultimately help you get more clients – when you do it well. 

I’ve heard a lot of business owners give lots of valuable information, and often do so with confidence and clarity, and yet the audience remembers little of what was said. 

Putting your content into a simple structure that can be easily followed, understood and remembered will make you more memorable than the next speaker...

Do you have a pre-presentation routine? Most of the best speakers do – so why not you? 

When you prepare yourself both physically and mentally you are so much more likely to deliver your best stuff – and who wouldn’t want to do that? 

Here are a few tips to help you. You might want to use all or some of them, depending on the presentation itself, the situation and who is in the audience. 

1. Arrive with enough time to check out exactly where you will be presenting before your audience arrives. Where possible, stand where you will be standing to get a feel of what it will be like when your audience is in front of you.

You may even want to go through parts of your presentation in your mind, to consider what movement you need to make in order to reach the room, i.e., will you need to walk from one side of the stage or floor so that everyone can see you, or will it be better to stay central. 

For a virtual...