The official blog of Executive Speaking has moved.
Australia's Public Speaking Coach Blog and Australian Public Speaking Courses Blog are both blogs operated by Executive Speaking.
These two blogs have now been combined to one blog at www.executivespeaking.wordpress.com.
You can still get all the latest information on public speaking by visiting Executive Speaking, or the new Executive Speaking blog.
Cheers
darren Fleming
Australias public Speaking Coach
Australian Public Spekaing courses
Showing posts with label Public speaking courses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Public speaking courses. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 September 2007
Thursday, 5 July 2007
Can You Present Statistics in an Interesting Way?
You Bet!!!
I recently had the opportunity to offer some presentation coaching with a client - Trina - who spent her day delivering statistical training. Her area of speciality was 'imputation', which looks at how you estimate certain numbers. As you could imagine, you could make the topic very dry and boring without even trying!
As I watched Trina deliver her training, I noticed that the people in the room were actually becoming involved and excited (well OK - Just involved) in what was being presented. Granted the participants were interested in the information, but lets face it, this was the fourth day of a full week of advanced statistical training! People were bound to be tired and over it. Why were these people so interested?
At the end of the training, Trina came up to me and apologised for all the things that she did wrong, and wished that she could do better. She said this was whyshe needed public speaking coaching. She apologised for holding her notes while she spoke, apologised for being nervous and apologised for being genuinely excited about the topic when no-one else was. What she did not realise was that her excitement for the topic was what made her so successful at her job.
Her enthusiasm for her topic was evident from the start. She told the participants that she was genuinely excited about the statistical Normal Curve, and what could be achieved by understanding it. She told stories of how her last employer ignored the normal curve, and how it cost them dearly. She showed the participants how they could follow the rules and avoid the same dire consequences. This is what involve the audience.
It was her enthusiasm for the subject that really entertained the audience. She was excited, and happy to be training and the carried her through and the audience through what was at times very tough and tedious learning
The fact that she held her notes, was no real distraction. The audience knew it was a technical presentation, and knew there was a lot of information to be presented, and understood that it would have been difficult to present off the top of your head. I gave her a few pointers on how to reduce the number of notes. She had several pages of the notes she was using. These were primarily be PowerPoint slides she was talking to. She could have made these notes are more useful to her by reducing the amount that she wrote on them. Simple bullet points instead of full sentences would have helped her.
She also would have been better do not read the slides verbatim. Many public speaking articles have been written about how to use PowerPoint properly. They all suggest that you should not read what is on the slides as it simply distracts the audience. In fact, there is some research coming out of the University of New South Wales suggesting that reading the slides at the same time as people listening to you and reading them reduces the amount that they take in. This is due to cognitive overload. Our brain can only do so much at once and if we have to listen and read the same stuff, we will not taken as much information.
So yes it is possible to make statistics interesting! If Trina could make statistics interesting, can't you make you all topic interesting? How do you do this? Follow Trina's example: be excited about your topic; have stories relate to your topic; & show how the stories relate to your audience.
You can get more information about stories in public speaking by following this link to Australia's public speaking coach.
Till later,
I recently had the opportunity to offer some presentation coaching with a client - Trina - who spent her day delivering statistical training. Her area of speciality was 'imputation', which looks at how you estimate certain numbers. As you could imagine, you could make the topic very dry and boring without even trying!
As I watched Trina deliver her training, I noticed that the people in the room were actually becoming involved and excited (well OK - Just involved) in what was being presented. Granted the participants were interested in the information, but lets face it, this was the fourth day of a full week of advanced statistical training! People were bound to be tired and over it. Why were these people so interested?
At the end of the training, Trina came up to me and apologised for all the things that she did wrong, and wished that she could do better. She said this was whyshe needed public speaking coaching. She apologised for holding her notes while she spoke, apologised for being nervous and apologised for being genuinely excited about the topic when no-one else was. What she did not realise was that her excitement for the topic was what made her so successful at her job.
Her enthusiasm for her topic was evident from the start. She told the participants that she was genuinely excited about the statistical Normal Curve, and what could be achieved by understanding it. She told stories of how her last employer ignored the normal curve, and how it cost them dearly. She showed the participants how they could follow the rules and avoid the same dire consequences. This is what involve the audience.
It was her enthusiasm for the subject that really entertained the audience. She was excited, and happy to be training and the carried her through and the audience through what was at times very tough and tedious learning
The fact that she held her notes, was no real distraction. The audience knew it was a technical presentation, and knew there was a lot of information to be presented, and understood that it would have been difficult to present off the top of your head. I gave her a few pointers on how to reduce the number of notes. She had several pages of the notes she was using. These were primarily be PowerPoint slides she was talking to. She could have made these notes are more useful to her by reducing the amount that she wrote on them. Simple bullet points instead of full sentences would have helped her.
She also would have been better do not read the slides verbatim. Many public speaking articles have been written about how to use PowerPoint properly. They all suggest that you should not read what is on the slides as it simply distracts the audience. In fact, there is some research coming out of the University of New South Wales suggesting that reading the slides at the same time as people listening to you and reading them reduces the amount that they take in. This is due to cognitive overload. Our brain can only do so much at once and if we have to listen and read the same stuff, we will not taken as much information.
So yes it is possible to make statistics interesting! If Trina could make statistics interesting, can't you make you all topic interesting? How do you do this? Follow Trina's example: be excited about your topic; have stories relate to your topic; & show how the stories relate to your audience.
You can get more information about stories in public speaking by following this link to Australia's public speaking coach.
Till later,
Cheers,
Darren
Australian Public Speaking courses
www.executivespeaking.com.au
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
What to look for in a Public Speaking Course
People often ask me why they should join my public speaking courses as opposed to joining others. There are many public speaking courses in the market, some good, others not. Below is a number of points to consider when looking for a public speaking course.
- Consider the skills of the person who will be delivering the course. Are they someone who has been there and done it before, or are they a "wanna-be". There are some great people who have won major competitions with their speaking, and these include David Brooks, Craig Valentine as well as my favourite, Darren laCroix.
- Not everyone can be a world champion speaker. However, you can find some speakers who have the skills that you need all the same. These include Darren Fleming, Jeff Justice and Eric Feng.
- Make sure that the course that you are interested in has what you are after. Many courses out there want to turn you into a keynote speaker and promise that you will make lots of money in your new found career. However, if you just want to be able to communicate more clearly with clients and colleagues, then you need to look at what your public speaking course will achieve and see if the results are what you are after.
- A good public speaking course will have a clear outline that is based in the 'real world'. That is, if you are a very nervous speaker, don't look for the magic trick that will turn you into the next Bill Clinton. Look for something that is achievable and can get you the results you need.
- See if you can get Public speaking course testimonials. yes, it is easy to fudge these, so look for one that have company names listed.
- Choose a reputable organisation that has a history behind it. Toastmasters International offers a number of programs that can improve your skills. Toastmasters Australia has a number of public speaking courses that can show you how to progress.
- Finally, try to get a public speaking course that has the ability to video your presentations so you can take it away and review it later. You will learn an amazing amount just from watching your own performance.
If you need some more information about public speaking courses, or even one-on-one public speaking coaching drop me a line and I will help you out.
Cheers
Darren Fleming
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)