It’s lurking and pervasive. It rears its ugly head during business presentations—project updates, board reports, and investor meetings. It happens during team meetings and webinars. CEOs and new hires are equally guilty of it.
It’s the corporate communication trap!
“Across 12 studies [an associate professor from University College of London School of Management] found that people could predict VC funding decisions based not on the actual content of entrepreneurs’ pitches but on how they were presented, especially body language and facial expressions.”
Read MoreOn the afternoon of July 6, a bolt of lightning pierced the Oregon sky and struck the ground near the small community of Beatty. If you were in the vicinity, it most assuredly caught your attention, but what happened next would catch the country’s attention.
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But what does a 400,000-acre forest fire have to do with effective communication?
When I was around 8 years old, I went on a sales call with my father. He sold paper and plastic products. I sat in the corner and quietly watched my dad sell branded plastic bags, copy paper, and toilet paper to the owner of a small shoe store.
How did he sell him TP? A story.
To be successful, arguments shouldn’t be combative, but they must be convincing.
Here are five tips to constructing and communicating a convincing argument.
While brushing off your power suits and shoes, you also need to brush off your in-person presentation skills. This means no more presenting through a camera with our notes pasted on the wall and dogs barking in the background.
Here are three important best practices to remember as you prepare to return to in-person presentations:
Read MoreIf each PowerPoint was an inch, there would be enough PowerPoints to extend to the moon and back...over 10 times!
That’s a lot of slides.
Despite the considerable volume of generated slide decks, the old adage “practice makes perfect” hasn’t borne out. We all regularly encounter slide decks that merely repeat spoken content—often as a string of bullet points. Like this:
Read MoreWhen the time comes to present, you get up and start your presentation. But once you start, you can’t stop...not even to breathe. You’re off to the races. You easily finish in the time allotted, and when you ask for questions, there are none.
Was it good? Probably not.
I recently watched a speaker who used 11 ‘umms’ and ‘ahhs’ in the first 26 seconds of their presentation. That’s nearly a filler word every 2 seconds! I became fixated on them. I started counting.
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