Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Blog - Improve Your Public Speaking Presentation and Influence Skills Training Coaching Melbourne Australia

Resources to improve your public speaking and presentation skills.

14May

Public Speaking Anxiety – A Drive for Certainty?

Public Speaking Anxiety - A Drive for Certainty? Creating certainty in public speaking Anxiety: it's not only a signal that something needs attention - it can also be a drive to eliminate uncertainty and a sense of loss of control in our lives. And in working with many clients on their public speaking anxiety, I'm frequently seeing that many of them have a strong drive for certainty and control around their speaking. This is a tricky one - because public speaking is an inherently uncertain activity. However, if you recognise yourself as someone who's uncomfortable (or driven mad) by your need for certainty, there are...

By Sarah DenholmMindset, Overcoming Nerves, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Blog, Rehearsalcontrolling public speaking anxiety, nervous about presenting, nervous speaker, public speaking anxiety, reduce public speaking anxiety2 CommentsRead more...

02Apr

Audience Brains Need Structure When You Speak In Public

Audience brains need structure when you speak in public Audience Brains Need Structure What's one thing that your audience really needs from you when you speak in public? A structure. It's so important to give them a clear framework for your content. Our brains are pattern-making machines. We're constantly scanning new information for patterns which we can relate to our current knowledge base, and we subconsciously try to create a logic by comparing and sorting information. If there's no logical flow, we'll be unhappy, even though we may not consciously know why. (Of course, if the presentation we've just sat through was a rambling...

By Sarah DenholmAudience Management, Content, Delivery, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Blog, Structurebrain patterns, clear message, confident presentations, confident public speaking, framework for public speaking clarity, presentation structure, public speaking structure3 CommentsRead more...

09Mar

9 Mistakes Presenters Make

9 Mistakes Presenters Make Mistakes Presenters Make Do you want to be a more dynamic presenter? You will be if you avoid these frequent mistakes. I've discussed all of these ideas in previous articles, but thought it was worth clustering them together for a 'common mistakes' overview. 1. Forgetting the WIIFM filter One of the most common mistakes that presenters make is forgetting to run their whole presentation through their audience’s No.1 filter – and that is always WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) From the moment you open your mouth, to the summing-up, you’re being judged through this filter, and in order...

By Sarah DenholmAudience Management, Body Language, Content, Delivery, Mindset, Overcoming Nerves, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Blog, Rehearsal, Structureaudience management public speaking, audience recall in public speaking, body language in public speaking, energy level public speaking, presentation structure, public speaking rehearsal, stories public speaking, storytelling in public speaking, vocal tone presence public speaking0 CommentsRead more...

18Feb

Public Speaking Fear: How Breathing will Help

Public Speaking Fear: How Breathing Will Help Think about public speaking fear and breathing: this may be a topic you resist. You may think you’ve heard it all before, or you've Public speaking fear: how breathing will help tried working with your breath and didn't find it helpful. That certainly used to be my experience, and I've had a client recently who told me it didn't work, because he could only do a breath or two before his negative thoughts started up again. I told him it's inevitable that our thoughts are always there, just keep coming back to the breath; and that he...

By Sarah DenholmBody Language, Delivery, Mindset, Overcoming Nerves, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Blogavoiding nasal tonality public speaking, breathing during public speaking, breathing techniques for public speaking, calm and control public speaking2 CommentsRead more...

15Jan

12 Essential Truths About Public Speaking, Fear and Growth

12 Essential Truths about Public Speaking, Fear and Growth 12 Essential Truths about Public Speaking, Fear and Growth Speaking in public is a complex activity with a lot of moving parts: especially when fear is involved, as it so often is: it brings up vulnerability and challenges for so many of my clients (and before I learned how to work through it in the right ways, for me). From recent conversations with clients and what's resonated with them, I've distilled some of my observations about public speaking, fear and growth which I believe to be true, and hopefully useful to you. That: 1. It's...

By Sarah DenholmMindset, Overcoming Nerves, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Blogafraid of public speaking, assumptions and beliefs about public speaking, authentic public speaking, breath and public speaking, commit to your voice, confident public speaking, engaging your audience, fear of public speaking, fear public speaking, good public speaking, nervous energy, public speaking growth, public speaking resistance, self-belief and public speaking, speaking skills1 CommentRead more...

02Jan

Three Factors Which Reduce Public Speaking Fear

How to reduce public speaking fear; as it's always such a popular topic, here are 3 ways to help reduce your anxiety: A Sense of Control will Reduce Public Speaking Fear Increase your sense of control Get annoyed! Be willing to act The first way: Increase your sense of control. Feeling a sense of control in a stressful situation is really important in making it manageable. I recently discovered Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut and writer. In a short radio interview, Chris talks about fear and control: "in my experience, fear comes from not knowing what to expect, and not feeling you have any control...

By Sarah Denholmbusiness meetings, Mindset, Overcoming Nerves, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills BlogAmy Arnsten, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, anger and public speaking, Chris Hadfield, David Rock, exposure to public speaking, move through public speaking fear, neurobiology, Our Brain at Work, overcome fear of public speaking, prefrontal control public speaking, public speaking avoidance, public speaking danger, public speaking loss of control, reduce public speaking anxiety, sense of control, shift beliefs about public speaking, Yale Medical School3 CommentsRead more...

18Dec

Navy Seals Teach Us About Public Speaking Fear

[Updated 2020.] As you'll know if you've been around my work for a while, I used to suffer real anxiety around presenting to people (and music performance anxiety before that - it was a long road!). And when I work with clients on reducing public speaking fear, I use lots of different tools and techniques, depending on what people present with. About 10 years ago there was an interesting article in Psychology Today about four techniques the U.S. Navy Seals used to increase their training pass rates with new recruits. The original article is here. And because all four tools are ones I...

By Sarah DenholmMindset, Overcoming Nerves, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Blog, Rehearsal0 CommentsRead more...

20Nov

When your Negative Voice Gatecrashes your Presentation

Negative inner voice during presentation - typical audience listening face Have you ever had the experience while presenting of looking out at the audience and seeing only a sea of blank faces? You look at them and immediately get discouraged; the negative self-talk kicks in: "John looks bored, this must be really bad" or "that woman's just looked at her watch again...I'd better speed up!" (which is usually a bad move, as we tend to accelerate when nervous anyway). I Hearing my negative inner critic voice during my presentation used to be an issue for me, especially when I was a beginning...

By Sarah DenholmAudience Management, business meetings, Delivery, Mindset, Overcoming Nerves, Rehearsalaudience attention, audience connection, audience cues, bored looking audience, inner critic public speaking, negative voice while presenting0 CommentsRead more...

30Oct

8 Reasons Why you Feel Anxious about Public Speaking

Why you feel anxious about public speaking There are very real reasons why public speaking is so uncomfortable for most people, both because of how our brains are 'wired', and also in how we relate to the outer world. Today I'm going to share with you some of the reasons why we feel anxious about public speaking. Firstly, let's look at what I call our brain's fear timeline: our initial 'wiring', way back in the mists of time, our own past, and our future. Our brains’ fear timeline Our ancestral past In primitive times when we were cave-dwellers, our very survival was at stake...

By Sarah DenholmMindset, Overcoming Nerves, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Blog0 CommentsRead more...

03Oct

Two Great Ways to Open your Talk, Especially if you’re Nervous

Make your Audience Think to Focus and Engage Them The opening of your presentation is often the part where you're most nervous or self-conscious. You're faced with pairs of eyes looking at you, the audience feels like it's one big stare, and you're not enjoying the sudden attention. What can you do to take some of the unwanted focus off yourself, and create an engaging, effective start to your speech? Here are two ways which really work: Make a statement Ask a question Keep reading, because I probably haven't convinced you that these ideas are all that startling or great just yet! I'll explain why they...

By Sarah DenholmAudience Management, Content, Mindset, Overcoming Nerves, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills Blog, Selling, Structureaudience focus, engaging presentation, engaging speech openings, opening of talk, opening your speech, using questions during presentation2 CommentsRead more...