I spent a couple of hours during the Christmas break to watch the recording of my recent speeches. It is an exercise that I had somewhat neglected in the past as I discovered that I hadn’t done a self-evaluation of many speeches, some even stretching back to 2018! It was time well spent and reminded … Read more
I recently remembered a conversation with a good friend of mine. More specifically, her use of a rather arcane electrical engineering term, ‘black start capability’ to refer to a set of attributes that made some leaders stand out from the rest. In her opinion, very few leaders actually have a ‘black start capability’ and this … Read more
Over the past few months, I’ve increasingly started using Zoom for conference calls and online meetings in my senior leadership role for Toastmasters International. Yesterday, I facilitated an online meeting followed by a series of virtual workshops. Online meetings are a powerful tool to add to your leadership and communication arsenal. Here are some of … Read more
This post is part of a series of posts aimed at PMO professionals ahead of my keynote Public Speaking Demystified at the Future PMO Conference on October 17th in Hammersmith. A fortnight ago, when discussing informative speeches, I also mentioned that most speeches or presentations either seek to inform or persuade an audience. Persuasion immediately triggers images of … Read more
Impactful public speaking is made-up of well-structured content delivered in a strong and confident manner. Eye contact and body language are key elements of a strong delivery. However, the one that can make the difference between a weak speech and an impactful one is the speaker’s voice. Your voice is a muscle One thing that … Read more
This post is part of a series of posts aimed at PMO professionals ahead of my keynote Public Speaking Demystified at the Future PMO Conference on October 17th in Hammersmith. In earlier blog posts in this series, we covered the importance of basing your presentation around a single idea and additionally why you should be clear on what … Read more
This post is part of a series of posts aimed at PMO professionals ahead of my keynote Public Speaking Demystified at the Future PMO Conference on October 17th in Hammersmith. In an earlier post in this series, I mentioned the importance of having a foundational idea behind every speech or presentation. While having a clear and well-structured idea … Read more
The words you use can make the difference between a good speech and a great speech. They can keep your audience engaged, interested and allow audience members to paint mental images of what you say. Only a few general principles should be followed to use good language when speaking. The magic of synonyms I didn’t … Read more
This post is part of a series of posts aimed at PMO professionals ahead of my keynote Public Speaking Demystified at the Future PMO Conference on October 17th in Hammersmith. We’ve all sat through boring presentations be it at meetings or conferences. Part of what makes a presentation boring are poor uses of PowerPoint. Poor … Read more
I spoke earlier this year about the development of a visual monopoly style incentives board, to communicate the initiatives linked to long-term strategies that I developed. At the challenge of a colleague, I eventually ended-up fleshing this into a playable board game. So far, hundreds of people have used the board game as part of … Read more