TYPICAL CHALLENGES
- Isolating a central message
- Narrowing the topic
- Analyzing and adjusting to the audience
- Organizing ideas for maximum impact
- Designing with focused scope
- Developing support material
- Designing visual aids
- Making points clear
- Moving others to action
- Dealing with apathetic or hostile audiences
- Delivering to hold attention and be memorable
- Handling questions and answers
- Being effective extemporaneously
TOM’S CREDENTIALS
Tom earned two degrees in speech communication. He has also taught public speaking in high school and college, and he coached competitive speech teams to be highly successful. In industry, he “scrubbed” speakers and their speeches before they were “released,” and he designed and taught a comprehensive oral presentations course covering a variety of speaking challenges.
Speakers under Tom’s direction have presented technical “papers;” informed large and small audiences on new products, polices and practices; led company cultural transformations; and communicated with hostile audiences.
How Tom Can Help
Coaching that probes to sharpen your clarity and bring out your ideas is absolutely valuable. A presentation, to be effective, has to be yours. Pulling out those ideas and getting them settled, situated and shared in a way that has you committed and impassioned must be done with aplomb or the presentation is artificial. But at times your ideas and self-critique is limited. Then its time for consulting—propelling you through aspects of a presentation that bring you to a higher, commanding level.
Both serve to make the process easy.
These allow you to see yourself as others will see you, with genuine, formative intervention.
One-on-one or for groups. Brace yourself: only instruction that engages you, gets you practicing proven concepts and supplies helpful feedback will generate significant improvement. A mere litany of principles falsely supports, like quick sand.