Saturday, October 22, 2005

Relief Found for America's Number One Fear: Stage Fright

Speaking Circles® International today announced relief for America’s number one ranked fear – stage fright. Stage fright surpasses death among people’s most prominent fears according the The Book of Lists. To support people worldwide in overcoming this fear, Speaking Circles International has created a quiz on its website to assess the severity of the anxiety as well as a 5-Step Method to offer relief to its sufferers.Whether giving a toast at a friend’s wedding, an informal talk to a small group at work, or an important presentation, it is natural to suffer from some degree of performance anxiety, or stage fright. Ranging from the “screaming meemies" variety of stage fright, to low-grade trepidation, to simply a sense that you can be so much more in front of groups, assessing your symptoms presents an ideal opportunity to begin transforming self-consciousness into self-confidence.“In 1989, still desperately seeking a solution to my life-long stage fright, I invented the group process that came to be known as Speaking Circles®,” said Lee Glickstein, Founder of Speaking Circles International. “Utilizing soft-focus group support for finite periods of time, this deceptively simple method has turned out to be the elegant key to gently dissolving fear of speaking in public for people around the world.” 5-Step approach to overcoming stage fright and performance anxiety:Full Presence Communication is based upon a natural method called “Be With”, meaning to invite connection on a personal level with one listener at a time.

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Friday, October 21, 2005

The Presentation After the Presentation

Stephen D. Boyd

Allowing the audience to ask questions after your presentation is an excellent way to reinforce your message and to continue to sell your ideas. In addition, because listeners can ask for clarification, audience members are less likely to leave your presentation with misconceptions about the concepts you delivered. Because of these benefits, the question and answer period is actually another presentation and vital to most speaking situations.Here are some suggestions to more effectively handle the question and answer period. Create the right mental set among your listeners by telling them early in the presentation that you will have a question and answer period at the end of your speech. If you have an introducer, tell that person to mention your willingness to answer questions at the end of the presentation.

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Thursday, October 20, 2005

Self-Confidence Is The Key To Personal And Professional Success

Michael Port

In my audio program Book Yourself Solid, The 7 Keys To Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even If You Hate Marketing And Selling, I focus on the nitty gritty of what to do to get loads of clients but the real key and what I try to deep into is what you need to do for yourself to take action.I think there are only two reasons for most any business problem:

  1. You dont know what to do
  2. You know what to do but youre not doing it
And, I also think that 90% of all business problems stem from number two. When I say business problems I mean why we dont achieve what we say we want to achieve or why we dont do what we say we want to do. So, of course, the next question you might ask is why dont we do what we know how to do? And the answer is. we havent built up the self-confidence needed for the goal at hand. Look learning is easy accumulating knowledge is easy.

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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Five "How to be a Better Speaker" Articles

Sandra Schrift

One: How to Create Sizzling Speech and Book TitlesDescription: Create titles that focus on what most people want all the time. Example "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Learn five ways to design your speech and/or best-selling book titles. Article URL: http://www.schrift.com/article_sizzlingspeech.htm Article Autoresponder: article-004@schrift.com


Two: How to Prepare Your Speech Part 1Description: The three rules for being a top presenter are: practice, practice, practice. The good news is that public speaking is a craft that can be taught and learned. Review these 14 top tips and then hire a speech coach.

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Tuesday, October 18, 2005

A Short Guide to Effective Public Speaking

Stephen D. Boyd

Delivering an effective presentation to 20 or to 200 people is difficult. Because listeners have better access to information since the internet became commonplace, audiences expect more content from speakers today. In addition, because of the entertainment slant of most media today, audiences want a presentation delivered with animation, humor, and pizzazz.If you would rather spend your time preparing your content than reading a book on public speaking, this is an article especially for you! From my experiences in delivering over l500 speeches during the past 20 years, here is a quick guide to giving an effective and interesting presentation your very first time.Begin with something to get the attention of the audience. This might be a startling statement, statistic, or your own story. Listeners pay close attention when a person begins with, “Two weeks ago as I was driving to work a car pulled out in front of me….” You could begin with a current event: “You might have read in the paper this morning about the flood that….” A question is another way to make people listen.

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Monday, October 17, 2005

Linda Belans Will Speak To Professional Women’s Group about Managing Impressions

(ContentDesk) August 24, 2005 -- Linda Belans, National Public Radio Host and Public Speaking and Communications Coach, will speak to Triangle Business and Professional Women (BPW) on Thursday, September 8th, 2005 at 6 p.m. at the Radisson Governor’s Inn in RTP, NC. Linda will coach members and guests of Triangle BPW on how to bring their authentic self to the podium while managing impressions such as body talk, gender differences, language and style. Addressing Triangle BPW is one of many ways Linda keeps her commitment to being a “woman who helps other women.” About Linda Belans:Linda Belans has been a secretary, sold ladies gloves in a department store and Avon door-to-door. She’s been a dancer, critic, teacher, actor, radio talk show host, writer, communications coach and parent.

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Sunday, October 16, 2005

Deceptive Public Speakers

Clive Simpkins

Deceptive Public Speakers and presenters - or just the blind leading the blind?A disappointing deception is being perpetrated in the so-called public speaking and presenting arena. For years it’s been a (now fading, thank God) ‘norm’ for companies to have a ‘motivational’ speaker at annual marketing, sales and other conferences. Being a veteran public speaker and founding member of the National Speakers’ Association of SA (NSASA), I need to declare an interest. The purpose of this article is to 1) Alert relevant parties to the ‘canned’ nature of what they may be getting for their speaker money and 2) Hopefully save some young wanna-be speakers from going down a highly inappropriate and ‘ersatz’ road.My opinion of the role of an authentic public speaker is that one takes a brief to get enough information to really understand the audience and the intended outcome of the assignment or conference. You then custom-craft something or ‘tweak’ an existing suitable presentation for the event and then deliver that material in an engaging, and hopefully also ‘professionally entertaining’ way.What triggered this article can only be described as a Damascene experience.

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