More Speaking Tips from Bert Decker

Bert Decker has several great recent posts that have been sitting in my “to blog” folder.  I’m going to lump them together here:

The Power of the Pause:  Practice pausing. Non-words are just pause fillers, and extend beyond the typical “um” and “uh” to “you knows,” “ands,” “okays,” “right” and the like. All anyone has to do is practice leaving pauses of two or three seconds after each sentence. In this exercise the speaker will at first feel the pauses are excruciatingly long.

Quick Tip: The Rule of 40: Whenever there are more than 40 people in a room of any size, use a microphone.

Impact with Technology:  Remembering that you are the presentation, develop visuals that enhance your point of view. After all, visuals are important:

• 55% of believability comes through the visual
• A 500% average increase in retention occurs when visuals are used in a presentation
• 83% of what we know is learned by seeing and observing

If you do presentations or public speaking, Bert’s blog has to be on your “must read” list.