Short! A reflex to set your speech up for success
Less is more.
Heard it a thousand times.
But how? How do you start with less?
There is a super simple answer to that and it lies in a moment:
Selling change: the top tip for change management communication
How do you persuade people (and organisations) to embrace a change-management concept like Excellence?
Murat Aydin and Christian Forstner invited me to their third edition of Excellence Talks to discuss this (see the video below). Both know a thing or two about selling Excellence. Christian is one of the world’s leading experts in the field and Murat has led his company’s (GC Europe’s) journey to winning the EFQM’s Global Excellence Award last year. EFQM is the European Foundation for Quality Management.
Okay, but what does Excellence actually mean? Read more…
An ocean of opportunity: my fun-fantastic online speaking journey
Had you told me a few weeks ago that I’d be as enthusiastic about virtual presenting as I am now, I would not have believed you.
Going into lockdown here in Brussels in March, all physical trainings were immediately postponed. At the time, most clients weren’t ready to move trainings online. Understandably so, they had other things to worry about.
But what if they had moved trainings online right away?
Would I have felt ready?
The answer is a resounding “Yes but…”
The yes
The biggest obstacle in making a good presentation is good content. Your presentation has to give the biggest possible value to the audience. I haven’t given a training where this wasn’t so: creating the value is the biggest hurdle a speaker needs to take. And it’s the biggest help I give: a method that shows you how to create top notch content every time. Read more…
Martin Luther King: master of metaphor
I was invited this week by Patricia Mansencal to give an online-workshop on the Power of Metaphor at the newly chartered but already wonderfully dynamic Toastmasters Academy Rome.
Metaphors are powerful because they are visual and because they help us explain concepts in a non-abstract way. I mentioned recent creative uses of metaphor by my fellow Toastmasters Allisha Ali, Krisztina Stump and by Florian Mueck, with whom I recently had the honour to share the online stage at Lukas Liebich’s Storyteller Sundays.
At Toastmasters you always always always get feedback. Lilian Shaftacola, a fellow Toastmaster from Cyprus, recommended one thing I didn’t do: give examples from a famous speech. Read more…
Learning from Abraham Lincoln, master of rhythm and concision
I love to give trainings at places where they have quotes from great speakers on the wall.
Yesterday, it was this quote from Abraham Lincoln:
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Phrases like these get quoted for a reason: they say something meaningful with rhythm and concision. Read more…