Public Speaking, Presentation & Leadership Skills

Persuade person with elegance At some point everyone tries to persuade someone else for something. It may be selling a product or lobbying for a promotion or even just trying to win a debate competition.  As we face challenges from the person/persons we are trying to persuade, we try to be push harder.  But, the harder you push the more people have a tendency to get defensive and back away. This is one of the most important challenges faced by a leader / person when one tries to get the work done from his / her subordinates / colleagues. Good persuasion is a skill. It's a give and take allowing for people to move at their own pace with some steady nudging. Some are good at it but others needed to learn it from scratch. But both have to continuously practice it. There are a number of effective and inoffensive considerations and techniques that can help with pleasant persuasion. Make it discreet Often, talking through a point gets lost. People have a strong...

As discussed in my previous blog my Toastmaster Project 6 - "Vocal Variety" was named “The Wind”. The speech was about finding a relation between nature and life. The speech was written in a way to have a drama, inorder to incorporate both movement and vocal variety . In red are the emphasis I had attempted of incorporating. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“THE Wind”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fellow Toastmasters and guests… A few years ago while I was in India, my wife and I traded our condo keys for house keys. Our floor space doubled, but there were two much larger changes. First, our mortgage jumped from something quite manageable to something which scares me considerably. Second, the few hours that I once affectionately called “free time” (emphasize it with a sarcastic voice and imaginary quotation sign) became known as “yard work.”  Yard work is a bit like working at MDA for me. I don’t have any clue what I should be doing half the time, but somehow I always end up be...

Ever heard of the saying “It’s not what you say it’s how you say it?” Does your voice put your audience to sleep? Does it put you to sleep? Do you find it hard to convey emotions with your voice? Are you easy to listen to, or does your voice let you down? Toastmasters Project 6 – Vocal Variety guides you to harness your own voice. The previous projects were about communicating coherent ideas, simply, and to the point. This project takes it a notch higher making you aware of how to use your voice to communicate. The most interesting thing is that we innately know how to use our voices to convey excitement, joy, surprise love or sadness as these are all key ingredient of our daily and we unconsciously use it almost all the time. In speech or public speaking we are conscious that our voice has to communicate the emotion we have to say, and that’s where something strange happens and we forget the very basics. Remember that our voice is the best tool available i...

Ask any professional speechwriter and he will tell you that most people in an audience will forget 90 percent of a speech by the morning after it is delivered. But amazingly, people in the same audience can repeat a well-chosen quotation or humorous item from a speech -- sometimes as long as several years later. Every speech does not need quotations, but every speaker needs to know why, how, and when to use quotations in their speeches . Benefits of Quote There are numerous benefits to crafting quotations into your speech, including: The primary reason to quote material in your speech is that it reinforces your ideas. A quotation offers a second voice echoing your claims, but is more powerful than simply repeating yourself in different words. Generally the quotes are from a well renowned person. By using the quote we can piggybank on them to enhance our credibility Quotes usually offer a concise and memorable phase, that has a proven track record Quotations a...