Public Speaking, Presentation & Leadership Skills

As a speaker there are few questions which we all face What is the correct speed in a speech? Is your pace of delivering speech fast,slow or just right? And what is a normal speaking pace? The answers are not straight forward. The most common way to express one speaking pace is in words per minute (wpm). To calculate this one has to simply divide the number of words spoken by number of seconds. Speaking pace Studies suggest that the pace of a speaker depends on multiple of things like his/her culture, geographical location, subject matter, gender, fluency to even their emotional state.  However there are some guidelines which are widely accepted Slow speech is usually regarded as less than 110 wpm, or words per minute. Conversational speech generally falls between 120 wpm at the slow end, to 160 - 200 wpm in the fast range. People who read books for radio or podcasts are often asked to speak at 150-160 wpm. Auctioneers or commentators who practice speed s...

In the previous blog “ STORY TELLING – AN ENGAGING WAY FOR PRESENTATION –PART 1 ” we have discussed the benefits of presenting the ideas by storytelling techniques and techniques of achieving the same. The 4 techniques of storytelling are: Journey of a Hero   - Journey of an ordinary person to the unknown. While treading the path he discovers his powers and emerges as a hero The Obstacle  -  The journey building up to the Final Finale – The Climax Plunge  - Start of the journey with a plunge to the climax and then just before the finish start the flashback Silver lining – The path that can change the hope to become a reality Here in this blog we will carry on and discuss 4 more techniques of storytelling Nest    Nest is a story telling techniques where your main or most important story is layered by two or three minor stories. All the stories are minor stories have to be interrelated. Your second story should start as a continu...

In order to garner audience attention public speaker needs to take them on a journey, leaving them feeling inspired and motivated. They need to structure their speech to get the ideas across; keeping the audience engaged all the way, which is a very tricky proposition.  Story telling is one of the most exciting way to put across your ideas Why Story telling You are doing a presentation, so the natural tendency is to start with facts and figures highlighting the facts you want to get across. We think that s the best way. WRONG!! Humans are hardwired for stories. They love heroes, journeys, surprises, layers and happy sometimes tragic endings. Deliver a presentation that captures the hearts and heads of the audience by taking them alongside the journey. Deliver the facts and figures disguised in the story. The moment they start relating to the story, you will have their unconditional attention. They biggest question public speakers face is – HOW? Here I would be detailing...

Nobody Cares! Believe it or not, it's true - not single person in your audience cares about you. You and your story. You and your success. You and your obstacles. You and your genius ideas. Even if your mom, spouse, or kids are in the audience - they don't care about you either. Humans are an egotistical lot. Only they care about is themselves. To be honest we love our name the most, even if we say to others even sometimes ourselves that we don’t love our name. That doesn’t mean we don’t like other person, we hear the story of success and adventure, because it affects us, it gives us the ambition and push to start believing that we can do. Why do you think, that underdog stories are the most successful stories in the world. Its one and only because it’s helps us to believe that we can do it, we also can be the best, in short it suits our egoism. While constructing a speech this is the first thing that we have to make sure, that in our speech there is something...

Title of my Project 7 Speech is  “The Epidemic” As discussed in the previous blog this speech is about my own feeling of being left out which was a product of my shyness ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`SPEECH~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dear Mr.Toastmaster, Fellow Members and Guests – Very Good Evening. Can anyone guess which disease has the most probability of being the greatest epidemic of this century? Malaria?... Swine Flu…?Aids…?Cancer…? No According to recent research in US by the National Office of Statistics, one in five people will go a whole week without speaking to anyone, with a staggering one in ten people spending up to a month without any human connection. The World Health Organisation has rated  “LONELINESS”  as a higher risk to health than smoking and as great a risk as obesity. When I was living in Kolkata, I had a person residing on my apartment block. I met him almost every day, but never spoken to him more than a “Hi” or a d...