Have questions about a blog post? Email the author directly. We love hearing from people.
8 Jul Crisis Management
Dr. Ethan F. Becker teaching Crisis Management at the RAZAK School of Government in Malaysia. The intention of the seminar was to help leaders understand how to communicate effectively during crisis situations. When leaders and managers are not prepared to communicate predictability, safety, and control, the results can be devastating. (more…)
19 Jun What’s in it for listeners?
Prepare & Organize for Business Speaking
Tell the listeners why they should listen to you talk about this topic. Whether or not they ultimately agree with you, how do you expect them to benefit by listening? Some benefits that you might mention as reasons why they should listen to you include:
- Making their jobs easier.
- Improving their health.
- Relieving stress.
- Stimulating creativity.
- Providing security.
- Increasing their income.
As a speaker, you should be able to tell at least one, and maybe more, good reasons why they should listen to you. The intent is to give your listeners a clear understanding of why your ideas are valuable. Many speakers find this the most difficult of all steps in the four-step outline. Business speakers frequently say things like, “They know why this is important,” or “They invited me to speak, I’m sure they know the value of what I’m saying.” This is a big mistake. There will be times when listeners have no clear idea how your thoughts apply to them. Perhaps their boss told them to attend. Maybe they came with friends. Maybe they came to make friends by networking. In any case, you cannot hurt your cause by giving a short, direct, answer to their question, “What’s in it for me?” After all, if you can’t think of a reason for them to listen, they probably can’t either. If you can’t identify the reasons why people should listen to you speak on a certain topic, then why are you speaking to them at all?
Monica Murphy is a senior coaching partner with The Speech Improvement Company
6 Jun TSIC is the Winner of the American Resident Project’s Pitch-Off
Laurie Schloff, winner of The American Resident Project’s Connected Health ’15 Pitch-Off, discusses how The Speech Improvement Company uses emotion-sensing technology to help people overcome their anxieties with public speaking. The Connected Health ’15 Pitch-Off challenged clinicians and clinicians-in-training to pitch creative ideas that improved health through the use of emotion-sensing technologies.
6 May Master Job Interviewing Skills
From the archives…
Download interview with confidence audio-only mp3 professional studio recording.
Master Job Interviewing Skills: After 911 in 2001, many clients of The Speech Improvement Company (TSIC) were out of work. To respond to this shift in the economy, TSIC created a 2 hour workshop open to the general public and free of charge to teach people how to master job interviewing skills. This public service had become popular and private presentations were requested by many networking groups in the region. TSIC continued to offer this service for years to come as a way to give back to the business community. (more…)
5 Apr TSIC 50 year anniversary video
Enjoy the video celebrating 50 years of helping people communicate!
10 Mar How do best in class organizations prepare speakers
Senior Speech Coaches Laurie Schloff, Tori Hollingworth, and Dr. Ethan F. Becker are on-site at a conference and during a break got together to share the “behind the scenes” of what happens at big conferences. How do those speakers nail it? It may look like they are winging it, but very few do! How do best in class organizations prepare all of their speakers? Find out how and why on this episode of Talking about Talking! Running time 14 minutes. (more…)
8 Mar What Google can learn from Communication Coaches
A recent New York Times Magazine article (Group Study by Charles Duhigg 2/25/16) discussed the Google Project Aristotle, a painstaking, in-depth study of what differentiates high functioning team meetings from stagnant, ineffective ones.
With all due respect (more…)
5 Mar Virtual Reality for the fear of public speaking
What started in 1997, as an in-house tool only for coaches to use Virtual Reality with clients is now closer than you think for the masses! Our interactive virtual reality experience is the first of it’s kind and will be available this spring! It’s not simply a panorama image with static people, but interactive people. The pro-version will allow a coach to jack-into the matrix if you will and control the avatars to create a more lifelike experience! To learn more click here!
The video here is from WGBH in Boston.