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I do my best to make this blog a resource for presenters - not pro-speakers, but real people who need to make presentations as part of their 'day job'. If there's something you really want to know about, just email me and I'll see what I can do (no promises except that I'll read your email - use simon@ and you can guess the rest of my address. :) )
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This month's most popular (and useful?) blog posts are:
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There are many good things about the internet but one of the less good things is that it’s almost impossible to get a definitive version of the quote you want. In this instance, I want to quote a tennis player – but the point of this blog is that no matter how un/confident you feel, …
Read more “Confidence when you’re down (and almost out)”
RP – could be Received Pronunciation, but on this occasion it stands for Reflective Practice. Great, but what’s Reflective Practice? At it’s most simple, it’s the habit of looking back at something (performance, project, meeting, whatever) and asking yourself how it went – but doing it in a structured, objective and helpful way. Why would …
Read more “Confidence and Reflective Practice in your presentation”
Amy Wood Brooks works at the Harvard Business School and in 2014 she wrote a paper called “Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement”. Not the sexiest title for a document but the content is pretty darn exciting. She was looking at handling nerves and so on – and doing so in a pretty hardcore …
Read more “Confidence without calm :)”
Worked up? Well, sort of. I’m thinking of how you tighten your muscles in Progressive Muscle Relaxation? (Let’s call it PMR for short.) This is a pretty short article because, frankly, it doesn’t take much explaining. Just do it. 🙂 [jcolumns] What’s PMR? There are lots of systems, definitions and so on, but according to …
Read more “Getting confidence by getting more worked up”
I don’t think I’m saying any strikingly new when I suggest that confidence can come from two sources – inside and outside. I’m not suggesting their totally independent, of course: for example, dressing nicely and being complimented that you look good is an external thing, but it can have an effect in your internal confidence. …
Read more “Confidence Month – inner and outer games”
Let’s start simple. I outlined what I mean by confidence here. And for me, assertiveness how you act – but before we look at the two together, we need to be sure what assertiveness is. What it isn’t is riding over other people, their needs and wants and rights. Demanding you get the best table …
Read more “Confidence Month – confidence vs assertiveness.”
With the launch of the upcoming Presentation Genius course, I’m getting a few questions about the workshop/training. (You don’t know about the course? See here.) I’ll answer them all individually, of course, but to try and save myself some work in the future (yes, honestly! 🙂 ), I’ve recorded some FAQ videos over the last …
Read more “Presentation Genius – Quick and dirty FAQs!”
There’s a quick thought about my favourite chapter in the book at the Presentation Genius Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/presentationgeniusinfo)
Forgive me – this post is a blatant plug… but I’m pretty excited about it! We’ve just launched our Presentation Genius Open Course programme! We’re starting in Newcastle, in the new year, in this lovely arts venue (the Biscuit Factory is a commercial gallery as well as a conference venue). We’ll be touring the courses over …
Read more “Become a presentation genius”