Welcome to the guest blog.
As part of the expansion to help more people tap into their unique talents to communicate, connect and come alive, I've decided to include other voices on the website. I hope the ideas here will help you in your business and in your life. Enjoy!
All my best,
Victoria
Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Cytower.blogspot.com
As I have discussed here before, audience engagement is perhaps the most important element of a successful presentation. I suppose that’s obvious—any performance fails if the audience is comatose—but it’s worth saying anyway. Often we spend so much time worrying about our notes, our outline, our timing, and our visuals, that we forget to cater our work to the crowd. Like snowflakes or fingerprints or people (for that matter), every crowd is unique. They each need a concierge’s diligent care. It’s like customer service for the theater.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Break.com
Timing is a strange beast. Some people seem to have an innate sense, an internal clock of social appropriateness. These people know when to pause and when to speak. They slip easily into a conversation, and slip out with such grace we don’t even blink. They step on stage and hold our attention for exactly as long as they need to. We don’t feel bored. We don’t fantasize about sneaking out to the snack cart. We are edified, entertained, and then released back into the wild. These people are uncommon. We know them when we see them and are invariably impressed. Why can’t we all be so socially adept? Perhaps technology is partly to blame. We’re not as used to face-to-face conversation as we used to be.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Flickr.com
Most business presentations end with a Q&A session, a time for the audience to ask all of the burning questions they’ve been holding back during the talk. It’s also a time for the presenter to elaborate on points that he didn’t have time for during his presentation. But often, the Q&A session falls flat. Sometimes the audience is embarrassed or caught off guard, other times a lackluster presentation has lost their attention or left them feeling tired and bored. Whatever the reason, there is nothing worse than a silent room.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Vintagephone.com
Technology is great. I think about when I was a kid and can’t believe the progress we’ve made. And I’m not that old! One day, when I have a child, I’ll tell her about the dark times before the Internet. We had to look things up in books! We had to call people! It’s scary to think about a whole generation that has never known the quiet pre-Internet life. I’m grateful that I knew it. I think it grounds me in the real world. It helps me remember that real people and real connections are the most important things. Facebook is fun, but it’s not a face-to-face conversation. The human animal still needs contact.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Americamspeakerforum.wordpress.com
I’m not the most organized person in the world. I try to be. I make lists; buy all manner of containers for my papers, clothes, and books; carry around a scrawled-upon calendar; and yet still, I struggle to keep my life in order. If only we could all be star students with meticulously placed post-its in our textbooks, neatly sorted index cards in our backpacks, and three-ring binders in a dusted row on our desks. Alas, organization doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Fortunately, change is possible.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Sportsillustrated.cnn.com
I love to play sports. The extreme physicality, the mind/body synthesis, and the teamwork, transform rule-based banality into something ephemeral and deeply important. Anticipating where your teammates will run, picturing the field like a geometric illustration, playing the angles, strategically saving your last burst of speed for a game-saving goal… it’s no wonder human beings have been playing organized sports for as long as recorded history has been recording. Team sports teach a person to be selfless, organized, and goal-oriented. They also teach both physical and mental discipline. All of these skills are critically important in the corporate world. Today, though, I’d like to focus on one: visualization.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Jazzguitarzone.com
Music is universal. Sounds are used to make rhythmic or tonal audioscapes in every culture on Earth. Some use percussive stomps, claps, slaps, and clicks. Others make instruments with strings, stretched animal skins, or hollow tubes. Whatever the instrument, sound has the power to move us: to evoke, soothe, amuse, and entertain. It can bring tears to our eyes. It can signify death, life, fierceness, anger, and pride. Music has extraordinary emotional power, power that can be used to communicate a message.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Sites.duke.edu
Memory is a mysterious beast. Some things we remember so vividly. We can call them up in a daydream: we can see the wallpaper, the shoes, an entire meal; taste the key lime pie; recreate every pause in a conversation, every laugh. These memories never fade. They stay with us through relationships, mishaps, successes and mistakes. They flood the space behind our eyes at the strangest times. Years seem to have no power. The mind can make a childhood morning feel like yesterday. Then again, other things refuse to stick. They flit through one ear, bounce around, and exit stage left. It doesn’t matter how hard I try, I can’t remember a new name. I forget how to get to a friend’s house or what I told my husband to pick up for dinner.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Us.shalomlife.com
Presentation is critically important, but it’s nothing without a strong and consistent underlying message. I was at a Science and Reason conference several years ago and I probably attended fifty presentations and panels on everything from solar technology to fruit fly mating experiments to creativity in teaching. All of the presenters were professional scientists doing well-funded research. They were experts in their fields and yet, so many of them were failing to communicate a single message in their presentations. They shared plenty of exciting information. They had some strikingly memorable visuals—from the embryonic zebra fish to the digitally enhanced eyeball of a brown recluse spider—but at the end of the day, the pretty pictures were all I remembered.
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Posted by
Anni M.
Image source: Guardian.co.uk
Like breathing and beating hearts, laughter is something we all have in common. It flips an everyday experience on its head. It examines our strangeness, our fears, and our faults. It dissolves barriers and makes us understand each other in new and surprising ways. I have always held comedians aloft. They are like birds of paradise or the giant squid—examples of the beautiful rarity of living on earth. You might imagine Gallagher or Carrot Top and think me ridiculous, but when something can be so unifying, so poetic and yet so accessible, it holds an almost religious power. Anyone with the gift of observation and wit can create comedy and that comedy can cut through the layers of defensiveness and prejudice we all inadvertently construct around our souls.
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