|

Cam Barber’s interview with European CEO Magazine

Public speaking has evolved.  Cam Barber was interviewed by Elizabeth Matsangou for European CEO Magazine about the relevance of modern public speaking in business. Here are some interesting points from the interview:​ The art of public speaking has changed significantly since Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Winston Churchill. “Most people haven’t caught up”, “the old…

|

10 Reasons You’ll Improve Your Next Presentation By Using The ‘B’ Key

Business Insider interviewed me last week on the best way to avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’ and improve public speaking and presentation skills. I talked about the simplest and most powerful technique – the ‘B’ key. Otherwise known as blanking the screen during a slide show. They published the piece on Friday as ’10 Reasons You’ll…

|

How to develop poise as a Speaker

Poise is a lovely word. It implies ‘calm’, ‘balance’ and ‘assuredness’ and it underpins powerful delivery skills. Most speakers don’t have poise because they don’t fully understand the (normal) anxiety that comes with public speaking. The ‘Stress Response’ to danger/uncertainty/fear actually causes us to shrink, tighten and contract our muscles. When you understand what’s happening to you – and when…

|

Finding poise: do you shrink under pressure?

In a previous article, I talked about a condition known as over-efforting, where we use far more energy than is required for a particular activity. This is quite common in public speaking, as people think they need to perform and exaggerate their voice, gestures and body language to have greater impact on the audience. And…

|

The 4 communication barriers & how to overcome them

If we fail to overcome the inherent communication barriers, our experience and intelligence are wasted. Genius has no value if it can’t be communicated clearly. Objective thinking is needed to vanquish these communication barriers. Understanding them is the first step. Communication barrier 1: All words are vague Vague is everywhere. Without an agreed context for…