Archive for the 'Eye Contact' Category

Nervousness and public speaking go hand-in-hand. And in all my years as a presentations skills coach, I’ve found that people’s anxiety tends to fall into one of four categories. These four levels reflect a speaker’s comfort level and confidence. Which one best describes you?

Level 1: Pressured and Petrified: People in this category tend to display [...]

Multi-tasking, a word no one used a few decades ago, is now firmly ensconced in our everyday language and has become a way of life for many of us. Generations X and Y in particular are known for the ability to speedily produce a surplus of results while working on many different tasks at the [...]

When I was growing up, Easter Sunday was a celebrated occasion, much like it is today. A big part of the fun was dressing up in our new pastel dresses with matching shoes, jewelry and fancy Easter bonnets. To top off our splendid outfits, my father gave my sister and me one last accessory: freshly made [...]

I’ve been working with two different clients lately, of two different genders, in two different companies, from two different states who have two entirely different approaches to listening. One client actually listens too intently, and the other doesn’t seem to be listening at all.
Is it really possible to listen too much? Well, you decide: Whenever [...]

Psst…hey you…yeah, you…do you want to know a secret about someone many people consider one of our country’s greatest public speakers? Okay, here goes…even though he was very eloquent and his words changed history, he often felt pangs of nervousness and anxiety when he stood up to speak. In fact, when he first began speaking, [...]

“Eyebrows up!” I say this to my clients every day. “Don’t be a poker face, raise your eyebrows, and smile!”
When speaking to a group, displaying a flat face is like playing a zombie in one of those Halloween movies—you come across as lifeless and boring, just like the living dead. Keeping a poker face when [...]