by Tina Blake | Oct 23, 2019 | Public Speaking Tips
Speakers – and speaker trainers – rightly focus on the “tricks of the trade”. Breathing, body language, voice. All these things matter, and are critical to speaking success. They can all be grouped together as “how” skills, though – and just as important in any...
by Tina Blake | Oct 4, 2019 | Public Speaking Tips, Speech-writing
All successful speeches are scripted. Fact. The most successful, however, seem like they trip off the tongue of the speaker. It may seem weird, but the best way to make your script sound fresh is to commit it to your memory. This isn’t about knowing every word and...
by Tina Blake | Sep 9, 2019 | Public Speaking Tips
We are often called upon to speak persuasively in a work context: to recommend a report’s conclusions, or to advocate for a particular change. This can be a challenging task – sometimes more so than persuading a room full of strangers. We have pre-existing...
by Tina Blake | Jul 22, 2019 | Public Speaking Tips
The whole of the internet, it seems is currently going Game of Thrones crazy – and who am I to disappoint? So here is a blog with a Westerosi theme – and no spoilers for the finale! It’s also a post which, I hope, will help you think of speaking a little...
by Tina Blake | May 24, 2019 | Public Speaking Tips
I’ve just completed a two-day event featuring 43 speakers and over 6,500 delegates, and wanted to share some thoughts on what it takes for them to create that amount of energy on stage. The event was the Utility Warehouse 20 20 Vision conference, and the order...
by Tina Blake | Apr 8, 2019 | Powerful Video Presenting Tips
Even for speakers who are more than happy to stand in front of large audiences, the humble camera can pose a real challenge. Novice speakers aren’t alone in feeling nervous around a lens, – there’s something a bit unusual about it’s unblinking eye that can unnerve the...
by Tina Blake | Mar 20, 2019 | Speech-writing
Martin Luther King Jr’s famed “I have a dream” speech lasted just seventeen minutes. Most of Shakespeare’s well-known soliloquies – Hamlet or Macbeth – are just a few dozen lines long; and Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address on the back of a napkin. In other...
by Tina Blake | Jan 21, 2019 | Speech-writing
The vote of thanks is a tricky speech to make. You might imagine that a type of speaking which has its purpose in its title – the vote of thanks – would be an easy job to do. But, in fact, proposing a thank you for anyone can be quite difficult to do well, For...
by Tina Blake | Dec 20, 2018 | Public Speaking Tips
It’s nearly Christmas,so I’m in the festive spirit! So for this holiday period I thought I’d take inspiration from one of my favourite Christmas songs – and give you twelve tips of speaking in a single post! Use them all, or take a selection, and see how a speech is...
