Public Speaking Skills

At The Latimer Group, our teaching model is based on the 4 Skills of Great Communication: Assess, Message, Document, and Deliver. In this new four-part series of our Soundwaves podcast, Dean shares the four skills of our model, through the story of The Latimer Group’s origin and evolution. As we conclude our 15th year of […]

At The Latimer Group, our teaching model is based on the 4 Skills of Great Communication: Assess, Message, Document, and Deliver. In this new four-part series of our Soundwaves podcast, Dean shares the four skills of our model, through the story of The Latimer Group’s origin and evolution. As we conclude our 15th year of […]

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council October 20, 2017. To be a powerful communicator, you have to be brutally honest. You need to look critically at how great a change you are suggesting and how much you are asking of your audience. But perhaps the most important place you must look is within yourself. How […]

We talk all the time about message development — clarity of and organization of message make it easier for people to listen to you. And if you do all the right things on your message plan, and then translate it into a good slide deck, the final piece of the puzzle is your delivery. Once […]

My wife and I recently had some bookshelves built in our home, which gave us some much-needed space to display many of the books we owned. So when the job was completed, we had a wonderful night of populating our new shelves. We had a little wine, and we spent hours opening up boxes of […]

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council October 2, 2017. There are lots of tips and techniques for crafting a persuasive bit of communication. But there’s one fundamental secret that underlies all of them. What is this secret weapon or becoming a powerful communicator? Honesty. Why? Because to successfully persuade someone, you need to be […]

We deliberately used an example of that weak language in the title of this post, to illustrate what it can do to your message and your credibility when presenting. Weak phrases like “pretty much,” “sort of,” “kind of,” or “a little bit,” don’t actually add a lot to your message. Phrases like these make you […]

“Practice puts brains in your muscles.” ~Sam Snead Over the last few months, we’ve published a series of blog posts both here and at Forbes.com on Communication Leadership, and building a presentation, speech, or other communication. How we assess our audience, how we build our message, how we document, and how we deliver that message […]

Have you ever listened to someone who speaks really well? Who gets to the point? Who makes the point clearly? Who doesn’t waste your time and makes the message valuable? It is SO nice when that happens, right? It is so refreshing when a presentation or a conference call or an important conversation is efficient […]

Originally published with the Forbes Coaches Council at Forbes.com on September 8, 2017. Authenticity and confidence: These are the key elements of a great speech delivery, but developing these elements can feel like bottling lightning. Sometimes we seem to think they are qualities you are either born with or not. People say, “I’m just not a […]