Public Speaking Skills

At The Latimer Group, we talk and write all the time about the ability to communicate clearly. That is our purpose, our mission, our raison d’etre. To succeed in the 21st century global business environment, you need to be able to communicate with your colleagues, employees, customers, prospects, and shareholders, and you need to be […]

Sometimes it is hard to know the right way to say or write something. Sometimes it is hard to know the correct tone to take. How should I speak to these people? How formal or informal should it be? The answers depend on lots of things: the nature and seriousness of the topic; the level of […]

One of the best parts of the client workshops we teach is that our clients are really smart people. We are blessed to be able to work with so many companies, which are full of bright, qualified, hard-working people. Sure… I am kissing up to our clients this morning… but it also happens to be true. And frequently someone […]

Lots of people spend time working on their preparation for their presentations. But for many, we spend considerably less time preparing for what follows the presentation… the Q&A. And in fact, one of the questions we hear most often in our coaching sessions is this: Can you help me sound more confident, when I am […]

When you speak to an audience — be it a room full of executives, a staff meeting, or a one-on-one phone call with a client — keeping a few key concepts in mind can help you get your message across persuasively and powerfully. Clarity, for example, ensures that your audience understands exactly what you are saying; brevity […]

Let’s talk about building credibility… real credibility. Not the short term version of credibility that comes from a referral or a common friendship or the personal courtesy of someone giving you a chance. No… let’s talk about the long-term credibility that is built by you, your actions and your performance. Real credibility is created in […]

One of the things I listen closely for in our workshops is a certain kind of vocabulary that we call “weak” or “qualifying” language. And when I hear it, my coaching sensors start ringing loudly. Words or phrases like “sort of,” “kind of,” “pretty much,” or “basically,” can be toxic for the speaker and dramatically […]

We spend a lot of our time with clients working on message development. We focus on delivery as well, but good delivery is almost irrelevant if you have not first worked out what the message will be. In other words: What you say is really more important than how you say it. When building a […]

As a coach, I see a lot of different kinds of speakers: those who are confident and controlled and others who are nervous and still figuring out how to get their point across. And I’ve had people ask, “Don’t you sometimes want to laugh at how bad some of these presentations can be?” It might be hard to believe, […]

I had an interesting question come up in a workshop last week. One of the participants made a statement and then asked me to validate it… he said “You can never go wrong being self-deprecating… right?“ I thought about it for a few moments, and quickly responded with “I am not sure I agree with […]