Public Speaking: 9 Characteristics Of The Greats

There's more to speaking than sharing a few words. Here are the top nine characteristics of public speakers that you can use too

1. Solid Content. Even a person lacking charismatic gifts can develop solid content. Always share something the audience finds valuable to their lives.

2. Humorous. It's hard to hate someone you laugh with. The best speakers find a way to get people smiling early in the program. It opens hearts and makes the group receptive. You don't have to be hilarious, just humorous.

3. Organized. There's no excuse for rambling through a presentation. Have your notes structured in way that keeps you on pace and on target. Listeners should feel they received a message that made sense and was easy to remember.

4. Approachable. Some speakers try to get in and get out as fast as possible, but the audience likes to know the speaker is available an approachable. One of the best ways to make a good impression is to get to the event early and meet people as they come in.

5. Authenticity. It's said that honest arrogance is preferred over false humility. We all want to know people are being honest with us and that what we see is what we get. Be true to yourself and others by being the same around everyone. That way you don't feel like one person in front of an audience and another person at other times

Public Speaking: 9 Characteristics Of The Greats



There's more to speaking than sharing a few words. Here are the top nine characteristics of public speakers that you can use too

1. Solid Content. Even a person lacking charismatic gifts can develop solid content. Always share something the audience finds valuable to their lives.

2. Humorous. It's hard to hate someone you laugh with. The best speakers find a way to get people smiling early in the program. It opens hearts and makes the group receptive. You don't have to be hilarious, just humorous.

3. Organized. There's no excuse for rambling through a presentation. Have your notes structured in way that keeps you on pace and on target. Listeners should feel they received a message that made sense and was easy to remember.

4. Approachable. Some speakers try to get in and get out as fast as possible, but the audience likes to know the speaker is available an approachable. One of the best ways to make a good impression is to get to the event early and meet people as they come in.

5. Authenticity. It's said that honest arrogance is preferred over false humility. We all want to know people are being honest with us and that what we see is what we get. Be true to yourself and others by being the same around everyone. That way you don't feel like one person in front of an audience and another person at other times




6. Growing. Great speakers continue to grow in the knowledge and application of the craft. They don't rest when reaching a particular level. Instead they continue to stretch and become better.

7. Giving. The best in this profession give without expecting return. Most big name speakers give anonymously to the charities and organizations they cherish. This giving attitude in private creates warmth and welcome in public.

8. Natural. Last night I actually watched BookSpan for the first time. I've flipped by before and mostly viewed it as a cure for insomnia. However, Walter Isaacson author of Benjamin Franklin An American Life was speaking. Having read the book I wanted to see how well he presented the material. He did a great job. I got the impression that he would be the same off the podium as he was in front of the microphone. A great example of natural expression.

9. Passionate. Speaking transfers energy with words. The more passion passes through the message the greater the chance of it being remembered and applied. No one has ever said, "I sure hope the speaker is boring." Instead they like to say things like, "Wow! She sure was excited about her message."


in Business

What now? Once you have read this article, give it a rating.

Irish Whisky

Irish Whisky
Jameson
The fact that there are only three distilleries in Ireland would suggest that this has always been a small-scale industry. Take time to visit the Old Jameson Distillery in Dublin or the Jameson Heritage Centre in Midleton, County Cork and another truth is immediately apparent. These are distilleries built on a grand scale. Both sites are long silent, but give a glimpse of a time when Irish whiskey rather than Scotch was the world's favourite style.

No wonder distillers like Jameson and Power rejected the column still; the world wanted their pot-still whiskey. By the end of the 19th century, Jameson's Bow St. plant was employing 300 people and 2 million gallons were sleeping beneath the Dublin streets. But history stepped in and five years after the formation of Irish Distillers, the Bow St. site closed. Production was switched to Power's equally grand John's Lane distillery for three years, before the new plant at Midleton started up in 1975.

Much the same happened in Cork Distilleries' massive 'Old' Midleton distillery now (slightly confusingly) called The Jameson Heritage Centre. It's undoubtedly impressive, but like all silent distilleries, slightly sad and ghostly. Wandering round this vast plant you can imagine the scrape of the shovels in the malting barns, the creak of the pulleys, the hiss and rattle of the stills, the clatter of hooves in the cobbled courtyard, the cries and laughter of the men, the calming splash of the water wheel which powered the plant.

Then in 1975 the wheel stopped, the largest pot still in the world (at 31,648 gallons big enough to hold a party in) produced its last spirit. But the ending of the old world ushered in a new one of high-tech whiskey making. 'New' Midleton, carefully hidden from the tourists' gaze, may look unimpressively industrial from the outside, but is the most remarkable distillery in the world.

So why haven't we heard about it? Maybe the industry had been so badly beaten up that it lost confidence in selling to the world. Until recently that is. Jameson is currently the fastest-growing whiskey brand in the world, new lines are appearing at a rate of knots. But we skip ahead.

How can you make 30-plus different whiskies (and gin and vodka) in one site? The few visitors who are allowed into the Midleton still room spend an age shaking their heads in wonder at the four massive pot stills sitting opposite the seven columns that shoot up to the roof. 'Effectively, what we have here is two distilleries rolled into one - a pot still/malt whiskey distillery and a column still light/grain whiskey distillery,' says master distiller Barry Crockett, looking down into the cavernous stillhouse.

'What's unique is the way the distillate streams can be diverted from the pot still side to the column still side, and vice versa. Actually, I can use any combination that takes my fancy!' In other words, he can make a triple distilled pot still spirit, or pot-column-pot, or column-pot-pot, or ... well, you get the idea. Just through distillation, different flavour profiles are created. There's more. 'The cut points for each component whiskey will vary,' he says.

'Say we're making one for Jameson 15-year-old. It will have a different cut point to the standard Jameson. Power's and Paddy will also have their own different cut points, distillation techniques - and mashbills.' Most of the pot still whiskeys use a percentage of unmalted barley - giving them a distinctive crunchy, spicy quality. 'It's hard to describe.

Tracking For Profits

If you can't track it, don't do it.

Every high-performance venture needs a tracking system. A tracking system with well-designed metrics lets everyone know how well they are doing relative to their commitments. It is a guide to whether additional or extraordinary actions need to be taken.

It is one of the first things I set up with my business coaching clients because without a clear set of objective metrics it is hard for people to be clear about their results.

Establish intentions for your project, figure out the critical success factors, determine suitable measurements for each, and set performance targets for those measures.

For example, say your intention is to increase market penetration. The measure is your venture's sales divided by total sales in your market. Perhaps your current market share is 10% -- good, you have a benchmark, and your new target is 25% by the end of the year.

That's objective, measurable, and thus... achievable.

Make someone accountable for your project's performance against each target.

Establish a timely tracking system for each metric, which easily gathers the necessary data.

Develop periodic interim performance targets, and a reporting structure to let everyone involved know how they are doing.

Your performance tracking systems can be kept with pen and paper, or they can be automated on your computer system. However you implement them, keep it simple and don't let the overhead of your tracking system become a burden of any kind.

Below is a very simple system I used to keep track of my page output while writing Faster Than The Speed of Change. It was kept on a computer spreadsheet, but could just as easily been pencil on graph paper. Whenever I was below the line I had catching up to do.

Start with 0 in the lower left corner, write units of measurement along the left axis, and dates of measurement along the bottom. Draw a straight reference line from 0 to your goal, and plot your performance against that goal. Of course the reference line need not be straight; set it up in whatever way reflects the time-relationship of your goals.

If you want to find out how you can set up a performance dashboard and completely systemize your entire business to make it "scalable and saleable" link to http://www.turnkeycoach.com