One day this summer, while walking with my family on the Santa Barbara pier, my son excitedly pointed out to me a large starfish floating in the water.

We talked that day about the starfish's amazing powers of regeneration. We couldn't help but wonder, wouldn't it be great if people also could grow back lost limbs?

But then it occured to me that in a metaphorical sense, we can!

Many of my clients express anxiety that they will forget part of their speech and that this will get them off track and ultimately ruin the whole speech.

It's not quite an argument for mindmapping, but it's awfully close. Read the whole post for the explanation.I

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die." ~ Howard's End

I love this statement: Only connect. It is the crux of human relationships, of course. And it is the crux of the speaker/audience relationship. You can have good material, perfect organization and skilled delivery, but if you don't connect with the audience, something critical is missing.

Lisa Brathwaite suggests nine ways to connect with an audience. Besides the text of her message, Lisa provides a downloadable audio message at her site.

Every speaker speaks with notes - even the ones that insist notes shouldn't be used at all!

When speaking 'without notes', our brains are still referring back to what we have written in preparation for the speech, or referencing touchpoints in the room that represent tentpoles in their presentation. Even if you are speaking off the cuff, you are pulling information out of your head as fast as possible, essentially looking for notes in the broad files of your brain.

Without getting mired too far into the neuroscience of note usage, let's look at ways you can use notes effectively in your presentations.

One of the bugaboos of Toastmasters seems to be that you can't speak with notes. Here's a blog post by Rich Hopkins, a finalist in Toastmasters' International Speech Contest, that says otherwise and provides seven ways for doing it well.

Angelou: Speaking with hope, humor

Maya Angelou's a staple on the college campus lecture circuit, and in this article she describes how she calibrates her speeches by thinking about the mood of the audience as well as what she can bring that will inspire them, something every thoughtful speaker should do. From the interview:

• "I speak quite a lot on courage, because I think it is the most important of all the virtues...Without courage you can't practice any of the other virtues consistently."
• "[I]f people are too dour, I speak on humor, because I never trust people who don't laugh!"
• "If there has been some unfair play, if someone has been mishandled, and there is some reason for outcry, I try to speak to that."

(Photo of Angelou speaking at Wake Forest University from Flickr by wacko_-)

Poste

Social Media Trumps Old-Line Wealth, Networks

Could Hillary Clinton be President of the United States today if her advisors believed more in social media?  Probably. 

And I just want to get my Toastmasters district to use social media more.