How often do you sit in a meeting, or on a conference call, or listen to a presentation, and feel disengaged within the first two to three minutes? Yep… me too. It usually takes speakers forever to simply

What do people say about your meetings and presentations? Do you know? Are you sure?

The slides don’t matter until you first figure out what you want to be talking about. The slides need to be placed in proper perspective.

There is one element that is consistently required for successful and persuasive communication…. creating an emotional connection.

The single most frequently asked question I hear regarding public speaking is this… “Dean, how can I be more confident as a speaker?” I’ve been in this line of work for more than 15 years, and every year, I hear that question more than any other.

And throughout my time leading The Latimer Group, my answer has remained essentially the same:

When you stand up to speak in a professional setting, there are three primary ways you are interacting with your audience: the message you have developed, the slides you have created, and the delivery skills you exhibit. All three matter, because all three impact your audience’s experience.

Twice a week, The Latimer Group’s experienced facilitators deliver clear, succinct, and actionable lessons about business communication to tens of thousands of readers worldwide. Here’s the latest entry:

As comfortable as I am as a speaker, managing nerves is important for all of us. Here are three strategies that help manage nerves, all of them backed by neuroscience.

There are a few questions we frequently hear from our workshop participants. And perhaps the most vexing is the question of detail: how much do I need, where do I put it, how much is too much?

Do you want to be an effective communicator? Be more memorable? Do you want people to follow your lead, support your idea, or buy your product or service? Of course you do.

That little voice inside your head, the one that tells you aren’t good enough… do you know that voice? Do you ever hear that voice telling you to question your own value or qualifications? Do you ever hear that voice whispering sour questions to you? I hear that voice, and I am sure most of you do

We have shared many past posts here on the need and importance of clarity and brevity in your communications. Clarity and brevity are often the price of admission to be heard in the 21st century — table stakes — the cost to simply be able to play in the big leagues and have people listen to you. But

Engaging your audience during a virtual meeting is really hard, they say. And most people we work with are desperate for ways to create more engagement with their audience… because it feels next to impossible to create it.

In the game of golf, not every shot is the same. The variables change with every shot: distance to the hole, your lie, whether you are in the fairway/rough/sand trap, the weather conditions, what hole you are on and the score vs your opponent. All of these variables,

Several of my coaching conversations have been focused on the same thing of late… when I am speaking to my boss, how do I stay out of the weeds? I get stuck in the deep detail, and he/she gets frustrated with me.

Have you ever noticed that when people are making a business presentation, very often, they make the story sound super complicated? Have you ever noticed that once they sit

PowerPoint (or any of the other similar presentation tool options), actually can be powerful. The key is to use PowerPoint strategically, and the following five techniques can help:

I often present status updates to my colleagues, and am often told I need to make it less formal and more “conversational.” I have a big one coming up where I will be sharing information about the need for audience members to prepare for some pretty big infrastructure changes. How do I achieve that more conversational tone?

We just finished an intensive workshop, designed in multiple modules and spread out over multiple days, with one of our top clients. The topic was Executive Communication Skills, and the goal was to coach a small group of