Chapter 1

Your Audience Speaks

I always sit in the quick-exit seats, the ones right by the door. When I attend a presentation, I want the option of escaping the clutches of a boring speaker who’s wasting my time. I’m amazed at the number of people who will politely sit in their seats, trapped by a speaker from hell. Their minds scream, “Shut up!” while their bodies fidget in disgust.

Early in my career as a presentation skills coach, I was asked to provide some one-day programs for the Oregon State Bar Continuing Legal Education speakers. These were lawyers who were presenting programs to their peers. To research the task, and to find out all about these programs, I attended one of the organization’s standard training sessions. Approximately ...

Get 101 Ways to Captivate a Business Audience now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.