Blog – How You Say It

Successful Coaching in Leadership: Seven Lessons from the ‘Trillion Dollar Coach’

Awareness, Coaching, Communication, Culture, Effective Communication, Leadership, Lessons from Leaders, Listening, Mentoring, Rapport Building, Storytelling

Bill Campbell was once described as the “Silicon Valley’s best kept secret” by Fortune. Bill was a former American Football Coach who became so influential that he worked regularly coaching Steve Jobs and the founders of Google. The…

The importance of being inauthentic | Mark Bowden

Audience, Awareness, Body Language, Communication, Communication Skills, Influence, Non-verbal communication, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills, TED Talk, TED Talks

A lot of people, myself included, often talk about the importance of authenticity when it comes to communication. But in this video Mark Bowden blows this notion out of the water with his incredible talk on body language and how to use it…

The secret structure to great talks | Nancy Duarte

Communication, Communication Skills, Effective Communication, Engagement, Influence, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills, Story Telling, Storytelling, TED Talk, TED Talks

In this fascinating talk Nancy Durate breaks down some of the most iconic speeches in history to show a pattern, shape and structure that we can apply to our own speeches and presentations. Nancy is hugely passionate about presentations…

The 110 techniques of communication and public speaking | David JP Phillips

Audience, Awareness, Body Language, Communication, Communication Skills, Confidence, Effective Communication, Engagement, Non-verbal communication, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills, Rapport Building, Storytelling, TED Talk, TED Talks

David JP Phillips is a public speaker, coach and renowned TEDx speaker. In this talk, he explains that he dedicated time to analysing 5,000 public speakers from all over the world to understand “what makes a good speaker good, what makes…

How to speak so that people people want to listen | Julian Treasure

Awareness, Body Language, Communication, Communication Skills, Effective Communication, Engagement, Influence, Listening, Non-verbal communication, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills, Storytelling, TED Talk, TED Talks

This is one of my all time favourite TED Talks. Julian is a sound and communication expert, author and international key note speaker. “What would the world be like if we were speaking powerfully to people who were listening consciously…

TED’s secret to great public speaking | Chris Anderson

Audience, Communication, Communication Skills, Effective Communication, Engagement, Influence, Preparation, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills, Storytelling, TED Talk, TED Talks

Chris Anderson is the head and curator of TED. So if there’s one person who knows the secret to a great speech it’s him. In this video, he explains in that there is no such thing as a ‘TED Talk formula’. But from all of the…

My Top 5 TED Talks to Improve Public Speaking

Audience, Body Language, Communication, Communication Skills, Confidence, Effective Communication, Non-verbal communication, Preparation, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills, Rapport Building, Storytelling, TED Talk, TED Talks

Crafting Your Speech: A Step-by-Step Guide to Defining Your Message

Audience, Communication, Communication Skills, Effective Communication, Engagement, Influence, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills

Is your message clear before you step in front of an audience? Without clear boundaries and guidelines for a specific subject, discussions may lack depth on key points while simultaneously delving into excessive detail elsewhere. When speaking…

Preparation is Respect: Always do your homework

Audience, Communication, Communication Skills, Effective Communication, Engagement, Influence, Preparation, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills

The cliche when it comes to the ‘P Word’ that I grew up with is: “Piss Poor Preparation, Promotes Piss Poor Performances”. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I’d long left school before I realised that homework and studying was all…

Crafting Clarity and Connection: The Art of Using Analogies in Public Speaking

Communication, Communication Skills, Effective Communication, Engagement, Influence, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills, Storytelling

When George Lucas pitched the idea of his original plan for ‘The Adventures of Indiana Smith’ to Stephen Spielberg, he described the storyline to ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. Spielberg loved the idea and described the movie concept as: …

Public Speaking: How to create influence through engagement

Audience, Awareness, Communication, Communication Skills, Effective Communication, Engagement, Influence, Preparation, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills

In public speaking, engagement is the level of attention, interest and interaction you gain from the audience. It determines how interested the audience are in your message and how deeply they are thinking about what you are saying. The stronger…

Public Speaking Skills

Audience, Awareness, Body Language, Communication Skills, Confidence, Effective Communication, Non-verbal communication, Preparation, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills, Story Telling

Here’s my full guide and breakdown of what I believe are the key public speaking skills that can have a huge impact on how you communicate. Public speaking can be defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as: “The activity of speaking on…

Stuart Mitchell – Comedy Consultancy and Creating Engagement through Humour

Audience, Comedy, Engagement, Humour, Public Speaking

In this week’s episode of the How You Say It Podcast, I caught up with Scottish Comedian, Writer and Event Host Stuart Mitchell. For me, Stuart epitomises the hard work and effort that goes into something that so many of us take for granted. In…

Pat Nevin – “You have to know that underneath the person really cares…”

Coaching, Communication, Confidence, Football, Leadership, Lessons from Leaders

In my latest recording with Pat Nevin we discussed the different management styles that he has encountered throughout his career through playing, working as CEO at Motherwell FC and his time in the media. Pat describes one of his first football…

My Public Speaking Process – How I prepare

Awareness, Body Language, Communication, Communication Skills, Effective Communication, Engagement, Preparation, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Skills, Story Telling, Storytelling

I've been doing a lot more public speaking recently, and I'm absolutely loving it. There's something about being in front of a group of people and speaking that just makes me happy. People often view 'public speaking' as delivering keynote…

Feedback: Put the sh*t sandwich in the bin 🚮

Coaching, Communication, Culture, Difficult conversations, Feedback, Leadership

Having worked in the training, learning and development industry for nearly 10 years, I have been in plenty of positions where I need to tell someone something that I don’t think they’re going to want to hear. It can be uncomfortable, it…

Seek first to understand, then to be understood – How to build effective interpersonal communication to build influence

Communication, Diary of a CEO, Listening, Podcast, Public Speaking, Rapport Building, TED Talk, Uncategorised, Uncategorized

In his book - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey dedicates a chapter to Habit No.5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. We are all guilty of being too keen to help someone with a problem they have. We jump…

Visualise – Catastrophise – Energise | Prof Damien Hughes TEDx Talk on Finding your Courage

Communication, Confidence, courage, Leadership, Public Speaking, Resilience, TED Talk, Uncategorised, Uncategorized

Professor Damien Hughes has written and spoken about high performance in business and sport. He has written books and is co-host with Jame Humphry on one of the top podcasts in the UK - The High Performance Podcast. In his recent TEDx…

James Smith – Confidence Predicts Success

Audacity, Communication, Confidence, Diary of a CEO, Podcast, Public Speaking, Resilience, Uncategorised

James Smith is one of the main reason that I started this blog. In January 2023, I took some time to listen back to my favourite Diary of a CEO podcast episodes and write about my top 5. It was though but fun ranking all the episodes that…

How You Say It – Lessons from Sir Alex Ferguson on Leading

Communication, Leadership, Lessons from Leaders, Public Speaking, Sir Alex Ferguson, Uncategorised

For me, Sir Alex Ferguson is the godfather of ‘man management’. It’s not just the longevity of managing at the highest level in world football, it’s the consistent success he had throughout his career as a leader. Tactics, ability…

I asked ChatGPT: What are the top 5 ways to build rapport

ChatGPT, Rapport Building, Uncategorised

I asked ChatGPT for the top 5 ways to build a rapport. And here is the response: Sure, here are the top 5 ways to build rapport: 1/ 🎧 Listen actively: The first step to building rapport is to be an active listener. 👀 Pay close…