The ability to speak is a short cut to distinction. It puts a man in the limelight, raises him head and shoulders above the crowd, and the man who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he really possesses.
– Lowell Thomas
It is often said that speaking in public is ranked as the number one fear of the average North American, outdistancing even the fear of spiders and snakes. Jerry Seinfeld probably put it best when he opined:
According to most studies, the number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.1
If you are a healthcare executive, speaking in public is not an option – it is an absolute requirement to do your job well. Whether you are giving a presentation to an employee group, your board, a government agency, a community group, or your peers, speaking well can not only help you to achieve specific objectives for your organization, but it can also contribute to the development of your own career as a healthcare executive. Times have changed for speakers and audiences.
Some of the best books aimed at improving your public speaking are the old ones. Bert Decker, author of You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard2 suggests that the Winston Churchills of the world have given way to the Norman Schwarzkopfs – those who can command more than $60,000 for each speaking engagement because they are able to engage the audience’s emotions.
Roger Ailes writes in his classic public speaking primer You Are the Message that one of the most common problems in communication is “presentation of material that is intellectually oriented, forgetting to involve the audience emotionally.”3 This means that the way you may have learned to deliver speeches may be outdated and ineffective with the audiences you will face today. (Making speeches and delivering presentations are two different things. Generally speaking, and with the exception of specific circumstances, stick to making presentations.) Today’s audiences, whether employee groups or the chamber of commerce, are children of the television and Internet age, a fact that has changed the way they view entertainment, information, persuasion, and source credibility. And it is worth remembering that the granddaddy of all public speaking trainers, Dale Carnegie (who started teaching people how to overcome their fear of speaking in public in 1912) has this to say: “There is no such animal, in or out of captivity, as a born public speaker.”4 But even he could never have envisioned challenges that public speakers today face: audience members tapping away on tablets making notes, tweeting every nugget and texting others who aren’t in the room.
We’ll examine the why and how of making effective presentations that will enhance both your job and your career in health care today. Then we will examine how your personal skills stack up.
Anyone working at any level of healthcare management must be able to make presentations. For some healthcare executives, making a presentation in public is as natural as brushing their teeth. For others, it is like a non-swimmer contemplating jumping off the back of a cruise ship – a terrifying experience that can and should be avoided. Between these two extremes is the majority that believes it is a necessary evil. But even mandatory presentations have a strategic component to them.
If we examine just the minimal qualifications necessary as a manager of any kind, it becomes clear that, even at this level, making presentations is a requirement. For example, it is now well established that front-line employees prefer receiving important information face to face (more about that in chapter 7) rather than in written memos, newsletters, intranets, or e-mails. This means that as a manager you are required to present informative and often persuasive messages to employee groups on a fairly regular basis even at very low managerial levels. Although these groups may be small for managers at lower levels on the hierarchy, as your career in health administration progresses, the size of these employee groups will grow as well.
Other areas within your role as a healthcare manager where presentation skills are increasingly important are in dealing with boards and government agencies. Often the healthcare manager is in the position of attempting to lobby or otherwise pitch something to these groups. Finely honed presentation skills are an important factor in the success of these efforts.
There may be some times when presentation skills may seem at first glance to be completely optional. However, for a career-minded professional, these seemingly voluntary situations are not. Whether you like it or not, as an administrator in health care, you are often viewed by the general public as a kind of expert in health care. While community groups may be inclined to see a doctor (or in some cases a nurse) as a health expert, you are a healthcare expert – and if your community doesn’t see you that way yet, you need to take steps to place yourself in that position. This means that you may indeed have a responsibility to help others to understand the healthcare system, and as such will need to make yourself available to address interested community groups. This is increasingly crucial today as healthcare consumers are acutely concerned about the future of their healthcare delivery systems.
This has a two-fold result from your perspective. It not only provides much-needed accurate information for the general public, which can help your organization with its important messages, but it also serves to enhance your own profile in the community. This is beneficial both for the public image of your organization in meeting its community responsibilities as well as for your own image.
Other instances in which you may find yourself needing highly developed presentation skills include opportunities for you to bring your experience and expertise to your peers. Participating in workshops, seminars, and conferences for health professionals, trustees, and other healthcare managers provides you with an opportunity to give something to your profession, as well as to enhance your own professional profile in the healthcare community. Have you ever passed up these opportunities because you do not feel as comfortable as you would like to in making presentations? This is very common.
In this same vein, you may also have the opportunity to bring that experience and expertise to students in health care and healthcare management. Your skills as a presenter will allow you to respond positively the next time an instructor or professor calls seeking a guest lecturer.
Whether making presentations is required or optional, you still need to exercise some strategic thinking in selecting when and where to make those presentations. This decision derives directly from the objectives you have in making that presentation. For employee groups, you may be able to control not only the venue of the presentation but the size of the group as well. If you are bringing bad news, such as layoff information, you may find it useful to make the groups small and the opportunities for immediate feedback greater. However, since the advent of social media, even if you provide opportunities for immediate, in-person feedback, many of the members of your audience will take to the Web to further provide reactions, and you need to be aware of this and follow up on it.
If you wish to make presentations to community groups, should you say yes to every request? Probably not. Should you seek out your own opportunities? Definitely, yes. In general, the presentations you make need to fit in with the overall objectives that your hospital or healthcare agency has for its relationship with the community (more about this in chapter 10).
In strategically selecting venues for public speaking, you should take a proactive approach. Don’t always wait for situations in which you will be on the responding end. Consider the overall goals of your organization on an annual basis, and make plans to use your presentation skills to achieve specific objectives. Then, when you find yourself in a reactive situation, the audience that you face (the board or employees, perhaps), will already be familiar and positively disposed to your presentation style.
The first rule of making presentations is to be fully prepared. This is one of the most effective ways to deal with stage fright. Even if you see yourself as a seasoned and comfortable speaker, never neglect this step. And while preparation involves more than making an outline of the topic to be covered, an outline is a good place to start.
As you sit down at your desk and consider what to say, begin by describing for yourself, in as detailed a fashion as possible, the audience you will face. The following questions may help you to tailor your presentation to this group.
• How does this group relate to you in terms of organizational hierarchy? This is always applicable when you are presenting to internal groups, and may be useful for some external groups.
• How familiar are they with this subject? The more familiar they are, the more appropriate it is for you to use related jargon; otherwise, avoid it entirely. You may also not need so much background if they already know it. Give your audience some credit.
• How interested are they in this subject? An audience that fails to share your enthusiasm for a topic area will especially need to be drawn into it emotionally, or they will tune out.
• How large is the group? The size of the group often dictates the degree of formality, the level of audience interaction you will be able to achieve, and the visuals you will need to prepare.
The answers to these questions will help you to determine a variety of factors including approach; language; tone; visuals; and, believe it or not, even what you should wear. But planning is key.
As Scott Berkun suggests in his funny public speaking manual, “The main advantage a speaker has over an audience is knowing what comes next. Comedians – the best public speakers – achieve what they do largely because you don’t see the punch lines coming.”5 The only way that you can know what’s coming before your audience does is if you plan it.
Once you are familiar with whom you will be presenting to and with your objectives for making the presentation, you are ready to begin preparing an outline. The place to begin is at the beginning. How will you start your presentation?
There are several approaches you can consider. Some people believe a joke is a terrific opener for a presentation. As a healthcare manager, however, exercise extreme caution in using this kind of an opening. It might be a good way to start if (a) you know your audience well, such as your employee group; (b) the topic is a positive one (it may not be a good idea to begin with a joke just as you are about to inform them of layoffs); (c) the joke is carefully selected; and (d) you are capable of delivering a joke well (and this is not a universal skill). If all of these criteria are met, go ahead. Otherwise, you should select another way to break the ice.
Feature writers in magazines have a few ways that they usually start an article. These openings are just as useful in making presentations.
1. Anecdote. One of the most effective ways to begin to draw an audience emotionally into your presentation is to tell a story. The story should illustrate a human side of the topic and should be one with which this particular audience may be able to identify on some level. It can be a humorous story (which differs from a joke) if the topic is a light-hearted one. More often, when we are talking about healthcare issues, the anecdote is a more emotional one. It might even be a personal story, if it suits the topic, and can be a very good approach when speaking to your peers. The story itself should not be too long, but needs a beginning, middle, and an end. Occasionally, you might save the end of the story until the close of your presentation.
2. Startling fact or provocative question. This could be a statistic that is not likely to be known already by your audience; something that happened; a startling amount of money; something that is quick, to the point, and wakes up your audience. It can be very effective if selected well.
3. Quotation. Some speakers place the well-selected quote on a slide and let the audience read it while they are preparing to listen. This allows them a minute or two to absorb it before you begin talking about it. (This same approach can also be used when you use a question to begin your presentation.)
Whatever approach you choose to begin your presentation, you need to plan it in advance. Then provide the audience with a brief outline of what you intend to talk about on this occasion. Be specific about the purpose of the presentation and where you will end up at the end.
Occasionally it can be useful to tell the audience something more about yourself than may have been conveyed during your introduction (if you have been introduced). This is obviously unnecessary in internal presentations that are centred on day-to-day activities of your organization. If your audience is at all likely to ask the question “What the heck is this person doing here talking to us about this?” then you may need to present yourself and your credentials briefly. Ensure that this is not perceived as patting yourself on the back. It should not be self-congratulatory in any way, only informative, addressing any anticipated concerns of your audience.
The remainder of your outline should be the main points supported by the facts, information, and stories that augment each of them. There are various approaches to organizing material. The topic, objectives, and how you think about the subject will all play a role in which method you choose. Here are some of the methods:6
• Topical. Divide your subject into its component parts.
• Chronological. Topics that have a history or any kind of future timeline lend themselves to this approach.
• Spatial. You can map ideas using a visual aid.
• Journalistic. Organize the topic according to the who, what, when, where, why, and how.
• Problem/Solution. Select a problem for discussion and propose a solution.
• Process of Elimination. Eliminate alternatives and argue for the remaining option (especially effective when your presentation has a persuasive objective).
• Motivational. Use the psychological steps of gaining the audience’s attention, establishing a need, satisfying the need, visualizing the results, and then providing some guidance for moving the audience to action.
• Classical Judicial. This is the provision of argument and counter argument, and again can be useful when persuasion is your goal.
Because a presentation needs a beginning, a middle, and an end, you need to outline your wrap up. Provide a brief summary, and then consider how you will actually end. If you haven’t finished your beginning anecdote, then you have a ready-made ending. Otherwise, you may want to save a relevant quotation, a thought, or a call to action, if that is part of your objectives.
Before we move on to considering your approach to the subject, it might be a good time to consider what you will look like. Although this may seem at first glance to be a frivolous matter for a serious healthcare manager, it is not. Today’s audiences were brought up with a variety of broadcast and Web-based visuals, and are fairly sophisticated about drawing conclusions based on visual presentation. Most communications experts believe, and have evidence to support, the fact that most of us make up our minds about someone on first impression in about seven seconds. This means that how you look and the eye contact that you make will be either positive or negative input for the receiver of your message.
Deciding what to wear when making a presentation is actually just a marker for deciding how you will look to the audience in general, including the expression on your face and how much eye contact you make. Image consultant Catherine Graham Bell cites a great deal of research that concludes that, at least in job interview situations, personal presentation is the key factor in the decision about who will get the job and who will progress up the career ladder.7 The same situation holds true when meeting people who are a part of your audience. They will make decisions about you before you even open your mouth. These first impressions can either help or hinder your ability to get your message across effectively. So, how will you present yourself?
As a healthcare manager, you represent a number of different constituencies besides yourself. Unlike the job interview where you represent only yourself, when making a public presentation you represent anything that the audience associates with you. This means that you are an ambassador for your healthcare organization, as well as the field of healthcare administration. Regardless of the venue or the audience you need to be perceived as a professional.
A good rule of thumb is to present yourself at one notch of formality up from that which you expect of your audience. If your audience will be wearing uniforms, you need to wear whatever you consider to be your best uniform. If you normally wear a uniform, too, this is what you should wear when making an in-house presentation at least (obviously a hospital-type uniform would be inappropriate at an outside conference). But your uniform should be impeccable, even if theirs are not.
If you are presenting to an external group or your board, you need to be just one notch up. If you know that the group is quite casual, you cannot be quite as casual as they are. Even if you choose to dress casually, you need to look well kept and professional. (By the way, if you are presenting at a conference where name tags are de rigeur, take it off before you take to the podium: presumably if you are up there, the audience knows who you are. And they are distracting.)
How will you approach your topic? What kind of a tone will you employ? Aristotle believed that there are three ways that we can persuade others to our point of view: ethos, logos, and pathos. These three approaches are useful in determining your tone and style even if your prime objective is to provide information rather than to persuade.
The first approach you might take is to simply rest on your laurels, but I do not recommend it. Aristotle called this ethos and indicated that the audience’s acceptance of the speaker’s message was dependent in this case on the believability of the speaker. Although this can’t be the total basis of your approach, it may be a useful guideline in helping you to determine how much of your own personal experience can be used. If you are perceived by this group to be credible, you can capitalize upon this and use your own perspective as a basic approach. On the other hand, if you lack credibility in their eyes, you need to include something that will help to build that believability.
Aristotle’s second approach, logos, rests on the strength of facts and statistics, all of which are used to put together a logical argument to make a point. Logic has a positive effect in the long term, but often fails to engage your listener in the short term. Thus, if a lot of facts and figures are needed to make your points, it might also be useful to consider a more emotional approach – what Aristotle called pathos.
Because communication technology is sophisticated and audiences are almost as sophisticated, the use of an emotional approach can be very effective. As we discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the reason Schwarzkopf was in demand as a speaker was not because of his ability to expound political rhetoric, or even to list facts and figures, but because he was always able to engage the emotions of his listeners. In the health-care area, the potential for emotional connection is even greater than in many other areas. Indeed, health professionals need to guard against the very real possibility of exploiting this emotional hunger in audiences.
Each of these approaches on their own has limitations. Thus, in determining the approach you will take to a topic, you should consider including each of them in greater or lesser amounts. Your audience, objectives, and topic will dictate this.
We take in messages through all of our five senses. In fact, some studies have shown that the relative effect of the five senses in the learning process is 11 per cent through hearing; 14 per cent through taste, touch, and smell; and a whopping 75 per cent through sight.8 Australian speaking coach Doug Malouf says that a speaker is likely to achieve only 33 per cent of his or her goals without visuals, but 67 per cent with visuals9 – a very compelling argument for always using visuals.
If we look at the history of humans making presentations, it’s clear that visual aids have always been considered useful, whether that aid has been the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah using a ruined linen belt to make a point, or Cicero pointing out statues and landmarks to his audiences in Rome to illustrate his points.10
The reality is that you may not always be able to use visuals. It may be impossible or at least impractical to use visual aids when your presentation is very short, when you have been asked to speak in an impromptu situation (more about these situations later), or when the group is very small and intimate.
In general, your use of visual aids should increase proportionally with the size of the audience and the length of your presentation. A two-hour presentation to a conference of healthcare executives should make extensive use of visual aids, while a half-hour presentation to your board would include only a small number. Clearly, visuals are very important for your audience, but they are also important for you as the speaker. Well-designed slides not only reinforce what you are saying, but they provide you with a very clear outline for where to go next. Since you should never memorize a speech, they will guide you from point to point with very little shuffling of notes. There is nothing more impressive to an audience than a speaker who seems to need no notes—this goes a long way to enhance the speaker’s credibility. In addition, shuffling through notes is often distracting for the audience. Use your visuals well and remember this caution from public speaking coach Richard Zeoli: “Do not make the mistake of relying on PowerPoint® or visuals to tell a story.”11
It is time to turn our attention to the practicalities of visuals – how to select them, prepare them, and use them.
In selecting the format and tone of the visuals, you need to think about the same audience considerations that you used in the preparation of your outline: size, type, interest, and knowledge levels. While you might use light-hearted visuals for a casual topic with a peer group, a serious topic may require a more polished look. The format you choose will depend on functional considerations such as the room size, availability, and portability. There is no point in selecting a slide presentation in a room so small that the slides will look like your vacation pictures hung on the wall. If you are going far afield, you must be able to transport your visuals, so a flip chart might not be a good idea. If you are speaking to a community group, check to make sure they have access to an LED projector before you begin to prepare a computer-based presentation, and if you need a connection to the Internet, you need to be very clear about whether or not it will be available to you.
How many times have you gone to a conference and been faced with a presenter whose visuals were impossible to see from the back, or so full of text that you couldn’t even begin to read them? I have even passed classrooms where professors are using photocopied pages from books as transparencies – in the twenty-first century! Unfortunately, these situations happen more often than they should.
There is nothing more effective than a well-thought-out, well-designed visual. Here are my very basic design considerations when preparing visuals to accompany a presentation:
• select a format and colour scheme and keep it consistent (Your organization should have a branded template for slide presentations.)
• keep them simple and uncluttered
• keep the background clear
• ensure that the type is a significant contrast to the background
• avoid large text blocks at all costs
• use large enough type
• avoid overly ornate type faces
• use lines and clip art sparingly
• use graphs, flow charts, and photos when appropriate
An abundance of software is available today for developing visuals for presentation.12 It is, however, only as useful as the user’s grasp of basic design. Although many programs provide templates,13 not all are effective in all situations. I don’t know about you, but I am sick of poorly developed computer presentations. If you do not know how to develop and use visuals well, these computer-enhanced slides are not going to save you. If you are going to use this method or one similar to it, consider the following:
1. The less contrast there is between the type and the background, the darker the room has to be (and darkened rooms are more conducive to sleeping than to taking notes).
2. Too many swirl-ins and rotate-outs can leave the audience feeling dizzy.
3. The darkness allows much less eye contact with your audience.
4. Incorporate videos and other online material as appropriate. However, it’s important that you know exactly how to access these the exact moment when you need them, and remember that using too many can detract from your own personal message. (And note the comment above regarding availability of Internet connections in the planning process.)
One final note about using visuals such as these: always manipulate your own slides. This avoids the need for continually interrupting your remarks with “Next slide, please!”
Whenever I hear that someone is going to “make a speech” I immediately start to yawn. While a well-delivered presentation can be life changing, unless you are a Martin Luther King Jr, you should avoid making speeches except in the most specific of circumstances when the message delivered from a prepared statement may be crucial to ensuring accuracy of the message.
This may be a simple matter of semantics, but here is what I mean by a speech. Webster’s defines a speech as “a public address; a discourse,”14 and gives “a sermon”15 as one of the definitions of a discourse. Need we say more?
One of the problems with speech making is that there is the tendency to read from a prepared text at times when such a delivery is inappropriate to say the least. When you are making a presentation, you should (a) never write out your entire presentation word for word, or (b) read from the prepared text. In fact, writing out a “speech” word for word increases the likelihood that you will, in fact, read it. This also means that you should never get your public relations staff to write a speech for you. You might, however, ask them to provide “speaking notes” that will provide you with a well-organized approach to the points you want to make.
For every professional there comes a time when someone unexpectedly says, “Could you just say a few words?” Then it is up to you to think on your feet and say something coherent and useful. The key to these unexpected situations is to never let them be truly unexpected.
It is usually possible to anticipate situations where it is likely that someone might make such a request: at a board meeting, at the annual dinner honouring your long-time staff, or at a public meeting considering your hospital’s application for expansion. Consider those Hollywood stars who aren’t sure they will win the Oscar, but they always prepare their acceptance speech. Don’t ever let yourself be completely unprepared.
The best motto you could adopt for these and most other communication situations is to think before you speak. As you rise to move toward the microphone, do so slowly and deliberately, thinking all the time. If you follow the second rule – keep it short – this brief moment of preparation will be enough to carry you through. As some people begin to talk, however, they start to prattle. Listen to yourself and try to connect with your audience to avoid this.
Finally, one of the best ways to ensure that your remarks are coherent and have a beginning, middle, and end is to tell a story if you can think of one quickly. It will always be better organized than a series of disconnected remarks.
Often, a team approach to a presentation can be a most effective tool for meeting your objectives. If a variety of expertise is required, you might consider a group of specialists. For example, if you are making a pitch for money to enlarge your emergency department you might consider asking both a physician and a nurse to present with you. If you are lobbying to change admission policies to your long-term care facility, you, your director of admissions, and even a family member might be a dynamic team. There are, however, some issues to consider when working as a team.
First, although each of you has a particular area of expertise, you need to organize the presentation as a whole. This means getting together to plan the objectives, approach, and tone. You also need to take an inventory of what each participant knows about the issue and the individual relationships with the proposed audience. This overall organization also extends to your visuals – they must be consistent. Once the planning is out of the way, the group should rehearse together and determine how you will handle the actual presentation and any question that will naturally follow.
One of the best tools you can use for developing a group presentation is a wiki. A wiki16 is a collaborative Web site that a number of people can contribute to and that no one individual in the group owns. Each member can develop content, and each member can edit any content. The wiki also provides a history of the content edits and a discussion. If you do not have access to a wiki on your in-house intranet, you can sign up for a free one on a Web site such as Wikispaces (www.wikispaces.com). For a quick primer on how to use a wiki, see the Web resources at the end of this chapter.
There are two problematic aspects of actually speaking as a group. The first is the way transitions are handled. There should be a smooth lead-in to the next speaker by the previous one, and you need to consider carefully how the audience is likely to react to bouncing back and forth from speaker to speaker. It can be very distracting. In general, you should avoid organizing the material so that it is necessary for any one person to speak more than once, with the exception of the person who might open and close the presentation.
The second concern is figuring out what everyone else should be doing while one member of the group is speaking. The audience will see all of you, and if one of you looks bored or uninterested in what the others are saying, the audience will pick this up. When you are not speaking, you should pretend you are on camera at all times, because anything you do can and will be picked up by at least some of your audience members (who may find it necessary to tweet about it as you sit there!). Maintain your interest by unobtrusively nodding and making the occasional note. And never interrupt or correct the speaker!
Finally, you need to decide early on how you will handle questions. It is most appropriate for each speaker to handle questions, rather than having one do all the talking.
Here are some questions that you might ask yourself to determine just how well prepared you are for making presentations.
✓ When asked to speak, do you always ask the following questions:
○ How many people will be attending?
○ Who will the audience consist of?
○ What do they know about this issue?
○ Whose idea was it to present about this topic?
○ How large is the room?
○ How is the room laid out?
○ What kind of audio-visual equipment is available?
○ Is there an Internet connection?
○ How long will I be speaking?
○ Will others be speaking?
○ If yes, what will they be speaking about, and when will my presentation be in relationship to the others?
✓ Do you always spend some time thinking about how you will begin?
✓ Do you always prepare an outline?
✓ Do you always figure out what your objectives will be for the presentation (both for you and for your organization)?
✓ Do you always do more research than you think you will need?
✓ Do you always consider carefully the kind of visual impression that you will make on this particular audience?
✓ Do you prepare eye-catching, uncluttered visuals to support your presentation?
✓ Do you feel comfortable in the use of a variety of audio-visual approaches (PowerPoint, videos, audio)?
✓ Do you practice before the presentation – especially with the technology?
✓ Do you always speak approximately within the time that was allotted to you?
✓ Do you always avoid prattling on?
✓ Do you feel comfortable fielding questions?
✓ Do you ask to see any written evaluation that may be done by participants (e.g., at a conference)?
If you can honestly answer “yes” to all of the above questions, then you stack up well against your peers. If, however, there are areas that you have failed to consider or where you feel uncomfortable, you may need to think about your presentations a bit more or even ask for outside coaching.
You cannot avoid making presentations in your career as a healthcare manager. Indeed, it is to both your advantage and that of your organization for you to seek out opportunities to put yourself in front of an audience to meet strategic organizational objectives.
Often it seems like after your presentation the work simply goes to waste. In the digital age, there is no need for this to happen. You can give your presentation a longer life and let those who were unable to attend the presentation an opportunity to learn from you by posting them on a slide-sharing site or narrating your PowerPoint™ presentation and creating a video.
The following online services support this kind of approach by permitting you to create a free account and uploading your slides and information about them:
• SlideShare (www.slideshare.net)
• AuthorSTREAM (www.authorstream.com)
• Slideboom (www.slideboom.com)
• myBrainshark (http://mybrainshark.com)
In addition, you can add narration to your presentations and create videos that can be shared via video-sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo.
However you choose to do it, you may find that having your presentations online may be advantageous to both you and your organization.
Jaffe, C. Public Speaking: Concepts and Skills for a Diverse Society. 6th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2010.
Zeoli, R. The 7 Principles of Public Speaking: Proven Methods from a PR Professional. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2008.
Allyn & Bacon’s Public Speaking Web site. http://wps.ablongman.com/ab_public_speaking_2/
An Unconventional Guide to Public Speaking. http://www.entrepreneur.com/video/223160
Common Craft. “Wikis in Plain English.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnL00TdmLY
Graphics & PowerPoint with a Leadership Edge. http://www.homeworkmarket.com/sites/default/files/barrett_chapter_6.pdfToastmasters International. “10 Tips for Public Speaking.” http://www.toastmasters.org/tips.asp