My Blogposts — Mel Sherwood

Helping business leaders and teams to communicate with confidence for over 10 years!

Mel Sherwood

How To Ensure You Are Understood

How To Ensure You Are Understood

Whether you are leading your team meeting, pitching to investors or talking to your partner over a romantic dinner, the ability to be understood is critical. Here is one of the best ways to ensure that your message is understood...

What's Your Theme For 2015?

What's Your Theme For 2015?

We are already more than three weeks into the new year and there has been a lot of talk about new year resolutions. But I wonder whether you are sticking to your resolutions? Have you already broken them or at least some of them? Often we set too many or make them completely unrealistic so that it is impossible to stick to them. Here's an alternative...

What to Do When Things Go Wrong During a Presentation

What to Do When Things Go Wrong During a Presentation

During any live performance there will inevitably be some on stage disasters; even with the best preparation there is always a possibility that something will go wrong. In this post I talk about the most common public speaking disasters and how to manage them...

How to Take Your Presentations From Good to Great

How to Take Your Presentations From Good to Great

During a recent Professional Speaking Association event Patricia Fripp, award-winning keynote speaker, business presentation expert, sales presentation skills trainer and in-demand speech coach, put presentations under the microscope and offered advice for how to make a good presentation great. Here is an overview of her top tips...

10 Tips to Make Challenging Conversations Easier

10 Tips to Make Challenging Conversations Easier

If you're someone who avoids conversations that you perceive may be difficult, you'll probably already know that this can lead to further miscommunication, upset and angst. It is crucial to ensure that you find a way to express yourself so in this post you'll find some tips for preparing and managing the conversation...

'Let Go' and Improve Your Public Speaking

'Let Go' and Improve Your Public Speaking

Do you sometimes wish that you could wave a magic wand and you’d be great at public speaking? If so, I’m sure you wouldn’t be the only one! But rather than trying too hard, sometimes you just need to tear up the script and let go in order to improve...

What to Wear When Presenting

What to Wear When Presenting

Whether we like it or not, people are making judgements about us from the moment they first see us. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a great first impression. Therefore, when we are speaking in public it is crucial to think about the image we are presenting as this can have an effect on how the audience perceives us and receives our message...

7 Simple Rules of the Stage for Presenters

7 Simple Rules of the Stage for Presenters

Many presenters are unaware of some of the basic rules of the stage so in this post I share with you some of the points you should take into consideration whenever you are in front of an audience...

Lessons From My Most Difficult Speech Ever

Lessons From My Most Difficult Speech Ever

Delivering the the eulogy at my brother's funeral was tough; however, at that emotionally challenging time, I was grateful I was able to write and deliver a well-crafted, succinct and heartfelt tribute to him because I had taken the time to develop my public speaking skills. Here are some lessons from my most difficult speech ever...

How to Ensure Your Pitch Strikes the Right Note

How to Ensure Your Pitch Strikes the Right Note

I have developed a simple formula for what I like to call a 'pitchtastic' pitch. It can be applied to any type of pitch from a 30 second elevator pitch that you might deliver at a networking event right through to pitching for millions of pounds worth of investment. This post looks at each element of the formula individually...

Dos and Don’ts for Pitching Competitions (and other important presentations)

Dos and Don’ts for Pitching Competitions  (and other important presentations)

Pitching competitions are a great opportunity for companies to raise funding and support to grow their business, but in order to win you need to be able to stand out from the competition. Based on what I observed at a Scottish EDGE fund final, here is a list of dos and don’ts to help your next presentation or pitch stand out...

5 Tips to Weed Out Self Doubt and Cultivate Confidence

5 Tips to Weed Out Self Doubt and Cultivate Confidence

Do you feel confident and positive all the time? If you are like most people, your confidence can wax and wane depending on the circumstances. However, lack of confidence and low self-esteem can impact on every area of our lives. In this post I share my tips on how to weed out self doubt and cultivate your confidence...

9 Attention Grabbing Ways to Open a Presentation

9 Attention Grabbing Ways to Open a Presentation

During the first 30-60 seconds of your presentation, your audience will decide whether they like you and are interested in listening to what you have to say. It’s a very short time to draw people in and it’s important to ensure that you don’t waste those first few precious moments to effectively engage them so here are 9 attention grabbing ways to open your presentation...

7 Worst Ways to Open a Presentation

7 Worst Ways to Open a Presentation

The beginning of your presentation is the most crucial part and you have approximately 10 seconds for your audience to decide whether you are worth listening to. Here are the statements to avoid so that you avoid losing your audience before you begin...

Speaking Tips from the Man Who Has Spoken At 2,500 Funerals

Speaking Tips from the Man Who Has Spoken At 2,500 Funerals

This week I was delighted to have the opportunity to interview Neil Dorward who is known as The Legacy Man. He was the first full time civil funeral celebrant in Scotland, and has written and delivered over 2500 funerals in the past nine years. In this post he shares a bit about his work and some great tips for public speaking...

Professionals Don't Get Nervous... Do They?

Professionals Don't Get Nervous... Do They?

Are you allowing yourself to miss out on opportunities due to nervousness or anxiety? Do you long to express yourself and share your message but find that fear is holding you back? There are numerous ways to overcome your nerves so read on to find out how I manage it and how you can too...