Tom Peters Quotes

There are few things that will take you further in life, than your ability to make a good presentation.

I found myself doing so much public speaking, more and more and bigger and bigger.

If you're not comfortable with public speaking - and nobody starts out comfortable; you have to learn how to be comfortable - practice. I cannot overstate the importance of practicing. Get some close friends or family members to help evaluate you, or somebody at work that you trust.

It was only after a visit to a learning centre, where they taught me public speaking, that my personality emerged.

Writing and speaking and communicating, it's something important to me, and something I want to get better at.

Practice, practice, practice in speaking before an audience will tend to remove all fear of audiences, just as practice in swimming will lead to confidence and facility in the water. You must learn to speak by speaking.

There are two kinds of speeches: the Mother Hubbard speech, which, like the garment, covers everything but touches nothing, and the French bathing suit speech, which covers only the essential points.

Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.

I can't say I'm not nervous at all with media and doing speeches, but I'm getting used to it and better at it, hopefully.

I owed Lewis one thing, at least. Once you had suffered the experience of presenting a case at one of his Monday morning conferences, no other public appearance, whether on radio, TV or the lecture platform, could hold any terrors for you.

I am still working on patter and presentation.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

I think that no one, or very few, are born as good presenters. It's a skill that you learn.

You have to learn how to dress yourself and how to walk into a room and talk to people. Once you're in rehearsal, you have to know how to rehearse and how to communicate with your creatives, even if you don't communicate the same way.

I remember doing my first coaching sessions at Macclesfield, when I was still playing, and I was just terrible. I felt really uncomfortable standing in front of people, and it felt very odd. It was not something I was naturally comfortable with at all.

When I first started VMware, I was very shy and self-conscious about speaking. I grew out of this by giving talks each week in front of the whole company; gradually, as we scaled, I had talked to more and more people, and this is how I conquered my fear of talking to people.

That's what I need to work on - my charisma in front of people.

Once you break someone of the habit of up-talking, they can start to see immediate improvement in their careers.

You might be thinking that some people are just naturally good at speaking up, and others just aren't - game over. Not true. Speaking up is a skill that you have to learn like any other, whether it's speaking Spanish or doing calculus or changing a tire.

You could be the World's greatest orator and if you don't say anything while orating, they are going to walk out on you after a while.

I like that kind of stuff. I like doing speeches. I've been lucky because I've had a lot of characters, over the years, who will have three or four page speeches.

And I love to speak - I am very good at it. And if you love to do something, you're very good at it, and also you are paid well, why would you not do it? Why would you stop?

Why would you get up there and bore people? I never have figured that out. These people are supposedly in the entertainment industry, and they finally get up there to that podium and they become the most boring people in the world.

I'm mostly just getting used to the idea that people want to hear what I have to say.

Presentations are the most amazing persuasion tool available in organizations today