Speakers & Trainers Activities & Tips
100 Training Games by Gary Kroehnert
Clear, comprehensive, and well‑organized, this valuable resource presents 100 lively ice breakers and instructional aids suitable for all kinds of programs. The simulations, brain-teasers, and case studies improve communication skills, create a spirit of teamwork, and get participants to participate. Every activity is self‑contained and easily identified by graphic symbols; a unique index grid helps you tailor a whole series to suit your training needs. Includes many reproducible pages for overheads and handouts.
101 Games for Trainers and 101 More Games for Trainers: Collections of the Best Activities from Creative Training Techniques Newsletter by Bob Pike with Christopher Busse
Here are the best games from Bob Pike’s renowned cutting-edge work gathered into two books. They are based on Bob’s Law #3 of Adult Learning: “Learning is directly proportional to the amount of fun you have.” These classroom-tested games, exercises, and activities add spark and energy to your training sessions– and help adults really learn without even knowing it. You’ll find hundreds of ways to: bring a weary group back to life; lead an audience thorugh a spirited, comprehensive review session; break the ice; improve communication and conflict resolution skills; create team players, and more. These sourcebooks are a one-stop goldmine of the best practical training tips and techniques gathered in the past 30 years.
101 Ways to Make Training Active by Mel Silberman
Enliven your training sessions with 101 dynamic, proven active-learning techniques that get your participants mentally and physically involved in learning. This book contains strategies that apply to virtually any subject matter. Turn your ordinary training sessions into extraordinary, memorable occasions with the techniques presented in four sections: the nuts and bolts of active training (160 tips on how to form groups, learn names, make lectures active, facilitate discussions); how to get active participation from the start; fun and engaging ways to teach information, skills, and attitudes; tips to make training unforgettable. Includes a helpful case example for each strategy. The materials that appear in this book may be freely reproduced for educational/training activities
201 Icebreakers: Group Mixers, Warm-Ups, Energizers, and Playful Activities by Edie West
This is the largest and most imaginative collection of icebreakers you’ll find anywhere! Use the wide variety of icebreakers to: re-energize trainees or workshop participants on the brink of boredom, introduce strangers to each other in interesting and involving ways, stimulate positive interaction and creative thinking among group members, generate interest and excitement about the subject of a meeting or the topic of a speech, boost problem-solving skills in an atmosphere of relaxation and fun, and much more! Includes reproducibles along with a handy matrix to help you find the perfect icebreaker for any group in seconds! Each activity comes complete with how-to guidelines and requires virtually no prep time. Best of all, most can be completed in five minutes or less, so you can rekindle the group’s enthusiasm and get your session back on track… fast! You’ll find icebreakers: for energizing long presentations, especially for big groups, especially for non-icebreaker type participants, for grouping people, for introducing topics, mental aerobics, outdoor activities, physical energizers, pure fun, etc.
606 Great Training Ideas: The Best of Creative Training Techniques® by Bob Pike and colleagues
This series of six handy, hardcover 128-page books offers a fantastic collection of practical and powerful how to’s for delivering effective training. Based on the pioneering work of Bob Pike, these books are a goldmine of low-cost, easy-to-implement training techniques that you’ll come back to again and again.
Dynamic Openers & Energizers: 101 Tips and Tactics for Enlivening Your Training Classroom
Powerful Audiovisual Techniques: 101 Ideas to Increase the Impact and Effectiveness of Your Training
Motivating Your Trainees: 101 Proven Ways to Get Them to Really Want to Learn
Managing the Front-End of Training: 101 Ways to Analyze Training Needs — and Get Results!
Creative Training Tools: 101 Easy-to-Use Ideas for Increasing Trainee Participation
Optimizing Training Transfer: 101 Techniques for Improving Training Retention and Application
1001 Ways to Make More Money as a Speaker, Consultant, or Trainer by Lilly Walters
This best-practices volume grew out of a recent survey of 7000 speakers, consultants, and trainers who were asked to describe their revenue-generating strategies. The result is a priceless compendium of sure-fire income-and-joy-generating tips, tricks, and techniques including 300 “rainmaking strategies for dry times.” This all-star collection includes 1281 proven strategies to help you grow your income in any economic climate along with a quick-reference format that makes it easy to find the information you need for every speaking situation and engagement. Beginners as well as experienced pros will find a goldmine of ideas to create new income streams, get more bookings, generate publicity, and much more!
All New Tricks for Trainers by Dave Arch
Magic is the medium… the laughter and learning that come along with it provide the real message. This book presents 57 proven magic tricks and techniques that make you look great as a trainer or teacher. Between these covers, you’ll find new ways to: immediately grab attention, energize classes, provide intriguing ways to review, and end with memorable closings. As a bonus, you’ll also find a score of reproducible overhead transparency masters of the best brain-teasing Puzzlers for PresentersTM. This book is guaranteed to add magic to your teaching and training!
The AMA Trainers’ Activity book: A Selection of the Best Learning Exercises from the World’s Premiere Training Organization by Carolyn Nilson
This large-format book presents the combined efforts of the very best seminar leaders affiliated with the world’s preeminent learning organization. Easily adapted for use with both individuals and teams, the collection includes exercises on such topics as applying seminars to the workplace, making great decisions, clarifying goals and values, developing your brand, building a positive work environment, the learning-creativity connection, problem-solving, and leadership. A special activity template gives you all the information you need at a glance to help you incorporate the exercises seamlessly into your classes and presentations. The book also includes reproducible handouts that are also available as PFD’s on your computer.
The ASTD Trainer’s Sourcebook: Creativity & Innovation: Create Your Own Training Program by Elaine Biech
Individuals must be creative and organizations must be innovative if we are to survive and thrive in the new millennium. This is your one-stop-shop for creativity workshops-in-a-book. This large book is the ultimate in easy-to-personalize, ready-to-run workshops. It offers dozens of training games, questionnaires, learning activities, fully reproducible workshop materials, creativity-measuring instruments, recommended resources, overhead masters and handouts to give you optimum results. You’ll find fully scripted whole-day, half-day, and one-hour workshops that will maximize the benefits of creativity training while minimizing your time investment and the costs to your organization. You can use this book by yourself as a self-guided creativity course… or you can use your creativity and this book to develop complete, instant, you-design-it workshops for others.
The Big Book of Business Games: Icebreakers, Creativity Exercises, and Meeting Energizers by John Newstrom and Edward Scannell
Would you like to have the attention of every person in the room when you give a presentation? This collection includes dozens of engaging activities adapted from the best-selling Games Trainers Play series and shortened to suit the needs of managers, trainers, and team leaders for use with their departments, staff or committees. The activities include session openers, presentation boosters, communication and team-building exercises, and much more. For ease of use, each game features follow-up discussion questions and many also include reproducible participants’ handouts.
The Big Book of Customer Service Training Games by Peggy Carlaw and Vasudha Deming
If your goal is to provide customer service with a smile… this book is for you. It includes 50 quick, fun activities (and reproducible participant handouts) for training customer service reps, salespeople, and anyone else who deals with customers. This book provides concrete techniques for: maintaining a positive service attitude, honing superior telephone skills, learning the best approaches to dealing with difficult customers, and much more. You can use these activities either to enliven traditional customer service training programs or as part of a regular staff meeting. This book is a funtastic reminder that the “frontline” and the “bottom line” do intersect!
The Big Book of Humorous Training Games by Doni Tamblyn and Sharyn Weiss
We are soooooooooooooo excited to announce the arrival of this book! What a funtastic resource for any speaker, trainer or teacher who believes that laughter and learning can (and should) go hand-in-hand. Each chapter in this easy-to-read book offers games/icebreakers that focus on such issues as customer service, team-building, creative problem solving, time management, reducing workplace negativity, management skills, dealing with change, emotional intelligence, how to be a naturally funny trainer, and much more. Step-by-step instructions coupled with dozens of reproducible handouts, suggested debriefing questions, and comic delivery tips will help you minimize preparation time and maximize training success. This laugh-and-learn book shows that humor is fun-damental: the fun comes along with da mental!
The Big Book of Icebreakers: Quick, Fun Activities for Energizing Meetings and Workshops by Edie West
Icebreakers are a great way to warm up and re-energize large and small groups, encourage shy people to make connections, add color to “bored” meetings, stimulate creative team thinking, and encourage everyone to participate fully. This wonderful book contains 65 proven and effective activities to add a burst of energy and fun to all of your presentations and classes. You’ll love the variety of icebreakers for: staff meetings, sales meetings, complete strangers, groups of 20 or more, pure fun, introducing a topic, outdoors, everyday living, and even icebreakers for stuffy, conservative types who hate icebreakers. The book includes reproducible handouts along with a very helpful “Find the Perfect Icebreaker Matrix.” You have found the perfect icebreaker book!.
Big Book of Leadership Games: Quick, Fun Activities to Improve Communication, Increase Productivity, and Bring Out the Best in Your Employees by Vasudha Deming
This new book is a kindred spirit of the one above. It’s a tremendous treasure of 50 unique games and activities that are designed for a busy workplace— most can be accomplished in 20 minutes or less during staff meetings, in training sessions or even in the course of a regular work day. These exercises include ten “flavors”— including activities designed to: break the ice, create a positive work environment, foster collaboration, encourage higher productivity, tap individual creativity and organizational innovation, gain insights on “leadership”, and alleviate stress by increasing fun in the workplace.
The Big Book of Meeting Games: 75 Quick, Fun Activities for Leading Creative, Energetic,Productive Meetings by Marlene Caroselli
If you have ever thought or uttered the words, “Oh, no! Not another meeting!,” then the newest in “The Big Book” series is for you! This goldmine guide is also for meeting leaders, facilitators, trainers, and teachers who would welcome 75 activities to keep participants awake, involved, and eager to provide input and generate creative solutions. These five-minutes-or-less exercises are powerful and fun tools for any group, class or business meeting to: help break the ice, convert complainers into contributors, find opportunities in problems, encourage full participation, achieve consensus among opposing viewpoints, disarm confrontational people, expedite decision-making, and transform “bored meetings” into engaging, energizing, and inspiring gatherings.
The Big Book of Motivation Games: Quick, Fun Activities for Energizing People at Work and at Home by Robert Epstein with Jessica Rogers
For managers, leaders, speakers, trainers, and individuals seeking to motivate themselves and others, here is a lighthearted book that includes dozens of fast, simple icebreakers along with reproducible handouts/overheads. It contains two unique tests that you can use to measure your “motivation competencies” and to select the exercises to: jump-start personal as well as team motivation, fight boredom and burnout, improve performance, overcome failure, boost energy when it’s low, enhance managerial skills, stop procrastination, help people through tough times, and much more! The activities in this book can be customized to suit your specific needs and group size. We know you’ll be motivated to pick up the latest book in the very popular “Big Book of Games” series.
The Big Book of Presentation Games: Wake-Em-Up Tricks, Ice Breakers, & Other Fun Stuff by John Newstrom and Edward Scannell
Here’s a foolproof grab bag of 70 fast, fun, and easy-to-lead games and audience activities that can invigorate any speech or presentation. The authors take the kinds of activities made popular in their renowned Games Trainers Play series and adapt them for today’s speakers and presenters– providing brief, participative activities to help you wake up, win over, win back, and pump up all kinds of audiences.
Big Book of Stress-Relief Games: Quick, Fun Activities for Feeling Better
by Robert Epstein
These quick exercises are designed to reduce stress wherever and whenever it strikes— in meetings, in front of the computer, during the morning commute or when dealing with difficult people. Psychology Today Editor-in-Chief Robert Epstein has created fifty 1-3 minute games based on STRESS-PROOFING: an original system derived from scientific research that makes stress reduction effortless, effective, and even fun! For everyone from deskbound office workers to managers in meetings to hurried/harried parents, this book is packed with activities and techniques for both individuals and groups who are “all stressed up with no place to go.” You deserve a (stress) break today… you deserve this book!
The Big Book of Team Building Games: Trust-Building Activities, Team Spirit Exercises, and Other Fun Things to Do by John Newstrom and Edward Scannell
Here are 70 quick, creative activities (and reproducibles) guaranteed to energize any meeting, boost a group’s sagging morale, and build team communication and spirit in your department, work group or class. This high-octane motivator includes tips on how to present games and how to select exercises for specific situations as well as essential advice on what not to do when leading games. You’ll come away with varied and imaginative activities to promote a culture of harmony and cooperation, to enliven bored meetings, and to have fun with your work team.
The Bottomless Bag Again!? by Karl Rohnke
This new book offers over 300 playfully pedagogic, off-the-wall, hands-on, curricular activities– more than you could possibly present during a semester or series of training workshops. Karl has distilled 25 years of Outward Bound and Project Adventure experiences onto these pages. If you want user-friendly ice breakers, sit-down-no-sweat activities, trust-building exercises, cooperative games, challenging initiatives, and exciting adventure stunts that you can use with educational, recreational or corporate groups– you got ’em! Includes over 200 photos and illustrations.
Brain Teasers for Team Leaders: Hundreds of Word Puzzles and Number Games to Energize Your Meetings by Leslie Bendaly
Are you looking for a way to break the ice at a first meeting? Have you just been assigned to lead a cross-functional (or dysfunctional) team? Or are you trying to get your group thinking outside the box? Or are you a trainer, teacher or speaker looking for some fresh ideas to get things going at your next workshop, class or conference? For all of the above, you’ve come to the light place! This book is a goldmine of 1000+ activities that can be reproduced as handouts or overheads. These mental icebreakers will help capture and maintain a group’s attention, spark creative thinking and mental sharpness, increase participation, and add fun to otherwise mundane meetings.
Comedy Writer™ for Windows by Vince Constantino
Turn your computer into your personal comedy writing partner! This unique creativity and productivity software for IBM-compatible PC’s is a great tool for speakers, trainers, teachers, businesspeople, and comedians (the head writer of the Tonight Show is a known user!). It is not just a list of jokes– this software mimics the thought process and interactions of the best comedic writing teams. Cut your writing time in half and be creative on demand, on-the-spot. Uses 63 huge databases of comedic raw material (e.g., the “Cliches” list is an index of 8600+ common sayings and slang expressions; “Song Titles” lists 3500+ popular songs) along with terrific comedic tricks of the trade (substitution, exaggeration, understatement). 90-day free technical support. Requirements: PC with at least 386 CPU, 4 MB of RAM, hard disk with 3.5 MB free, Windows 3.1 or later, VGA monitor or better.
Communicate with Confidence!: How to Say It Right the First Time (and Every Time) by Dianna Booher
Here is everything you always wanted to know about being a great communicator but didn’t know who to ask. This treasure trove of 1042 terrific, tried-and-true tips will boost your confidence and competence in communicating. Ken Blanchard says it well: “This is the best communication book I have seen. It teaches you specific ways to give and accept criticism, praise, and thanks. It teaches you how to communicate one-on-one and as part of a team. If you want to be more effective in your interpersonal relationships, this is a must read.”
The Complete Games Trainers Play on CD-ROM by Edward Scannell and John Newstrom
Trainers everywhere will rejoice (we certainly did!). Here is the complete collection of all of the games that appeared in the 1323 pages of the best-selling four-book Games Trainers Play series. Ultra-easy to install and run, this CD-ROM enables you to search out the exact training game you need, customize it to your specific requirements, and print it using any Windows-compatible word processing program. This incredible tool belongs in every trainer’s library. You’ll have instant access to over 400 fun, innovative, stimulating, trainer-tested activities that range from 3 to 30 minutes in length. Toll-free technical support is available. Requires at least IBM 386 with 4 MB RAM and 8 MB free hard disk space, double-speed or faster CD-ROM drive, VGA or better graphics display, Microsoft Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, mouse, and printer. Comes with user manual.
The Consultant’s Big Book of Organization Development Tools: 50 Reproducible Intervention Tools and Activities by Mel Silberman
This book offers incredible value for the consultant, speaker or facilitator who wants to use hands-on structured exercises, team-building activities or simulations in meetings and retreats, one-to-one coaching, and training sessions. The tools and reproducible handouts feature step-by-step facilitation instructions and resources that can be downloaded, copied or customized from the Web (at no additional charge)—the worth of this book goes well beyond its covers!
Creating a Climate for Power Learning: 37 Mind-Stretching Activities by Carolyn Chambers Clark
Create a climate for openness and change with these thought-provoking activities guaranteed to establish a mindframe for learning. From keynote speeches to staff meetings to group presentations, these fun and creative warm-up processes will help participants: relax, focus on your message, connect with one another, look at problems with fresh eyes, and think and work as a team. Next time you’re up front, make your message stick by energizing minds, engaging different learning styles, and sparking active learning.
The Creative Trainer: Holistic Facilitation Skills for Accelerated Learning by Michael Lawlor and Peter Handley
Help employees learn better and faster with Accelerated Learning, one of today’s hottest training methodologies. Fill your training sessions with music, color, drama, puppets, metaphor, team learning, whole body learning, right-brain learning, and play. This book: contains case studies together with mind maps and cartoons; shows how to create an environment to inspire optimum learning; explains how to balance relaxation and high energy in the classroom. With Accelerated Learning exercises and tips, trainers and teachers can make every course more enjoyable, memorable, and effective– just like this book!
The Creative Training Idea Book: Inspired Tips and Techniques for Engaging and Effective Learning by Robert Lucas
We were thrilled to discover this “bible” that is stuffed with strategies to bring out energetic, active participation! Inside you’ll find more than just terrific exercises and games. You’ll learn how to maximize props, puzzles, visual aids, and electronic media to put more pizzazz into your presentations, as well as how to: open with a bang, “reclaim” turned-off learners, encourage and reward participation, discover learner styles, set the right tone from the beginning, etc. Take your programs to new levels of fun, participation, and results with a book that should be in every teacher, trainer, and speaker’s bookshelf.
Creative Training Techniques Handbook (Second Edition) by Robert Pike
Here’s your opportunity to experience Bob Pike’s powerful instructor-led, participant-centered approach to training. We consider his Handbook to be the “Bible” of tips, tactics, and how-to’s for delivering cost-effective, high-impact training. This practical, relevant, and useful goldmine gives you step-by-step strategies for designing and delivering training that is fun– and gets results! Along the way, you’ll pick up 36 alternatives to lecturing, 8 ways to get rave reviews before you open your mouth, 13 things you need to know in creating visuals, 8 dynamite ways to energize your class when they’re drowsy, and much more. Includes a comprehensive resource guide, activity sheets, transparencies, outlines, etc. This book should be part of every trainer and teacher’s professional library!
Creative Training Techniques ® Handbook and Cassette Tape Program by Bob Pike
Here’s your opportunity to experience Bob Pike’s powerful instructor-led, participant-centered training programs. We consider his Handbook to be the “Bible” of tips, tactics, and how-to’s for delivering effective training. The Handbook includes reproducible visuals along with pocket-size cards to remind you of Bob’s messages (e.g., Learning is directly proportional to the amount of fun you have.). This attractive large vinyl package also includes the seminar that’s made a difference for over 50,000 trainers. This six-hour audio program of the “Best of Creative Training Techniques R” live with Bob Pike consists of a series of 20-minute modules on such topics as “How to Get Rave Reviews Before You Open Your Mouth,” “Openers with Impact,” “Using Participants’ Energy to Increase Learning and Application,” etc. Includes a specially designed handout packet with the tapes that will dramatically improve your training efforts.
Creativity Games for Trainers: A Handbook of Group Activities for Jumpstarting Workplace Creativity by Robert Epstein
Here is an imaginative cross-section of varied and versatile training activities that work and give measurable results. You’ll find exercises that can be easily customized for almost any setting (from corporate boardrooms to classrooms to large auditoriums), special forms that enable you to track the success of the exercises, reproducible handouts, updates on the Internet, and much more. This valuable handbook will help you to inspire creativity throughout the organization by developing in-depth workshops on creativity or by spicing up other types of training with creativity breaks. 303 pages.
“Did I Ever Tell You About The Time…”: How to Develop and Deliver a Speech Using Stories That Get Your Message Across by Grady Jim Robinson
Whether you’re a professional speaker, teacher, salesperson, trainer, or someone who just wants to be a more effective communicator, good storytelling can make the difference. This entertaining and informative guide can make a difference for you as you learn how to: create an immediate bond with your audience, deliver your message with maximum impact, use personal experiences to discover your “signature story,” integrate humor and action into the story, and go beyond skill toward soul in delivery. This book will reach, touch, and teach your audiences through the power of stories.
Don’t Let the Funny Stuff Get Away by Jeanne Robertson
You do not have to be a comedian or comedy writer to turn life experiences into humorous vignettes. Just follow Jeanne’s proven methods (from 40+ years as an award-winning humorist and past president of the National Speakers Association) and enjoy the results! You’ll learn how to: use minimum time to gather gobs of clean/funny anecdotes; magically transform everyday experiences into laughter; and design a personal (and powerful humor journal. This reader-friendly book comes complete with Jeanne’s step-by-step humor-gathering system along with lots of funny examples. A must-read for speakers…. And for people who love to laugh.
Do’s And Taboos Of Public Speaking: How To Get Those Butterflies Flying In Formation by Roger Axtell
Fear of death is our fourth greatest fear, according to the Book of Lists. Number one? Fear of public speaking, of course! Fear not-‑ for this fun‑to‑read book will show you sure‑fire techniques for controlling fear, preparing for and organizing a business presentation or speech, using body language and humor, and much much more! So whether you have to make a pitch to the Board of Directors, state your case to the town council, or ask a small gathering of in‑laws for a loan, this book can help you be an intelligent, articulate, confident and likable presence in front of any audience you’ll ever face. Lend this a read and they’ll lend you an ear!
Even More Games Trainers Play by Newstrom and Scannell
Here is the latest and biggest in the best-selling series (over 150,000 copies sold). Are you looking to add spark and excitement to your training sessions and achieve dramatically better results? Here’s the book that shows you how, with over 100 different trainer-tested activities that teach a variety of personal and professional skills in ways that are challenging and fun. Included are: games to develop leadership ability, brain teasers that enhance problem‑solving skills, exercises that improve communication skills, plus much more. Innovative, stimulating, effective, and a lot more fun than learning “is supposed to be!” Includes a wide variety of all-new training games.
Executive Speeches: Tips on How to Write and Deliver Speeches from 51 CEO’s by Brent Filson
Not for executives only! Packed with practical ideas, this book targets the needs of business speakers with more depth than any other manual. You will learn 32 compelling ways to begin a speech, 27 effective ways to end a speech, 9 ways humor can make you a better communicator (along with dozens of humor tips), and 13 strategies to combat nervousness. Also includes chapters on writing speeches, delivery, visual aids, dealing with the media, international audiences, and more. Wayne Calloway (CEO of PepsiCo, Inc.) sums it up: “How do you learn to communicate? You can call up 50 CEO’s and ask them for advice, or you can simply read this engaging book.”
Games Presenters Play: How to’s on Audience Participation Devices with Lilly Walters and Jeff Dewar
This 2-hour video workshop will help you enhance the design of audience participation and group learning experiences. It is chock-full of practical ideas and tips on such subjects as: how to involve introverts and manage extroverts; guidelines for the use of games and energizers in groups; gimmicks, gizmos, and gadgets you can use to tickle curiosity and funnybones in groups; the four most powerful words in the English language; how to use humor and heart stories to make points; and icebreakers and great ideas you can use.
Games That Drive Change by Carolyn Nilson
The first book of games to focus exclusively on personal and organizational change fills a clearly-defined need in today’s new training market. It provides a broad assortment of 100 ready-made activities to reduce people’s anxiety about change, help them discover that learning to drive change can actually be fun, and teach them innovative and flexible responses to a wide range of challenging new situations. Each game contains templates and answer sheets for easy administration, has a measurable outcome, and includes commentary on the business issue it addresses. Includes reproducible checklists and illustrations. Get this book… for a change!
Games Trainers Play Series by John Newstrom and Edward Scannell
Here are the books that started it all! This best-selling series (over 150,000 copies sold) belongs in every trainer’s library. Are you looking to add spark and excitement to your training sessions? These four books (1323 pages) show you how, with over 400 fun, innovative, stimulating, trainer-tested activities– e.g., games to develop leadership ability, brain teasers that enhance problem‑solving skills, exercises that improve communication skills, plus much more.
Games Trainers Play
More Games…
Still More Games…
Even More Games…
Great One-Liners, Classic One-Liners, Hilarious One-Liners by Gene Perret
Gene is one of the country’s premier comedy writers. Winner of three Emmy Awards for his work on The Carol Burnett Show, he has written for Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Bill Cosby, and others for 27 years. This three-book set gathers 1000’s of fast, funny favorites from Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen Degeneres, Steven Wright, George Burns, Groucho Marx, Mae West, and more! Find out what’s so funny about everything from waking up, legal matters, the road to success, growing old, smoking, marriage, money, family, friendship, work, kids, travel, the weather, etc. Add these fun-liners to your speeches, conversations, correspondence. This treasury of laughs for every occasion will make your day… a fun one! If brevity is the soul of wit, then this book is IT. As Gene tells us, “One-liners are a double bargain. They pack a powerful one-two punch of wit and wisdom into a short sentence or two. They not only say something, but say it in a funny, potent, and memorable way.”
Great Session Openers, Closers and Energizers: Quick Activities for Warming Up Your Audience and Ending on a High Note by Marlene Caroselli
For anyone who has faced a roomful of restless, reluctant or downright bored people, this book is a lifesaver! It’s a fun-filled collection of can’t-miss activities to kick off each session with a bang, quickly focus an audience’s attention on any subject matter, and end each session on a high note. These ready-made, easy-to-use activities will enable you to: warm up the group so that everyone feels ready and eager to learn, finish with a crowd-pleaser so that participants feel good about what they have learned, make learning memorable (and fun), reinforce the key points in your presentation, and spark active involvement from all participants. Includes reproducibles and a handy matrix to select the best activities.
The Greatest Speakers I Ever Heard… And What You Can Learn From Them by Dottie Walters
Great speakers affect their audience in astounding ways. Here’s a chance for you to personally meet over 90 powerful speakers… a veritable who’s who in the world of speaking. Dottie provides a warm and humorous account of the people behind the voices. Peppered with quotes and anecdotes, this unique collection includes business and marketing greats, educators, motivational speakers, and humorists. You’ll learn from their example, their messages, and their lives how to add greatness and inspiration to your own speaking.
High-Impact Presentation and Training Skills: Proven Techniques for Captivating, Motivating and Inspiring by William Hendricks et al
This user’s manual is packed full of valuable tips from some of the nation’s top presenters and trainers. You’ll learn how to: beat your fears of public speaking to become a “star” presenter, hold your audience’s attention and have them begging for more, cover your mistakes so no one knows but you, build rapport and credibility with audiences (even the rude and hostile ones), and make presentations that have a powerful punch. You’ll learn secret techniques it took others years to learn: keys to ensure a smooth presentation, how to size up any audience, identifying your personal presentation style, tips for using audio-visual materials, and tricks of the trade that every professional speaker uses to get focused and energized. For anyone who makes presentations, this book will be not only a lifesaver, but a career enhancer.
Hot Tips for Speakers: 25 Surefire Ways to Engage and Captivate Any Group or Audience by Rob Abernathy and Mark Reardon
From managing stage fright to keeping the audience hanging on their every word, experienced public speakers have the techniques to make every presentation memorable. Now you too can learn every trick in this book! Whether you are giving seminars, leading meetings, or facilitating training sessions, you can strengthen your skills with this brain-friendly workbook that makes learning come alive through interactive text and activities. Throughout this artfully-designed workbook, you’ll have room to record your practice and insights. This book is a great investment for any presenter who would like to be more comfortable— and effective— in speaking, teaching, and facilitating groups.
How to Be the Best Speaker in Town by Doug Malouf
Public speaking is not a mysterious gift bestowed on the lucky few at birth. It is a skill… a skill that can be developed. This highly entertaining, easy-to-read book is chock-full of practical tips: how to boost your speaking confidence and competence to enhance your career; simple yet powerful techniques for overcoming nerves; keys to insuring your presentation is always right for your audience; the 7 Rules of Humor; how to prepare a speech file so that you will always have something worthwhile to say no matter what the occasion; 10 simple exercises to give you a vibrant, energetic voice that no one can ignore; how to become a skillful storyteller to capture the attention, imagination, and applause of your audience.
How to Be the Life of the Podium: Openers, Closers & Everything in Between to Keep Them Listening by Sylvia Simmons
Turn to this book whenever you’re called on to speak on any subject. A sought‑after “speech doctor” shares a lifetime of tips that will make your presentations funnier, smarter, and better. She presents a foolproof system for creating a speech that flows naturally and builds to your point. Includes platform-tested collection of openings, closings, jokes, and anecdotes. “A must for every speaker or speechwriter.”‑‑ Terry MacDonald, Young & Rubicam Advertising.
How to Give a Damn Good Speech– Even When You Have No Time to Prepare by Philip Theibert
Does the mere thought of presenting a speech give you butterflies? This book will help your butterflies fly in formation! It provides a blueprint for professional, thought-provoking, and friendly presentations. Phil has read thousands of speeches in an effort to bring you the best examples possible. You’ll learn: how to organize and write a speech, 100 important things you need to know about giving a speech, entertaining stories to use in any speech, the best quotations ever heard, and 365 historical anecdotes for each day of the year. Instead of turning green, turn to this book the next time you have to give a presentation.
How to Make It BIG in the Seminar Business by Paul Karasik
New in paperback, this book gives novices and pros alike practical insights into the do’s and don’ts of seminar design, delivery, and promotion. The Seminar/Workshop Business Yellow Pages section provides hundreds of contacts: 204 public seminar companies, 121 corporate and business seminar companies, 94 training and HRD associations, 77 speakers’ bureaus, and the 547 best seminar sites. Learn how to schedule a seminar, fill a room, ensure audience interest, and use low-risk and high-profit marketing strategies– in short, learn how to reap rewards from the seminar business.
How to Make It Big in the Seminar Business, Second Edition by Paul Karasik
Incredibly useful for novice and pro presenters alike, this fully updated new edition is packed with insider tips on becoming an information entrepeneur, how to put together a dynamic seminar, how to hold an audience in the palm of your hand, low-risk and high-profit marketing strategies, and much more. You’ll also find a fully-updated and expanded directory listing contact info for 130 public seminar companies, 248 corporate training companies, 164 training and HRD associations, 517 speakers bureaus, and the 1000+ best seminar sites.
The How‑To of Great Speaking: Stage Techniques to Tame Those Butterflies by Hal Persons with Lianne Mercer
Drawing from techniques used by actors and professional speakers, you’ll learn proven ways to render yourself articulate, speak with ease, write winning presentations, psych yourself up to peak performance, tell a joke, use visual aids, meet the media, and more. Includes 21 ultimate exercises– a chance for you to practice the how and why and humorous storytelling. “Hal Persons’ methods may be humorous, but the effect is quite serious and sophisticated.”‑‑ Jim Ferri, Senior VP, Hill & Knowlton
How to Say It Best: Choice Words, Phrases & Model Speeches for Every Occasion by Jack Griffin
This unique book offers a wide choice of words, phrases, sentences, whole paragraphs, and sample speeches as models for 39 different speech-giving occasions– including the impromptu speech, after-dinner, anniversaries, awards, business meetings, charity events, commencements, introductions, keynotes, master of ceremonies, occasions of triumph or crisis, annual reports, PTA, retirements, reunions, sales meetings, weddings, etc. For each occasion, this book also gives you useful advice on what not to say and words to avoid. Whatever the occasion, you’ll know exactly what to say and how to say it best!
How to Teach Adults in a Fun and Exciting Way by Doug Malouf
Learn the keys to making every training course, seminar, workshop or presentation a spectacular success. Springboarding off the notion that learning should be (and can be) fun, this book will show you how to: plan well-designed and structured sessions, appreciate the process of adult learning, use visuals effectively, engage your audience in active participation, use icebreakers to maximum effect, add pace to your presentations, design effective handouts, and evaluate your sessions. Drawing on his observations of the world’s best presenters, trainers, and educators in the past 25 years, the author from Down Under will show you how to go up over the top as you learn, laugh, and are inspired to create presentations that are exciting, entertaining, and educational.
I Can See You Naked: A Fearless Guide to Making Great Presentations by Ron Hoff
The title tells you this is going to be a different book on how to address an audience, and it is – bright, buoyant, sometimes irreverent. And it’ll make you a visibly better presenter without undergoing a personality change or visiting a charm school. The author, a nationally recognized authority on marketing and advertising, dedicates this book to the exhilaration of presenting well – and to making sure that you feel the joy of it.
Icebreaking 101: Getting to Know You in One FUN Question! by Perry A
This book could be called Icebreaking 300, because it has over 300 mind-stimulating questions to stir the imagination and add zest to any occasion– meetings, training sessions, classrooms, family gatherings, parties, etc. This unique collection includes fun and playful questions related to English, history, science, health, music, religion, psychology, graduate school, business, etc. An insightful, invigorating, and delightful way to discover unknown qualities in people you thought you already knew well… and to really get to know those you’ve just met… in one fun question.
I’d Rather Die Than Give a Speech by Michael Klepper
We don’t know of anyone who has actually died giving a speech… but why take a chance? This step-by-step game plan will help you transform speechmaking from a teeth-chattering ordeal to a rewarding experience that can benefit your career and company. Learn how ear appeal can turn lackluster speeches into winners. Pick up tips on how to move from heart failure to speeches with heart. Look at the chapter on “Humor and Numbers.” And laugh (and learn) at the how-not-to-do-it tips that are integrated throughout the book in “Death by Oratory.”
Imaginative Events for Training by Ken Jones
Encourage original thinking and challenge ho‑hum ideas with dozens of innovative games, simulations, and role‑plays. The exercises focus on three broad categories of thoughts and behavior: creativity, organizational efficiency, and personal (ethics, attitudes, artistry). Includes a step‑by‑step guide to planning, facilitating, and debriefing each activity, plus handouts, props, questionnaires, and self‑assessment sheets.
Improvise This!: How to Think on Your Feet So You Don’t Fall on Your Face by Mark Bergren, Molly Cox, and Jim Detmar
Are you surprised to learn that the most successful people have learned a lot from the world of improvisation? Lightning-quick responses, keen powers of observation, and confidence are qualities that can help anyone go far. This unique guide, written by a trio of professional improv trainers and performers (see page 16), teaches you spontaneous combustion skills (igniting your creative spark) and foolproof ways to improvise your way out of any situation. Filled with amusing anecdotes, sound advice, easy exercises, and true-to-life practice scenarios, this is an invaluable resource for you to improve with improv. Go out on a whim and buy this book.
Inspire Any Audience: Proven Secrets of the Pros for Powerful Presentations by Tony Jeary
This must-have resource has something for everyone. Tony provides a well-organized toolchest that will move any presentation from conventional to inspirational. This valuable guide simplifies the entire process of developing, preparing, and delivering powerful presentations. Filled with checklists, duplicable worksheets, and 18 tear-out “Secrets of the Pros” cards (including the keys to success in the first 3 minutes of any presentation). Learn how to exceed audience expectations whether you are presenting to 1 person in an office, 5 people in a living room, 50 in a boardroom, 500 in a ballroom, 5000 in an auditorium or 50,000 in a stadium. Zig Ziglar: “This is the ultimate presenter’s handbook. It is loaded with practical advice and tools to use immediately. A live seminar presenting this information would be worth several hundred dollars.”
Instant Icebreakers: 50 Powerful Catalysts for Group Interaction and High-Impact Learning by Sandy Christian and Nancy Loving Tubesing
Icebreakers are much more than fun and games. This book is filled with brief group activities (5-15 minutes) that help people connect with each other and with the subject matter at hand. These interactive processes reduce resistance, promote positive group interaction, invite participants to get involved in their own learning, and appeal to any audience and diverse learning styles. Each of these lively openers includes step-by-step instructions, activity extenders, engaging (reproducible) worksheets, and ideas for specific applications.
The Instant Trainer: Quick Tips on How to Teach Others What You Know by C. Leslie Charles and Chris Clarke-Epstein
Designed to transform you into a skilled instructor in as little time as possible, no matter what size group or what kind of subject matter you cover, this savvy guide is a rich resource of ideas, techniques, and practical tips. Learn how to prepare, deliver, evaluate, and fine-tune presentations that keep trainees riveted and leave them smarter and more capable. This book will help you deal with a staggering range of issues facing first-time and veteran trainers, including how to: overcome stage fright, break the ice, get shy people to participate, use today’s technologies in teaching and training, reach diverse group members, and how to (and when to) use humor. Features training tools you can use: 8 instant checklists, 10 surefire ways to get audience participation, the best 11 resources for trainers, 2 training evaluation forms, and enough titles to make a bookaholic trainer happy for a very long time.
Knockout Presentations: How to Deliver Your Message with Power, Punch, and Pizzazz by Diane DiResta
Whether speaking one-on-one or before a large group, you can dazzle any audience with the expert advice and creative ideas in this book, which is chock-full of no-fail techniques to build both your confidence and competence in speaking. This goldmine covers such topics as: dispelling the top 10 myths of public speaking, the most common mistakes speakers make, keys to developing stage presence, fixing fear and conquering nervousness, using visual aids and stage setup to your advantage, managing difficult people in the audience, and special speaking situations (trade shows, motivational keynotes, sales presentations, media interviews, videoconferencing, etc.). Knockout Presentations will help you come to your senses (and skills) about speaking.
Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional’s Guide to Growing a Practice by Alan Weiss
The new and updated edition of this best-selling guide will show you how to market and develop your business into one that generates $1,000,000 or more annually. This book will help you grab the amazing new opportunities in this era of corporate downsizing and mergers. From setting fees to identifying new clients to obtaining capital, this guide walks you step-by-step through the process of developing a successful consulting business: keeping your sense of humor, building relationships, seeing twists and turns as opportunities rather than as threats, and growing your self-esteem and business at the same time. The book offers practical insights into such subjects as: the ten basic principles of million dollar consulting, how jobs get in the way of careers, surefire strategies for growing your firm, how to use technology and live to talk about it, and turning bad times into good times by playing your cards right. This book could be a real ace up your sleeve!
Mind-Body Magic: Creative Activities for Any Audience by Martha Belknap
Whether you’re looking for an effective way to illustrate a point or an activity to pump up or calm down a group, this book provides a professional bag of tricks for adding pizzazz to your presentations. Includes 40 feel-good, brief (2-10 minutes) exercises that stretch the mind and body, activate energy, and calm the restless. Handy tips and reproducible worksheets with the activities show you how to use and adapt them in your programs. Martha’s vivid guided imagery, powerful mnemonic devices, and variety of relaxation exercises will awaken people to learning.
Money Talks: How to Make a Million as a Speaker: Alan Weiss
Dynamic speakers are made, not born. This book will tell you how to take what you know and spin it into verbal gold! It’s simpler than you think. Through stories and anecdotes, Alan shows you how you can succeed in today’s booming market for public speakers. You’ll learn the ten best practices to increase your business along with how to: choose a topic that people will pay to hear, establish fees, craft a winning speech, and market your programs. Packed with boxed tips, checklists, lists of resources, and plenty of helpful examples, this book is your roadmap for the world of professional speaking. Nido Qubein (internationally-known speaker): “Quite simply, the best book I’ve ever read on speaking as a profession. Alan Weiss turns some cherished myths upside-down and just may prompt you to rethink your business. It’s a fantastic, inclusive, most useful book!”
More Games Teams Play: Activities and Games for Powering Up Your Team’s Potential by Leslie Bendaly
Creating teams in the workplace is easy. Making them effective is the challenge! Dozens of new activities will help you develop the communication, cohesiveness, and group dynamics characteristic of a high performance team… and have fun at the same time! This hefty collection of exercises include short games that lend themselves to small team meetings as well as experiential exercises that spark fun and teamwork at large corporate events. Ranging in length from a few minutes to a few hours, you can use a single activity or link several together to design complete workshops. This follow-up to one of the best-selling books on teams also provides reproducible worksheets, handouts, overhead masters, a game selection index, back-up plan tips for facilitators, and team assessments for creating powerful team development sessions.
More Team Games for Trainers by Carolyn Nilson
You loved Team Games for Trainers… here’s a second helping! If it’s your job to build and maintain strong and cohesive teams, you need this book! It’s one of the very few that focuses exclusively on teams. The 90 high-involvement, easy-to-facilitate games and training aids are designed to develop team learning, advanced team skills, trust-building, change management, innovation, and diversity. Each game is self-contained and ready-to-use… and all have been tested and proven effective.
Motivating Your Audience: Speaking from the Heart by Hanoch McCarty
Discover the secrets to motivational speaking and to connecting with audiences and remaining in their hearts and minds long after the speech. Hanoch presents time-saving insights on: the most powerful information-gathering techniques for motivational speakers, how to uncover and build on the motivation already present in an audience, tips to tap the audience’s desire for your success, strategies for dealing with any resistors in the audience, and techniques for reminding people of the original motivation which brought them to their job or profession. Recommended by Toastmasters International and the National Speakers Association.
Never Be Boring Again: Make Your Business Presentations Capture Attention, Inspire Action, and Produce Results by Doug Stevenson
Unlike any other book on speaking skills, this goldmine teaches a breakthrough method that can help you make dynamic presentations in front of any audience, anytime, anywhere. Based on his Story Theater Method, Doug shows how you can become a magnetic presenter by: following a nine-step formula for crafting compelling stories, getting your point across to insure maximum “buy in,” branding your message with the magic “phrase that pays,” making dull and dry technical information come alive, calling on the #1 secret to being your best when you speak, and injecting humor so people laugh while they learn. With a combination of powerful examples and specific tips, this book will help you deliver meaningful and memorable presentations.
Off the Cuff: What to Say at a Moment’s Notice by Anne Cooper Ready
This book provides a potent and practical approach to help you develop “prepared spontaneity” skills in your life and work. After-dinner speeches, toasts, introductions, job interviews, eulogies, apologies, appreciations, panel presentations, new business pitches, media interviews, arguments, phone calls… virtually everything we say every day is impromptu. This wonderful book prompts you to put words together to motivate, direct, entertain, and succeed. You will come away with both the competence and confidence to make planned remarks seem ad-libbed and to know what to say, when to say it, and how to say it right anytime and anywhere.
The One-Minute Motivator: 365 Dynamic Stories to Jump Start Your Day and ENERGIZE Those Around You! by King Duncan with Rebecca Clark
We were very excited to discover this resource! The ultimate storyteller’s book contains stories about hundreds of people from Louisa May Alcott to Zig Ziglar. It is designed to be used as a personal daily morale-lifter for you and as a rich reference book for inspiring and motivating others. Cross-referenced by source, name, and subject, this incredible collection includes stories on 40 subjects. We hope you are motivated to pick up this marvelous, rib-tickling, thought-provoking, user-friendly resource you can use every single day of the year.
Playful Activities for Powerful Presentations by Bruce Williamson
Spice up your presentations with healthy laughter as you get your audience (play)fully involved. No matter what your subject, the 40 creative energizers in this great book will help participants put fun back into their work and make your presentations more playful, powerful, and productive. It’s amazing how much you can learn by having fun! For your convenience, worksheets are reproducible (up to 100 copies per year) for education or training.
Playing Along: 37 Group Learning Activities Borrowed from Improvisational Theater by Izzy Gesell
Set the stage for change, learning, and growth with these innovative, playful activities borrowed from a centuries-old art form: improvisational theater. Developed for group leaders who have no improvisational theater experience, these easy-to-use, proven techniques build an optimal learning environment by: fostering understanding, reducing resistance, creating cohesiveness, and promoting active participation in the learning process. You’ll love the way these brief (5-10 minute) activities spark creative thinking, support problem solving, promote team building, and build self-esteem. Whatever your topic may be, let these imaginative icebreakers activate those all-important skills of listening, accepting, affirming, conceptualizing, and trusting– and pave the way for personal growth and organizational change… you can improve with improv!
Present Yourself! by Michael Gelb
Speaking in public is the #1 fear. This book will help you to say, “Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that public speaking could be so much fun?!” Meet your brain (both the left and right sides) and learn high performance presentation techniques like mind mapping, visualization, body language, and relaxation as you captivate your audiences with great presentation skills. Michael coaches you step-by-step through the process of becoming a more dynamic and effective communicator… by showing you how to enjoy being yourself in front of a group.
The Presenter’s Survival Kit: It’s a Jungle Out There by Lori Backer, Michele Deck, Doug McCallum
This spiral-bound “first aid kit for presenters” gives the inside scoop on how to: use group activities and energizers to capture and maintain audience interest, present content effectively using visuals and handouts, and troubleshoot the “mosquitoes” that can drive you crazy and ruin a presentation. The kit is filled with all the little things that no one ever told you about… that can make a big difference in the success of your presentations. It comes with playful props that you can use in over 60 creative ways. As a bonus, it includes master cartoon graphics along with motivational sayings for your own transparencies or posters.
Presenting and Training with Magic: 50 Simple Magic Tricks You Can Use to Energize Any Audience by Ed Rose
Magic tricks add flair, excitement, and entertainment to any class, workshop or training program, but most teachers, trainers, and speakers don’t use magic because they think it’s too difficult. In this well-illustrated book, corporate training manager and magician Ed Rose gives a step-by-step look at 50 of the most effective and easiest-to-perform magic tricks for emphasizing and illustrating key learning points. Within no time, you’ll be adding the spice of magic to your presentations… and getting enthusiastic applause, plus greater energy and participation, from every audience. Includes reproducible handouts.
Presenting with Pizzazz: Terrific Tips for Topnotch Trainers by Sharon Bowman
This gem of a book gives you a host of easy-to-apply tips and an idea-bank of activities for getting learners of all ages more actively involved in their own learning. Based on accelerated learning research and written in a fun, conversational style, this book is ideal for today’s busy teachers and trainers. Terrific tips include: never talk longer than the average age of the group; active bodies equal active brains; become the-guide-on-the-side rather than the-sage-on-the-stage, etc. Generate rave reviews… and lots of learning.
Punchlines, Pitfalls, and Powerful Programs: 10 Surefire Ways of Adding Humor to Your Presentations by Scott Friedman
This book is chuckle-full of practical principles for neophyte and veteran speakers alike. After discussing the two trends driving the new world of public speaking as well as “Law One” of the National Speakers Association (“You don’t have to use humor… unless you want to get paid”), Scott offers a wealth of imaginative, guaranteed ideas for applying humor to increase the value of your presentations. Learn to play off the audience, develop original material, and uncover an organization’s “humor hot buttons.” Determine where to find clean, appropriate humor and how to make spontaneity better the second time around! This book is inviting laughing and learning in your presentations.
Quality Games for Trainers: 101 Playful Lessons in Quality and Continuous Improvement by Marlene Caroselli
Here is the first collection of exercises designed specifically for trainers who teach TQM and continuous improvement. Each activity comes complete with pages that can be photocopied as handouts or overhead transparency masters, a fully scripted mini-lecture, ways to stir up interest and participation, and discussion questions. These innovative exercises focus on such concepts as worker empowerment, customer satisfaction, teamwork, improving meetings, benchmarking, reengineering, and more.
Quick Team-Building Activities for Busy Managers: 50 Exercises That Get Results in Just 15 Minutes by Brian Miller
Timing is everything when it comes to comedy, life, and work. This new collection of 50 timely and engaging activities and icebreakers focuses on: building new teams, dealing with change and its effects, finding creative ways to solve problems together, improving communication, and leveraging diversity and individual differences to meet team goals. The book also includes a chapter on “What Can Go Wrong in a Team-Building Activity” (and what to do about it) as well as a chapter on the seven keys to running a successful team-building session. Full team ahead!
Secrets of Power Presentations by Peter Urs Bender
Cavett Robert (America’s Dean of Professional Speaking): “Secrets of Power Presentations is absolutely fabulous. It’s such a good combination of powerful thoughts clothed in such wonderful humor.” You’ll learn 5 sure ways to kill a presentation, 6 steps for effective communication, 6 ways to improve confidence, the misunderstood 80/20 rule, and how to end a speech with impact. You’ll also learn the 5 essential parts of a power presentation: the speech (writing, preparing, and delivering fresh material), body language (the power of a smile and non-verbals), equipment (making effective use of audio-visuals and microphones), environment (secrets to room set-up), and preparation (travel tips, rehearsal, introductions).
Secrets of Successful Speakers: How You Can Motivate, Captivate & Persuade by Lilly Walters
Filled with hundreds of helpful hints and amusing anecdotes from Tony Robbins, Steve Allen, Letitia Baldridge, Jack Anderson, Dr. Ken Blanchard, and other renowned public speakers, this book provides the insights, information, training, and techniques you need to give professional presentations. Lilly Walters is executive director of Walters International Speakers Bureau. “All the tools you need to prepare a speech that will inspire for years.”‑‑ John Wooden, former head coach, UCLA Basketball.
Secrets of Superstar Speakers: Wisdom from the Greatest Motivators of Our Time by Lilly Walters
What makes the cream-of-the-crop motivational speakers stand above the rest? What is the path to becoming a great speaker? Which techniques and methods are successful motivators? Which habits are most essential for a speaker to develop? Filled with anecdotes and inside tips, this is a fascinating source of practical wisdom sure to instruct and inspire speakers and presenters everywhere. Learn from the best of the best about the most memorable messages that motivate, magical methods that work with any audience, and the skills and steps to creating a superstar speech that will touch the hearts and minds of your audience.
Shake Rattle & Roll: Using the Ordinary to Make Your Training Extraordinary by Sharon Bowman
Do you want to create fun and memorable learning experiences? If so, you’ve come to the right place! With this book, you’ll discover over 100 fun, easy, and effective ways to use ordinary objects and simple training activities so that people learn better and remember more. Discover methods to make your training come alive with energy, excitement, meaning, and memory by using toys, gadgets and gizmos, movement and metaphor. David Meier (Director, The Center for Accelerated Learning): “Sharon’s books sparkle with positive energy and are fountains of practical, stimulating ideas for enhancing learning. Both new and experienced trainers can put her ideas to immediate use.”
Show Biz Training: Fun and Effective Business Training Techniques from the Worlds of Stage, Screen, and Song by Lenn Millbower
Grounded in the latest adult learning and training theories, this goldmine of playful and potent techniques reveals how you can use the secrets behind comedy, props, music, magic, and theater to keep your audiences rapt. Featuring step-by-step instructions and dozens of resource lists and worksheets, this book is packed with attention-grabbing entertainment techniques to keep folks listening, learning, and laughing. Filled with fun, original strategies for serious speakers, trainers, and teachers, this book will set the stage for exciting, entertaining, and effective learning and will help you put some razzle-dazzle into your presentations as you achieve funtastic, show-stopping results.
Speak Like a Pro: When What You Say Can Mean Millions: A Business Tool for Marketing & Managing by Maggie Bedrosian
Michael Marquardt (President, Global Training Associates) calls this “the best book for new and experienced speakers I’ve ever read.” We think you’ll agree as you build skills that yield lifelong results! This valuable book will help you: build visibility, influence, profit, and service; overcome the dangers of the first 90 seconds; build on your existing strengths and natural style; streamline your preparation process; rechannel stress into presentation energy; explore the five most effective speech structures; link your mission to your message; multiply the impact of each presentation; mine humor; become your own speaking coach; and much more! As a bonus, you’ll find an emergency 10-Minutes-to-Prepare Panic Plan.
Speaker’s Handbook of Humor by Robert Orben
Here is an invaluable practical guide that will provide you with the confidence and competence to use humor effectively in speeches and presentations. This easy-to-use humor tool kit offers a hands-on approach to writing, researching, rehearsing, and delivering effective speeches. Along with a generous sprinkling of laugh lines to spice up any presentation, the book presents the do’s and don’ts of getting laughs and step-by-step directions in such articles as: Always Lead Them Laughing; Kinder, Gentler Comedy; Opener: The First Two Minutes of Your Speech; Spicing Up Those Dull Speeches; Stage Fright and How to Deal with It; Using Humor When You’re Afraid to use Humor. “Enables even novices to give polished speeches with bomb-proof humor.” (Terrance McCann, Executive Director of Toastmasters International).
Speaking Is an Audience-Centered Sport: How to Create and Deliver Presentations That Make People Sit Up, Take Notice, and Beg for More! by Marjorie Brody
Ready or not… all of life is a presentation! Off-the-cuff remarks or orchestrated multimedia events, a meeting with the boss or an arena-sized audience, a simple phone conversation or crucial sales presentation… finally, a book that provides step-by-step coaching that teaches you to deliver knockout presentations! You’ll learn how to: control stage fright, warm up your audience before you ever meet them, use technology, integrate humor to score with your audience, and turn audience members into fans forever. We are real fans of this book, which has a special bonus “Meet the Pros” section that features a treasury of timeless tips and tactics from 12 master speakers.
Speaking Successfully: 1001 Tips for Thriving in the Speaking Business compiled by Ken Braly and Rebecca Morgan
This resource is a MUST for all speakers! Every page will have something that will improve your speaking and make life easier for you. This is the best investment you can make if you’re serious about speaking— ideas from this indispensable collection can save— or earn— you thousands of dollars. This updated, edited collection gives you tips from three years of the premier on-going “electronic think tank” involving experienced speakers worldwide. Tips are categorized into topics such as Running Your Business, Sales & Marketing, Creating Books & Products, Travel, Technology, Media, Better Presentations, Personal Well-Being, and Workshop Keepers from the National Speakers Association Convention. This 195-page large format book comes to you in an electronic format (PDF) as well. The PDF version you can easily search the full text of the book by keywords to find what you need in seconds, copy and paste ideas into your own “action items” list, even click on certain Web addresses to access those sites.
Stress Management and Relaxation Activities for Trainers by Robert Epstein
The stress proofing is in the putting… putting into action the goldmine of ideas and activities you’ll find in this book. These science-based methods are fun to teach and easy to apply. The book includes quick ways to help learners relax and prepare for learning, special techniques to help people cope with organizational change, innovative approaches to dealing with interpersonal conflicts, stress-handling methods especially for managers, relaxation tools for the desk-bound, games for the time-limited, self-assessment surveys for measuring stress-managment skills, reproducible handouts, and instructions for tailoring each exercise to fit any group. You’ll reduce your own stress by getting this book!
Structured Exercises in Stress Management: A Handbook for Trainers, Educators & Group Leaders, Volume 2 by Nancy Loving Tubesing and Donald Tubesing
This excellent collection contains dozens of experiential exercises with step-by-step instructions and reproducible handouts to help you design an effective stress management program of any length. You can also integrate these exercises into other presentations to creatively involve your participants in the learning process. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced trainer, you’ll find a goldmine of icebreakers, stress assessment activities, skill builders, closing exercises, and group energizers that are adaptable to nearly any audience, age, setting or group size. You’ll also find priceless training tips from the experts as well as a variety of sample workshop designs. This book takes the stress out of planning and presenting!
Teaching & Training with Magic: How to Use Magic Tricks in Business Presentations with Tom Ogden
Look great as a teacher or trainer… and make your sessions magical, memorable, and meaningful. This 47-minute video workshop teaches you 12 jaw-dropping, mind-opening magic tricks you can use in any presentation. But more importantly, it also teaches you how to think like a magician as you match the magic to your message. You’ll enjoy viewing this tape, learning the secrets of master illusionists (e.g., how to turn ordinary paper into dollar bills before your very eyes), and using the tricks to get program participants “in the palm of your hand.”
Team-Building Skills One-Day Workshop by Ralph Lewis
This complete training package addresses all aspects of developing and improving teams, team meetings, and team effectiveness. It is an easy and affordable way for organizations to offer training that balances essential content inputs and active participant involvement. This large looseleaf-bound book includes everything needed for a one-day, self-administered program: a step-by-step Trainer’s Guide with detailed content notes and time-coded curriculum, 13 ready-to-use color slides, and a photocopiable Participant’s Guide.
Team Games for Trainers by Carolyn Nilson
If it’s your job to build and maintain strong and cohesive teams, you need this book! It’s one of the very few that focuses exclusively on teams. The 100 games, exercises, and activities help you foster team building, team functions, and team maintenance as you teach critical group skills including information sharing, task and performance evaluation, and conflict resolution. Each game is self‑contained and ready‑to‑use, complete with answer sheets and reproducibles; all have been tested and proven effective. Recommended for experienced trainers and newcomers alike.
The Team Trainer: Winning Tools and Tactics for Successful Workouts by Scott Myers & Carole Barbato
The popularity of workforce teams continues to surge as companies discover the productivity-boosting effects of group collaboration. This book speaks to those who want to prevent “team” from becoming a four-letter word. Chock-full of fun, interactive, and dynamic exercises, checklists, real-world examples, and much more, this invaluable resource shows how to maximize “team think.” It also includes a user-friendly, vivid description of group dynamics research and team building efforts that have been important in the workplace. You’re in for a great spirit-refreshing, mind-expanding, team-building workout.
The Toastmasters International® Guide to Successful Speaking by Jeff Slutsky and Michael Aun
Terrance McCann, Executive Director of Toastmasters International: “I honestly believe that every person who truly wants to become a confident and eloquent public speaker can. Whether you are a novice or a more seasoned speaker, this book is for you.” This book will help you overcome your fears, win over your audiences, and build your business and career. Along the way, you’ll cover such topics as: using humor to make your point, engaging effective audience participation, incorporating visual aids, leading in with a perfect introduction, preparing inspirational keynotes, and promoting yourself with seminar selling.
The Trainer’s Tool Kit by Cy Charney and Kathy Conway
This tool kit for managers and trainers is packed with hundreds of proven techniques. Arranged in an easy-reference, A-Z format, this book supplies instant guidance through its bulleted, checklist format. You’ll get concise nuggets that are easy to digest, even at a moment’s notice, on 80 topics, including: adult learning principles, building a case for more training dollars, computer-based training, the top ten facilitator tips, humor in training, internet and intranet, learning organizations, outdoor training, overhead do’s and don’ts, resistance to training, using videos to your best advantage, training’s role in the year 2000, what’s hot and what’s not, etc.
Training Clips: 150 Reproducible Handouts, Discussion Starters, and Job Aids by Mike Lynch and Harvey Lifton
You’ll find yourself pulling content-rich, visually-diverse materials from this one-of-a-kind resource every day. It is an ideal source of one-page articles and informative job aids to support training classes, include in company newsletters, use in marketing your programs, and incorporate in self-study and long-distance learning. This timesaving terrific treasure includes 150 reproducible, short pieces, checklists, self-assessments, and thought-provokers on a wide range of management issues and training topics including: change management, coaching, benchmarking, creativity, employee development, ethics, leadership, meetings, morale, performance appraisal, teams, interviewing, and much more. The accompanying CD-ROM contains all the Training Clips in electronic format, which gives you the added flexibility to copy clips to your PC for printing and to distribute clips via email. 170 page 3-Ring Binder with CD-ROM.
Training Games for Career Development by James and Lynne Kirk
Perhaps the most comprehensive and multifaceted collection of career-enhancing games ever published, this collection contains a wealth of fun-filled and imaginative exercises designed to hone every skill needed to succeed in today’s workplace. Invite participants to “play their way” to career success by participating in games designed to build career awareness, chart a course for self-improvement, and contribute to greater organizational productivity. Games such as “Honey, They’ve Shrunk the Company,” “Feedback Fumbles,” “Company Capers,” and “Jobpardy” span a variety of topics: career motivation/resilience, career promotion, career climate, etc. Includes many reproducible handouts.
Training Games for Interpersonal Skills: 107 Experiential Learning Activities for Trainers by Philip Burnard
Trainers everywhere will welcome this rich treasury of quick games and activities designed to improve “people skills.” Intended for wide-range use– from management development to customer service training to personal growth workshops– this large-format looseleaf binder has sections on managing, facilitating, and evaluating interpersonal skills workshops. It includes checklists, icebreakers, pairs activities, insights on group dynamics, and much more. Reproducible handouts and overhead masters make this guide especially easy to use again and again.
Training Games… from the Inside: The Secret to What Works and What Doesn’t by Jeff Stibbard
This excellent book covers the how, why, where, and when of using and designing training games– including: what games can and cannot do, preparing to lead a game, keeping control of the action, what makes a game great, how to overcome resistance in participants, how to develop your own games, and how to conduct successful game debriefs. The heart of the book is comprised of 50 of Jeff’s favorite games, described in a format that helps you implement them immediately. You’ll learn insider tips on how each game can be adapted to achieve different training objectives.
Tricks for Trainers by Dave Arch
Do you ever find it difficult to get and hold participants’ attention? This book presents 57 proven magic tricks that make you look great as a trainer or teacher. Magic is the medium… the laughter and learning that come along with it provide the real message. Learn magical tricks of the trade in creating positive learning environments. These include 11 great brain twisters, 10 audience-tested early bird exercises, 11 tricks to teach your participants, 11 tricks that require no props, 14 tricks that require easily-made props. This book is guaranteed to add magic to your programs!
Turning Training into Learning: How to Design and Deliver Programs That Get Results by Sheila Furjanic and Laurie Trotman
Understanding how adults learn is critical to delivering training that’s interesting, relevant—and most important—gets tangible results. This big book shows exactly how to engage learners and ensure that they remember, internalize, and use what they’ve learned when they get back to work. Packed full of practical, time-tested advice, guidelines, activities, models, checklists, forms, templates, and other tools, this book includes: 10 questions to ask before even accepting a request for training, 3 different styles of adult learning, 7-step process for designing learner-based training, 5 secrets for transferring skills from short-term memory to long-term use, and much more.
The Ultimate Training Workshop Handbook by Bruce Klatt
The title says it all. This treasure chest of a book is the most comprehensive guide around for leading successful workshops and training programs. Whether you are a veteran trainer or a rookie, this amazing reference will help you discover how to: successfully contract with clients; develop high-energy, participant-oriented workshops using state-of-the-art methods, models, and techniques; use natural learning and deep learning techniques, visual aids, and humor; get programs started with energy and enthusiasm; reinforce, evaluate, and follow-up on training program and workshop success. Packed with tools, tips, skills, checklists, worksheets, and case studies, this is the most complete, thought-full, and useful manual on training workshops ever published.
Using Stories and Humor: Grab Your Audience! by Joanna Slan
With endorsements from the two largest and most influential public speaking groups (Toastmasters and National Speakers Association), this practical, down-to-earth guide teaches you how to use stories and humor to support your speaking objectives. Inside you’ll find a wealth of step-by-step tips, worksheets, and exercises to master storytelling and humor techniques to add polish and appeal to your presentations and to keep your speeches fresh (even when you are called upon to “play them again”). Morgan McArthur (world champion public speaker): “This book is more than another how-to guide on public speaking. It is a rare find! It will surely enhance your speaking but it will also enrich your life. It’s brilliant!”
Wake ‘Em Up!: How to Use Humor and Other Professional Techniques to Create Alarmingly Good Business Presentations by Tom Antion
Here is your A to Y Guide (no ZZZZZ’s allowed) to more memorable and fun presentations. Add humor and excitement to your next program and watch your audience come alive. This book shows you how with hundreds of advanced tips, tricks, and techniques of the top pros to make your audiences say WOW!; a systematic approach to creating outrageously interesting presentations that will make you the hit of your next meeting; 33 bombproof ways to use humor without telling jokes. Patricia Fripp (past president, National Speakers Association): “This book gives you advanced presentation skills and humor that would otherwise take you years to learn. It’s an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to be a fantastic presenter.”
What to Say When… You’re Dying on the Platform: A Complete Resource for Speakers, Trainers, and Executives by Lily Walters
This book is a cover-to-cover must-read for both first-timers and experienced presenters! It will prepare you in advance for 130 common panic-producing speaking situations. You’ll find thousands of powerful, positive, and humorous ad-libs and sure-fire “saver” lines for any situation as well as preventive strategies that will rescue your speech from hecklers, equipment breakdown, late arrivals (including yours), loud noises, jokes that bomb, and more!
Wuzzles R by Tom Wood
Endorsed by Creative Training Techniques R, this is the most comprehensive collection of brain-teasers and mental puzzles available. The mind-stretchers are organized into such sections as: business/sales, customer service, education, health care, management, manufacturing, sports, technical, etc. Each page is designed to be reproduced as a transparency so that you can project it to your audience. You have permission to reproduce the Wuzzles R which appear in this book for educational training events.
Your Public Speaking Workout: Exercise Your Body Parts: A Proven 6-1/2 Step Method to Help Build Your Speaking Skills by Dorothy Lynn and Jessica Selasky
According to surveys, fear of public speaking is greater than the fear of death. Of course, you could have the double whammy of “dying on stage.” Complete with guidelines, specific tips, stories, and powerful exercises, this workout will insure that your presentations are alive and lively. The authors are great mentors to help you speak with enthusiasm and confidence as they address: strong openings, strong closings, visual aids, 5 quick ways to calm your body, combining head and heart, etc. Imagine how good you’ll feel (and do) when you” lose your nervousness, are totally prepared, capture and hold audience attention, inject humor effectively, speak extemporaneously, and more. Bill Gove (first president of the National Speakers Association) sums it up: “This books should be called Everything You Want to Know About Speaking.”