effectively, don't bore people with too many facts and figures. Nine times out of ten they'll simply switch off and you might as well be speaking to an empty room.

The key to proficient public speaking lies not in bombarding audiences with fancy slide shows or a plethora of graphs, but in a more natural approach, says Mr. Alastair Grant, a consultant with the London-based Kingstree Group, which helps people develop communications skills.

"Be relaxed and allow your natural personality to shine through,'' said Mr.

Grant, who was in Bermuda last week with colleague Mr. Roly Grimshaw, coaching some 19 staff from the Bank of Bermuda, the Bank of Butterfield and accountancy firm Kempe and Whittle.

"The philosophical objective of our courses is that people are there to get their message and their personality across more effectively.

"We tell them to be relaxed and let their personality shine through. We try to make people more creative and powerful with their speeches, advising them how to better reach their audience.

"In business presentations, it's very often personality that wins the day.

The difference between one person's insurance product and someone else's, for example, may well be the perception the potential purchaser makes of the presenter.

"People make a judgment on the message being presented but they also make a subjective judgment on the speaker about his level of integrity and competency.'' The Kingstree Group has been sending staff across the Atlantic to Bermuda for four years, including every month for the last six months, not only dealing directly with private firms on the Island but also running courses through the Bermuda Employers' Council.

Mr. Grant joined the company, in which he is a shareholder as well as a consultant, about five years ago after 26 years in the Royal Marines, retiring as a Lieutenant-Colonel.

The group, which employs about ten people, teaches courses in several countries, but the problems encountered by businessmen in Bermuda were generally the same as their counterparts in, say, New York and London, as far as public speaking is concerned, he said.

"What drives our courses is getting people to do what they do instinctively well, which is normal conversation. We have observed that when most people get up and make a presentation they become too formal and too stiff and their personality doesn't come across.

"We have what is considered to be quite a radical approach to the whole process. We're against people deluging audiences with a mass of visual aids.

"Visual aids do play a key role in describing complex issues but if you keep pumping out large amounts of detail and information, your audience will get saturated and they will switch off after a while.'' The art of getting your message across is to make sure your audience understood the key points sufficiently well so that they can re-tell your story, he said.

"Unfortunately in business presentations, it is typical for people not to remember much of what was said,'' said Mr. Grant.

Good communications skills are especially important in Bermuda's international business community since many products are too complicated for the layman to understand.

"The role that I play is helping businessmen get their message across more effectively, particularly off the Island. I help them to better market and sell their various financial products in the international marketplace.

"I'm very impressed with Bermuda. The people are well-organised and there's an atmosphere of hum and buzz, which I find invigorating.''