Most of the people who know me would find it a tad surprising, if not downright worrying, that I've recently been on a training course all about speaking - I'm not exactly the quietest person around at the best of times! This was a course about public speaking, though, which has not been one of my greatest strengths up until now. Oh, I put on a good front and do pretty well at the occasional chance to introduce myself at things like business networking meetings, and have even been known to raise the odd laugh here and there, but underneath it all I've been quaking in my boots as much as the next person. Well, not no more!
Now that I've been on the Master Speakers Academy with Inner Compass, I feel ready and able, nay, itching even, to take on some speaking engagements! The approach was very much from an NLP perspective, so we spent time working on our "Presenter's State", including posture and focus, and then on creating rapport with the audience through eye contact. This before we even had a chance to open our mouths! Next we moved on to telling a 1 minute story, with an incident, a point and a benefit. The challenge here was to un-hook our hands from our mouths - not something that came easily to those of us used to talking with our hands. Oh, and we were also still standing in just the one place - movement came much later! So it went on, layering gestures, movements and other techniques on top of each other, with time spent at each stage on practice. Each of us got to stand in front of our own groups for each excercise, and a member of the group and one of the coaches would then give a 1 minute "feedback sandwich" each. This was the most rewarding part: we were firmly guided on the type of feedback we should give, and I have to say that the format was a great one that I have already used in other situations. We would start with specific examples of what we really, really liked, then we suggested what could be even better next time, and the whole thing was finished off with an overall positive comment. An absolutely superb way of giving feedback, as everything was phrased in a very positive way.
The following Saturday at a party, I found myself almost unconsciously employing some of the techniques that I had learnt whilst telling a funny story to some people. Of course, you'd have to ask them if there was anything that they really, really liked...
So here I am, a week on. I have a couple of ideas already of some short ten minute presentations I will give to one or more of my networking groups on jargon busting computers (any suggestions for subjects gratefully received!). As for expanding and growing the sizes of groups and lengths of presentations? Bring it on!
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