Speaking Well In Public

Latest news from Speaking Well In Public

Philippa Hammond — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:31:14 +0000

Employability seminars

Currently delivering a series of Brand ‘New You‘ seminars for business and executive audiences. Public and in-house corporate outplacement events, and 1-1 coaching available.

1-1 coaching

Just coached a private client preparing to read a poem at her daughter’s wedding

Actor training

Soon to be presenting investigative interview skills training for the actors of Chronicle Theatre

Leading masterclasses and workshops

Currently coaching and inspiring for success in

Building confidence
Creating the CV for business impact
Self-presentation and interview skills

New for 2013

A portfolio of business skills training in association with Centrevents:

Introduction to Investigative Interviewing
Confident Public Speaking Skills

See the brochure and booking details at http://www.centrevents.co.uk/pdf/brochure.pdf

Speaking Well in Public in the news

ETC Magazine featured Philippa in its Happy New You January 2013 edition

Inspirational speaking

Philippa gave the keynote speech on confident public speaking skills for business at the City Business breakfast networking event in November 2012

To book Philippa for inspirational speaking, please contact 07017 037590

—————————————————————————————————————

Launching Management Creative

Our new venture Management Creative‘s website details the range of training we offer around leadership, management and business skills for 2013.

In addition to the ability to stand up and speak with confidence, today’s leaders and managers need a portfolio of practical leadership skills for business

Management Creative offers real skills for the real world for the aspiring, new and future manager.

We are developing 1-1 coaching and corporate training programmes for the recently or imminently unemployed professional.

Watch the new site www.managementcreative.co.uk grow as we add the latest news of our courses.

Gallery

Philippa Hammond — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 20:10:00 +0000

See the gallery for images from Speaking Well in Public’s events

Social media: Employability and Twitter

Philippa Hammond — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 19:48:40 +0000

Sell yourself in 140 characters – the paper CV is dead.

As companies rate potential employees on their online presence, you need to tweak your Twitter CV …Social media sites aren’t just a way to get fired, but a great way to get hired, too. One company, Enterasys, is spurning paper CVs in favour of determining what candidates offer in 140 characters or less. They have been looking for a candidate with over a thousand followers who can inspire others to action with one tweet.

Recruiters can now see how professional – or unprofessional – people are by scanning the sum total of their tweets, and one employer, Poppy Dinsay, is beginning to ask candidates to include their twitter profiles with their applications. She is looking for three traits: originality, understanding and restraint.

So take a look at your Twitter feed as an employer or recruiter might see it – what does the sum total of your tweets say about you?

[adapted from an article by Rosamund Urwin, the Metro, 26/02/13]

Ten tips for successful public speaking

Philippa Hammond — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 20:36:21 +0000

People can be more frightened of public speaking than of spiders and death.

Don’t panic! Here come my ten tips for success…

Ten Tips 1: Planning and preparing well will help develop your confidence, and ensure that your speech or presentation is a success

Ten Tips 2: Focus: Decide on your aim and objectives for the presentation – find out about your audience’s needs, so it’s relevant to them

Ten Tips 3: Gather, prioritise and structure your material

Ten Tips 4: Make brief speaking notes and cue cards to refer to, or if you’re reading a formal script, learn Reading Aloud skills

Ten Tips 5: Use a visual aid to make it more interesting and memorable – but it doesn’t have to be Powerpoint

Ten Tips 6: Rehearse, especially first and last words. Increase confidence, ensure smooth performance and find where you need to make changes

Ten Tips 7: Deal with nerves. Even though you’re prepared and rehearsed, you’ll feel nervous, so study some confidence-building techniques

Ten Tips 8: Work on your vocal and non-verbal communication, develop an interesting voice and support your message with your body language

Ten Tips 9: Prepare for questions in advance, and practice your assertiveness skills for handling the difficult audience with style

Ten Tips 10: ‘How did I do?’ Seek and accept feedback positively, work on your message and delivery for improving your next presentation

Ten Tips: Speaking Well In Public’s portfolio of training courses will help you to become a more confident, polished and powerful speaker

How-to: Public Speaking – Attitude

Philippa Hammond — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 23:05:58 +0000

We’ve all seen the two extremes of speakers able to wreck the most compelling material. Recall the aptly-named Father Stone from the sit-com Father Ted; utterly deadpan, lifeless and immobile with the most boring voice in Christendom. At the other end of the scale, caricature Gio Compare from the car insurance ads, for whom everything is an opera delivered larger than life at full bellow and gesture to match.

Clearly no one would aim to imitate either for a serious public address. You can check out Pippa Hammond’s many articles on public speaking which cover the speaking part; and an earlier part here on the art of gesture to accompany your speech.

But what about posture, body, language, attitude and general demeanour?

The issue with our own body language is that we are usually unaware of the non-verbal messages we give out. The first thing any regular public speaker should do is record themselves on camera and, however painful it may be to watch yourself, play it back. Often it may be the first time you see yourself as others see you. Presenters are often shocked by the body language and attitude underlying their ‘immaculate’ presentations and how it undermines their ‘performance.’

Because any kind of public speaking is a performance. Perhaps not Hamlet, but a projection of yourself to an audience, nonetheless.

Standing Start
I’ve seen tall, loud, confident and even brash men shrink and wither when faced with an audience. Instantly, that audience loses interest.

How you stand in front of the room your stance, tells the audience whether you’re happy and confident, or uncomfortable and scared before you utter a word. The audience may not be able to read your slide deck but they will read you.

Your public address begins from the moment your audience turns their gaze toward you. You have to hold their attention even before you begin speaking. In this, nanny knows best, along with many an old fashioned finishing school; stand straight, upright, with shoulders back and chin up. Face out into the room and meet the challenge head-on. Be somebody worth listening to. Be alive.

Stillness
Here’s the tricky part. Being ‘alive’ does not mean cavorting about like a loon with St. Vitus dance. You’re there to present, not perform Riverdance. Stillness is a desirable quality. Someone who knows how to be still knows how to be the calm centre of a room. Stillness means not shuffling or tapping your feet. Stillness means being balanced on your feet or in your chair; not rocking to and fro like a bear in captivity. Keep your head level and your gaze steady.

When you’re not using your hands to gesture (which we discussed last time), find those moments of stillness in between the movement. Find a comfortable position in which to hold your hands. Clasped in front, behind, or held loosely at your sides; any of these positions are good. Arms folded in front of you is the classic defensive, ‘keep out’ pose, indicating either fear or superiority over the audience.

Constant fidgeting of limbs distracts the audience from your message. You can effectively upstage yourself. Likewise, playing with your ‘props’ is a distraction. Have you been in a presentation where the speaker continually spins or clicks a pen in their hand? Waves the remote control for the projector? Fiddles with their tie like Oliver Hardy? Waves their pointing stick around like Andre Previn conducting the Boston Philharmonic? Exactly. Did they realise they had all these ticks and habits? Probably not.

Be aware. It takes a little skill at multi-tasking, concentrating on your delivery and controlling your own body, but take heart; it can be done.

Remember that effective body language supports your message.

When you move, move with deliberate purpose. We’ve acknowledged that audiences respond to presenters who are alive and energetic, what you need is movement that is meaningful and supportive of the message. Regard energy and movement as your personal investment in the message.

The Eyes Have It
As we keep repeating, eye contact with your audience is very important. You need to move your gaze around the room and that means purposefully sweeping the audience making a moment or two of eye contact with everyone there.

We’ve all seen the “unaccustomed as I am…” nervous speaker whose eyes flick and dart all around the room as if seeking out an escape route in an exaggerated flight reflex. It fills an audience with unease. Even if you don’t want to be there, at least behave as if you do. RC

Core employability skills

Philippa Hammond — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:10:30 +0000

You’re more than just a former job title and a task list.Your employability rests on a set of core transferable skills that should shine from your freshly-polished CV:

Leadership and management

February 2013: People Management Magazine reports that managers and business leaders are struggling with basic management skills, as budget cuts and efficiencies increase the pressure on organisations. Of 1,460 managers surveyed, the issue was so serious that 55% of employers had made ‘leadership development’ a top priority for the year ahead.

If you have the ability to develop others, set objectives, give feedback including praise, hold difficult conversations for managing under-performance, use time and change management, interview and coaching skills, networking and promoting the business, then you have a highly valuable skill-set.

While you may not yet have leadership and management experience, you probably have a wealth of other vital skills that employers want and need from everyone they recruit. Here are the other skills that need to be highlighted in your CV, your cover letter and at the interview:

Communication skills

Communication skills are vital for business, yet employers find that candidates don’t perform well at interview because they haven’t addressed their nerves, prepared their answers or practised being interviewed. And, they reason, if you can’t demonstrate this skill at interview, how can you do it at work?

So develop the courage to speak up for yourself, using plain English and being sure to listen, too.

Be prepared to flex the language you use to help others to understand, explain and simplify complex information, developing your awareness of non verbal communication [tone of voice and body language], too.

The next three qualities go well together, and will affect how you deal with the challenges of everyday working life:

Confidence

It can be hard to hold on to a sense of self-worth if you’ve taken a few knocks, putting set-backs into perspective and trying again, but that confident decision to welcome a challenge will help you to get out of your comfort zone, try new things and inspire confidence in yourself and in others. And employers will be aware that this will positively affect how customers see their business.

Problem-solving ability

The ability to avert challenging situations before they escalate, and to deal well with problems, complaints and difficult conversations are highly sought after.

Staying calm under pressure

We all face pressure at work, and how you deal with it matters. Experience in taking responsibility, meeting deadlines, dealing calmly with aggression and negativity while staying goal-focussed will help sell you.

Team working

Most businesses are a team effort. We all have different team roles, different strengths and specialisms, all working to a common goal. If you’ve been accustomed to helping colleagues, respecting differences, doing your bit and going the extra mile, then be prepared to talk about it.

Attention to detail

Detail matters – ensuring there are no mistakes in your CV and cover letter will reassure the employer that you’ll be in the habit of reading the small print, picking up potential problems early, locking up securely, handling money well … and allowing spelling mistakes to go uncorrected will give quite the opposite impression.

Positivity

An finally, no-one wants to work with a sullen, negative cloud of gloom! Smile, stay good humoured and show a have-a-go / can-do attitude to help inspire your colleagues and yourself.

If you’ve used these skills in previous roles, whether at work, college or in private life – highlight them on your CV and cover letter, and be prepared to talk about them and demonstrate them in your behaviour at interview, because employers want them.

Quotations: the pause

Philippa Hammond — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 22:32:33 +0000

No word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause…

That impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words howsoever felicitous could accomplish it…

Mark Twain

How-to: Public Speaking – Gesture

Philippa Hammond — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:51:43 +0000

Not just speech, but attitude and gesture maketh the Public Speaker.He was a canny lad, our Will Shakespeare; he knew precisely the pits and traps in performance that would wreck his immortal poetry and prose. Hence his instructions to the players in Hamlet:

“Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, by use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

…let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature.”

If, as we’re often told, 80% of our meaning is conveyed by non-verbal communication, then our attitude, demeanour and gestures play a crucial part in delivering our material to our audience.

We nearly all use gesture in everyday speech, we use it for emphasis and to reinforce the key words. Expressive people with a little more imagination will use gesture to dramatise and role-play what they’re talking about.

That’s fine. You want your audience to know that you are alive and keen to pass on whatever it is you have to say. What’s more it gives your audience some visual cues as to what’s important in your speech. You know they’re not going to remember every single word; few of us have perfect recall; so think about the words or phrases you want them to remember. The emphasis in your voice as you hit those key words can be reinforced with a carefully rationed hand gesture.

Gestures that work

Do use your hands – knowingly. When you run-through your speeches or presentations (you do run-through your speeches or presentations, don’t you?), identify your key words and phrases as you will speak them and consider if a gesture will help to emphasise them.

Your gestures need to be open, confident and non-threatening. So an emphasis gesture is open-palm, directed outward toward your audience; it should be inclusive or invitational. Be deliberate and only gesture once for any word or phrase for the point you’re making. Repeatedly punching the air or pointing on each syllable comes across as overly aggressive or domineering to your audience. It really doesn’t help if you come across as a rude ego-maniac.

Of course there are exceptions. If your talk includes warnings or safety points – ‘stop…’ or ‘don’t…’ or ‘but remember…’ points can be emphasised with a hand up ‘stop gesture or a finger in the air. Like strong chilli peppers, use sparingly.

With all gestures, ask yourself; does it reinforce the point? Does it fit the context? Is it open and invitational? Have I used too many gestures?

Gestures that don’t work

Back to Shakespeare’s ‘sawing the air.’ We can look at examples of successful speakers whose use of gesture is at odds with their otherwise polished performance.

Respected former BBC Politic Editor Andrew Marr was regularly lampooned on the BBC impressions show Dead Ringers. In the TV sketches, the Marr caricature had attached a pair of six foot long puppet arms on sticks, which would wave about as he delivered his latest flowery report outside Number Ten.

Marr suffers from a condition movie critic Mark Kermode calls “Big Flappy Hands.” You don’t want to look like a flamingo taking off into the wind. Audiences love animated speakers but not if their windmilling arms will blow away their expensive hairdo’s.

A Big Horse Very Far Away or a Small Horse Very Close?
Your venue is going to affect the way you deliver your material. In a small meeting room, or any intimate space where do don’t have to raise your voice, your delivery needs to be light and conversational; almost normal speech. So you need normal gestures. No ‘Big Flappy Hands.’

In a large formal venue, say on a stage, in front of a large audience, you can go for a bit more drama and make things bigger. After all, most of your audience will be far away. But remember to use gesture sparingly to emphasise the words; this isn’t a Marcel Marceau mime show.

In a really large venue, such as a conference centre, the people at the back are going to see you as a lolly-stick figure in the distance. If you decide to gesture really big for them, just remember you may look like Andrew ‘Puppet Hands’ Marr to the folks at the front.

Never underestimate the comedy value of a big gesture. Arena-tour comedians like Lee Evans and Michael McIntyre know how to fill a big stage; it’s a tradition that goes back to Comedia De L’Arte and beyond. Possibly not appropriate if you’re delivering a eulogy, however.

Which brings us, finally, to speaking on camera. The lens picks up and exaggerates every tic, twitch and blink. Think how restrained the US President is in the White House press room. You have to keep things small for the camera, for one thing so you don’t look like a clown and for another, don’t obscure your face in centre-frame by waving your hands across it. Even in a big room with a lot of people, if there’s a camera rolling, you have to close down the hand-waving and facial expressions. RC

For students

Philippa Hammond — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 16:28:36 +0000

Students have so much to think about today. They may be leaving school and looking for their first job, thinking about careers and A level choices or applying to university.The ability to speak well in public is essential for interviews, oral exams and college presentations, and is an excellent CV point, yet it’s a task that so many find difficult.Speaking Well In Public offers a practical new one-day course for sixth form and further education students who are facing just these challenges.

My training is dedicated to inspiring young people to achieve skills for a wider world in a positive, supportive and safe environment. Students will …

Deal with their nerves and develop self-confidence, self-presentation and poise
Capture and keep an audience’s interest and deliver a clear, concise message
Move away from teen talk, developing their clear, communicative spoken English
Focus on personal impact and confident body language to support their speaking
Develop explaining, persuading and influencing skills
Take part in practical presentation exercises throughout the day
Give and receive honest, respectful and constructive feedback with grace

In short, I train young people to feel confident, project confidence and inspire confidence.

A one-day course for beginners – Maximum twelve students per group

Please contact us if you would like to discuss the course, or to book a Confident Public Speaking Skills day at your college or school

Voice-over artists

Philippa Hammond — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:38:00 +0000

Why use a professional voice artist?

We all learn in different ways

By reading and looking, by observing and doing – and by listening, too

Right now, your online presence may be all about pictures and text

A professional voice-over can enhance your site, helping you get the message across

A voice artist can take your script and give a clear, engaging reading to bring the message to life

These are the skills used by actors, broadcasters and advertising voices to captivate and keep attention

Your Public Voice: a new voice artist service for business

More news and voice samples coming soon

After-dinner speaking

Philippa Hammond — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:59:45 +0000

Comedy performer, writer and corporate speaker Barry Cryer says”I don’t call it nerves – I call it creative apprehension!”Barry Cryer

BBC TV Funny Business