New Year, New Look!
Happy New Year and welcome to the new Speakers Corner website! We felt a new year demanded a fresh new look and we are excited to share it with you.
What a year it’s been! It’s hard to know what to say that hasn’t been said already. The first point I make about public speaking is that the human connection with your audience is the only thing that matters. Without it you may as well stop speaking, pack your bags and go home.
This year we have faced lockdowns, border closures, social distancing, working remotely, all of which drives disconnection.
I recently worked with a client whose team hadn’t ever met in person until our Confident Communicator workshop. The joy, laughter and love that was expressed at finally being able to meet face-to-face was incredible to behold. However, through all this positivity I heard team members saying to each other “you’re not at all what I thought you’d be like.”
Despite months and months of communicating virtually, technology hadn’t allowed them to connect with each other on a personal level. Technology is designed to empower us and it does, but if not handled with a few core skills and techniques it will drive disconnection and disempower us. Hello Zoom fatigue!
My advice? If you are interested in public speaking coaching and able to do face-to-face training, then get it done. Because if there is one thing this new Covid world has taught us it’s that we need strong speakers now more than ever before.
Failing that, invest in some on-camera training. We’ll coach you to use the technology in such a way that it projects YOU through the space and wires. That way your colleagues aren’t in any doubt who you are, what you stand for and what you’ve got to say.
Despite ongoing uncertainty and ever-changing rules I’m so excited about the year ahead. Sure, there will be curve balls and continuing instability, but I’ll leave you with this thought which I think applies to every one of us;
Look at you! You have been through so much and here you are at the end of another year. Still standing, still smiling. You are genuinely unstoppable. So take a moment. Appreciate the ending of this year, because it signals the new beginning coming your way. You are unstoppable.
