Confident Speaking

My confident speaking course yesterday was actually better than I was expecting, and may even have verged on useful.

We had a nice discussion in the morning on what makes public speaking difficult, and then we did a small practice presentation just to two other people to ease us into it. The afternoon was run by George Palmer from EastEnders (or Paul Moriarty as he likes to be called), and he focused mainly on how we use our voices, how we project, and ways of engaging with your audience. I probably enjoyed this bit the most, although it involved some weird voice exercises like bellowing "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" at a complete stranger over and over again. I think it was quite useful though, and we learnt how to breathe in order to add more power to our voices and things like that.

And then we were supposed to end on a three-minute presentation by each of us to the rest of the group about a subject of our choosing. But in a rather anti-climactic way we ran out of time so only half the delegates got to do their presentations, and it rather undermined the point of the whole thing. I didn't do mine, but I wasn't that bothered because I didn't want to do it anyway.

So yes, it was fine, better that lots of other courses I've been on. I suppose one of the key things we learnt was that although we don't like public speaking, we're probably not as bad at it as we think we are, and people don't tend to notice even if you are a bit nervous.

I wouldn't say that I'm now going to be massively confident in speaking in public, but if you need the first line of a sonnet bellowed in someone's face, I'm your man.

Lack of confidence in confident speaking

I'm off on a confident speaking course tomorrow. I don't really want to go any more, it seemed like a good idea at the time when I booked it. I think I was mostly focusing on the free lunch though and the fact that it's a day away from my desk.

I suppose it will be alright... I don't want to go because I know they're going to force me to stand up and speak in front of the rest of the group, but I expect that's the point. The afternoon part of it is facilitated by an actor from EastEnders, not that I've ever heard of him, but I don't watch it very often.

So anyway, maybe I'll come back tomorrow with a new-found confidence when speaking in social situations and when doing presentations and things. It's possible. But it's far more likely I'll come back and completely disregard everything they said in the course, as is always the case with all staff development events everywhere.