As many of you will know, I’m writing this from Newcastle upon Tyne - and it’s RSC season up here. Almost all of our theatres are taken over by the good folks from Stratford for a couple of months.
Amongs some of the things they’re doing are a series of workshops on Voice and - naturally - I picked up on that. One particularly useful warm-ups for the voice then, straight from the RSC’s mouth:
- “36 thistle sticks”
- “66 distinguished, bespecticled boffins”
- “lots of hot coffee in a proper copper coffee pot”
and my favourite - to be whispered so that you really, really warm up the lips….
- “interplanetary auditory discrimination”
but you’re thinking of getting some help or training in making presentations or public speaking, there are dozens of other companies to pick from. Whether or not you want to come to us is up to you, but before you go anywhere as them some questions:
Ask what percentage of what we communicate when we make business presentations is based upon the words we use. If you’re given a fixed figure (around 7%) you should avoid them; they’ve mis-understood the research by Prof Mehrabian. It’s a common mistake by poor business presentations trainers. It seems to be more common amongst people who are ‘general, jobbing trainers’ but not communications training specialists - and, sad to say, it seems to be a particularly common mistake amonsts NLP trainers who are trying their hand at presentation skills training.
Ask them what they think about using microphones when you’re making presentations. If they tell you that they help with - or even solve - your voice problems, go somewhere else; microphones will only make your voice louder - if your voice is poor at the mic, it’ll be loud and poor when it comes out of the speakers! There are only three reasons for using a mic - if the venue is huuuuuge; if your presentation is being recorded; and if there is a hearing loop you wan to use. The last two need the mic, sure but not the PA system. If you can, always turn off the speakers!
Ask them what alternatives they recommend to PowerPoint for when you make your business presentations to larger audiences: if you don’t get a good answer, listing three or four alternatives, go somewhere else: there are plenty of other packages around and chances are if they’ve not researched enough to know something as simple as that they’ve not researched the rest of their work on making business presentations enough either! The point is, in any case, that the software isn’t the important thing - you are. The software is there to be used, not run the show.
Ask them how long it should take to put a good business presentation together: we recommend up to hour per minute on stage (don’t be put off, it’s not as scary as it sounds, honest!). If they tell you that preparing presentations is quick and easy they don’t have high enough standards (in my humble opinion, anyway!)
Ask them how many people they train in a group: if it’s more than about a dozen, go somewhere else. You can’t pick out individual’s voices in groups any bigger than that….. No, you can’t. (Well, okay, professional choir-masters can, but there are only a couple of hundred of them in the country who are that good, believe me!)
Hope that helps someone!
