It is hardly surprising that people get nervous. Firstly, they don’t get any training as public speakers; secondly, they don’t get to do it very often and thirdly, when they do get to do it, everyone is watching. Add to that the fact that from the time we are small children, we will have heard people talking of public speaking as something to fear.

Public speaking is a physical activity and as such it can be coached, but to think you can acquire that skill in a short time – particularly in a classroom situation - would be like thinking you could learn to the play the guitar or become a champion tennis player over a weekend.

The work I do with clients is tailored to where they are now and where they want to get to, however, there are almost always some vocal exercises. These are not about developing a more attractive voice, but a voice that is authentically connected to who you are and what you want to say. We also work so you become reacquainted with the many resonators that are available to you, resonators that are often forgotten about as we make our way into adulthood.

You get to know your voice again. And we work on specific material so we can put the theory into practice.

This depends on where you are now and where you want to get to. I recommend a block of at least six sessions to make any real progress. The work is about consistency, rather than intensity, so best done over an extended period. After this initial block, additional sessions are available either individually or in a block at an established client discount. A series of twelve sessions will see most clients achieve their goal.

I don’t offer tips and tricks. The key to overcoming nerves is shifting your focus from ‘public speaking’ to having a conversation with people, whether the group is thirty or three hundred or a thousand!

As you are sending your energy out, you disarm the ‘arrows of judgement’ that you imagine are coming from your audience!

What you hear is not what others hear and it is very unlikely that you have a ‘bad voice.’ What coaching can do though is help you to have a voice that is brighter and more connected and is characterized by vocal variety – monotony be gone! These variations in pitch, tone, volume, and tempo are not ‘add-ons’, but are the result of knowing how you want to act upon your listeners and the strategies you are using to achieve the result you want.

In most conversations, we are subtly shifting our intentions from moment to moment – and it needs to be no different when talking with a group.

I tell clients – and anyone else who will listen – that I am yet to see someone stop a conversation and say, ‘I'm sorry. I can’t go on. I don’t know what to do with my hands’.

How we hold our body and the gestures we make in our everyday speech are rarely, if ever contrived, but stand us up to ‘make a speech’ and we start to worry about what we are doing with our hands. Again, the answer is to shift away from the idea of being watched to focusing on how we want to act upon our listeners.