Are you tired of letting your fear of making mistakes control your experience of public speaking?
Are you more concerned with losing your place or flubbing your words than you are with serving the audience and creating a great experience?
Do you crave a sense of freedom and ease when you stand in front of the room, a feeling of anticipation and positive energy, and the ability to let go of having to impress your audience?
Are you ready to let go of the need to be flawless and to embrace being real?
"Thanks so much for a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed getting to know you, the other participants and, of course, the wonderful stories and great insights from your book.
What I'm very grateful for and excited about is including more stories and applying presentation ideas (like using props, having fun) into my capstone project and speaking engagements. Thank you for that."
MaryAnn D'Ambrosio, Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer Leap Without Limits
This four-week book-club-slash-coaching-program includes:
📕 A signed hard copy of Presenting for Humans: Insights for Speakers on Ditching Perfection and Creating Connection
📕 Four live coaching calls via Zoom focused on action-taking and implementation of the main principles in the book
📕 A resource vault of worksheets and handouts to help you integrate the ideas we’re discussing
📕 Recordings of all the calls
📕 A private Facebook group for discussion, support, encouragement and resources
These are the core themes that I teach and coach on, and the public speaking concepts that I find to be most critical to a speaker’s success.
Here's what we'll discuss:
Preparation: How is lack of proper preparation harming your relationship with the audience? Do you have an understanding of what proper preparation entails? Perhaps you'll pick up some new tips here!
Confidence: Confidence is both mental and physical. It’s both internal and external. It’s the positive way you perceive yourself, and it’s the way your body projects that positive self-image. How can you build your confidence, or at least demonstrate it until you grow it?
Fun: Are your presentations fun for your audience? Are they fun for you? If not, why not? And why is is fun an important element to presentations?
Connection: Connection takes conscious effort and awareness. Connection doesn’t magically happen in a vacuum. It requires a few elements to be present: Trust, respect, listening, humility, authenticity, flexibility, a willingness to be real, and a willingness to be outside of your comfort zone. Are you ready and willing to connect?
Service: Your #1 concern for every presentation should be to bring value to your audience, to serve them and provide them with relevant, practical and useful information that they can use right away. Unfortunately, many speakers make it all about themselves. Let's make it right for our audiences.
Experience: The days of standing in front of an audience and lecturing for hours are gone. Our audiences want to be taken on a journey and, in fact, they will retain your message much better if you create an emotional experience for them. How can you activate your audience's emotions and create an experience? Let's talk about it!
Standing Out: You can blend in with every other speaker at your conference or at your meeting, or you can stand out, be memorable, and make an impact. Your choice.
Mindset: The crux of every speaker's insecurities is our mindset. If your mind is powerful enough to create fear out of nothing (and it is, right?), then why can't our minds also see endless opportunity? We'll go there.
Who am I?
Image: Kelsey Crews Photo
Hi! I'm Lisa Braithwaite, Public Speaking Coach, Corporate Trainer and Author. I've been speaking, teaching, training and facilitating for 25 years now, and I've had my speaking, coaching and training business since 2005.
When I first started out as a speaker, I worked for a domestic violence organization, and my audience was teenagers. I was terrified. I was intimidated. I couldn't imagine making any kind of an impact, or even connecting with them at all. I don't even remember my first experience talking to a classroom full of teenagers; I must have blocked it out.
However, I kept going. (Well, I had to. It was my job.) I kept showing up. I kept tweaking my presentation to make it better. I learned from these high school students how to meet them where they were, how to engage them, how to understand their needs as an audience. I did it for six years, and I learned more about effective public speaking with these groups of young people than I ever had on the speech team in high school!
I learned how to:
listen to my audiences' needs and use the information to improve the presentation
address challenges and hostile audience members
make presentations interactive
build trust
answer uncomfortable questions - comfortably
use humor to defuse difficult situations (teachers often "checked out" while I was presenting
show respect by asking for input and feedback
project my voice over whispering teenagers and get their attention
adjust to different venues and spaces (ask me about the time I spoke in a cafeteria with a 104-degree fever)
give a great presentation when I wasn't feeling 100%, and
be myself, because you can't fake out teenagers - they won't stand for it!
I still teach the core principles I learned speaking to teenagers, because they work!
"I can’t let the opportunity to say 'WOW' and 'Thank you!!!' slip by.
I think I will tack up the quote 'If our mind is powerful enough to create fear from nothing, it’s also powerful enough to reframe our thoughts to propel us forward in a positive way.'
I am a huge believer in the effectiveness of affirmations. I know from personal experience they work. So OF COURSE, why not apply them to overcome fear?
I have a sticky on my desk at home that says, 'I’m an excellent writer, I’m intelligent, I get things done!' Think I’ll add 'I love to speak to large audiences' to that list.
Finally, thank you for the book club. I have thoroughly enjoyed the book, the interaction, and the self-examination."
Brenda Elrich
Each week, you'll read assigned chapters, do your own personal exploration and reflection, and return to the group for follow-up, discussion, and laser coaching on the concepts you've learned.
The tools you gain from this program will help guide you to finding your own objectives for speaking, your own intentions for your audiences, and your own desired results for the personal and professional development goals that you can achieve through speaking.
(And, if it's completely necessary to mention COVID-19 in every promotion, you might actually have some time for this right now, a combo book club/coaching program/virtual social hour!)
When is it?
The interactive author-led virtual sessions will span four Thursdays in April and May.
Live calls will be on the following dates. All calls are at 11:00 PDT/2:00 EDT and will be recorded.
Thursday, April 16
Thursday, April 23
Thursday, April 30
Thursday, May 7
If private coaching isn’t an option for you right now, the PFH Success Circle is a great option for public speaking support with personal attention in a small group format.
Sure, you can purchase the book on your own and maybe even read it! 😉😜
But the PFH Success Circle offers an enhanced experience to supercharge your learning and implementation! With laser coaching from the author, group discussion, inquiry and encouragement, and worksheets and handouts to supplement your own perspective, you’ll get so much more out of the book than you ever could on your own.
Join live for the best book club experience, but all calls will be recorded.
Join now for just $47! (Reduced from my regular price of $97)
