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FAQs:
What is a Speaking Coach?
Speaking coaches assist their clients in achieving their personal and professional goals by helping them improve their public speaking skills. In businesses, having a speaking coach can improve your presentation abilities, learn how to overcome fear, and attain better focus.
What Does a Public Speaking Coach Do?
As a public speaking coach, you provide each client with the training they need to speak in front of groups of any size. Your duties and responsibilities include helping your client adjust their delivery style, improve their vocal skills, and determine the best type of communication for each venue. Public speaking coaches usually work one-on-one or with small groups for the duration of a contract, but some larger companies may employ full-time public speaking coaches to help train sales and marketing staff. You must have excellent presenting skills yourself, and the qualifications for each role may vary by client.
How Long Does it Take to Prepare for Public Speaking?
A general rule of thumb is that you should practice for at least 30 hours. So, if you’ve written a 60-minute keynote speech you should aim to practice it at least 30 times. You should practice a 30-minute presentation at least 60 times, giving yourself 30 total hours of practice. It’s not a magic number, though—how well you practice matters a lot more than the number of times you do it. Longer presentations, of course, take more time to perfect than short ones. If you can, try to practice your speech 2 to 3 times per day over the course of a few weeks. Spreading out your practice sessions (rather than trying to cram it all in over one weekend) helps to embed your presentation into memory more effectively and efficiently.
Why Hire a Speaking Coach?
Confidence is contagious. Most people are terrified of public speaking. Perhaps one of the most important benefits of coaching is that your self-confidence will improve and will continue to improve. Speaking and communication are something we all do every day, at work and at play. As you work with your speaker coach and develop your communication skills, you will begin to feel excited about speaking opportunities that become available to you. And people will see it in you too. That confidence is contagious.
How Much Do Public Speaking Coaches Charge?
Undoubtedly, hiring a public speaking coach is expensive. On average, a public speaking coach will charge you anywhere between 200$ to 600$ per hour. Of course, the cost may vary depending on your learning requirements, the coach’s level of experience, and market forces of demand and supply.
Types of People Who Hire a Public Speaking Coach
1. Students and Working Professionals
School and college students are the ones who find public speaking coaching extremely handy. These institutions have events spanned all over the year and most of these events require students to ace their public speaking skills. Learning this skill gives you an edge over others in your professional career and helps you to climb up that ladder of success in your work life.
2. Media Professionals
People who are associated with the media industry cannot afford to lose out on this skill. If you are creative with your ideation and creation process but cannot put those thoughts forward on the table, all of your work goes in vain.
So, a creative field like the media industry requires people to work on this skill so that they can become an asset. Being an introvert won’t necessarily be your best bet!
3. Job Aspirants
If you are looking forward to applying for an internship or job, this skill is extremely crucial. Imagine you have great ideas to convey in a work meeting but you are too anxious to speak and then, the other person speaks out the very same idea you had and gets praised. You will feel bad, won’t you?
4. People Launching Start-ups
Say, you started a start-up and wish to get investors on board. You will need to be persuasive enough to win those hearts. Here’s exactly where a personalized coach will come to your rescue by helping you to master the art of persuasive speaking. As a bonus tip for all the start-up founders out there, we’ve written an article on how you can pitch perfectly to your investors.
5 Benefits Of Having A Speaking Coach
1. Improve Effective Communication. The ability to communicate effectively and help your audience understand your viewpoint clearly is vital to a successful career. Regardless of what challenges you have, a speaking coach can help you overcome them and make sure your content and delivery are flawless and effective.
2. Overcome Fear. Public speaking sparks fear in a large number of people and that fear can dramatically affect your delivery and therefore, the response from your audience. A speaking coach can help provide you with tools to overcome fear and lessen anxiety. Most importantly they will assist you in turning your fear into energy. No one wants to listen to a speech that is boring and dull.
3. Continual Reinforcement. Improving your ability is truly a process and having a coach to provide you with information and reinforcement is invaluable. Your coach has your back and their success is dependent on your success and solely has your best interest at heart. Assisting you as you continually practice to become an amazing and powerful speaker.
4. Increases Your Confidence Level. Speaking and communicating with others is something we all do every day, yet a large majority of people are terrified of public speaking. Perhaps one of the most important benefits of having a speech coach is that your self-confidence will improve dramatically. As you work with your speech coach and develop your communication skills, you will find that you can become excited about speaking opportunities that become available to you. When your audience experiences your confidence it will become contagious.
5. Increase Your Professional Success. Whether we like it or not, your inability to speak publicly and provide a compelling presentation may hinder you from your climb up the corporate ladder. Learning to speak professionally with great confidence can have the power to open numerous doors for you. By aiding with the help of a coach you can overcome fear, increase your confidence and learn to deliver presentations that can boost your career one speech at a time.
10 Tips for Improving Your Public Speaking Skills
Here are 10 tips for improving public speaking skills.
1. Nervousness Is Normal. Practice and Prepare!
All people feel some physiological reactions like pounding hearts and trembling hands. Do not associate these feelings with the sense that you will perform poorly or make a fool of yourself. Some nerves are good. The adrenaline rush that makes you sweat also makes you more alert and ready to give your best performance. The best way to overcome anxiety is to prepare, prepare, and prepare some more. Take the time to go over your notes several times. Once you have become comfortable with the material, practice—a lot. Videotape yourself, or get a friend to critique your performance.
2. Know Your Audience. Your Speech Is About Them, Not You.
Before you begin to craft your message, consider who the message is intended for. Learn as much about your listeners as you can. This will help you determine your choice of words, level of information, organization pattern, and motivational statement.
3. Organize Your Material in the Most Effective Manner to Attain Your Purpose.
Create the framework for your speech. Write down the topic, general purpose, specific purpose, central idea, and main points. Make sure to grab the audience’s attention in the first 30 seconds.
4. Watch for Feedback and Adapt to It.
Keep the focus on the audience. Gauge their reactions, adjust your message, and stay flexible. Delivering a canned speech will guarantee that you lose the attention of or confuse even the most devoted listeners.
5. Let Your Personality Come Through.
Be yourself, and don’t become a talking head—in any type of communication. You will establish better credibility if your personality shines through, and your audience will trust what you have to say if they can see you as a real person.
6. Use Humor, Tell Stories, and Use Effective Language.
Inject a funny anecdote in your presentation, and you will certainly grab your audience’s attention. Audiences generally like a personal touch in a speech. A story can provide that.
7. Don’t Read Unless You Have to. Work from an Outline.
Reading from a script or slide fractures the interpersonal connection. By maintaining eye contact with the audience, you keep the focus on yourself and your message. A brief outline can serve to jog your memory and keep you on task.
8. Use Your Voice and Hands Effectively. Omit Nervous Gestures.
Nonverbal communication carries most of the message. Good delivery does not call attention to itself but instead conveys the speaker’s ideas clearly and without distraction.
9. Grab Attention at the Beginning, and Close with a Dynamic End.
Do you enjoy hearing a speech start with “Today I’m going to talk to you about X”? Most people don’t. Instead, use a startling statistic, an interesting anecdote, or a concise quotation. Conclude your speech with a summary and a strong statement that your audience is sure to remember.
10. Use Audiovisual Aids Wisely.
Too many can break the direct connection to the audience, so use them sparingly. They should enhance or clarify your content, or capture and maintain your audience’s attention.
What to Expect from a Speaking Coach Training Session
Realistic expectations undoubtedly make the training sessions better. Besides, it’s always good to know what you should expect from a session before you actually invest your precious time and money in it. So, here’s an insight into a training session with a public speaking coach.
1. Personalized Learning
Each one of us is different! So, keeping this in view, your public speaking coach would begin with an interactive session to assess your personality. There’s nothing to be afraid of, the aim of this session is to get to know you better. Based on this interactive session, your coach will assess your strengths, weaknesses, and requirements. After this, a personalized curriculum will be designed for you to cater to those specific requirements.
2. Undivided Attention
When it comes to a personalized session with your public speaking coach, you have that undivided attention. It’s just you and the coach! This undivided attention pushes us to pay more attention and put in more effort as we are constantly under a watch. Even if you make a mistake, the instant feedback from your mentor will correct you then and there.
3. Exercises to Help You Become A Persuasive Speaker
The training sessions won’t be boring, mark our words! The coach will curate fun games and exercises for you to perfect your pitch, posture, voice modulation, eye contact, and much more.
Since each one of us has a different lifestyle, these exercises will be designed keeping in view your routine and personality. Here, you can expect to see a few positive communication improvements in your lifestyle, just because of these exercises.
4. Building Emotional Connect with the Audience
You can go through all the literature reviews available in this world to brush up on your content but only a mentor can guide you towards bringing out the emotional aspect of your speech. Appeal to the sentiments of the audience if you wish to persuade them, so they say and we couldn’t agree more. Having had a fair share of experience in public speaking, your public speaking coach will share his learnings and experiences to help you understand what works and what does not.
5. Enhanced Practice Sessions
Now, the basic aim here is to identify the flaws and improve the speech delivery so that you sound more confident. While most of us follow the age-old hack of practicing our speeches in front of a mirror, others find it better to record themselves. However, what’s the point if we can’t identify our own flaws? An experienced coach would draw from his stage experiences and help you work on your speech from a professional standpoint.
6. Value in Experience
Anyone can teach you the basics of writing a speech draft but the real value lies in how confidently you carry yourself while delivering a speech on stage. We all have had our fair share of embarrassing experiences when it comes to public speaking but there’s always something to learn from those experiences and a mentor will guide you towards drawing essential takeaways from both your not-so-good and good stage performances.
7. The Theatrics
Thus, public speaking is not just about writing the best content but also about how effectively you can deliver that particular content. When you bear this in mind, one needs to focus on body language, pacing techniques, pitch, voice modulation, facial expressions and so much more. Your mentor will train you on this according to your personality. Essentially, you will learn how to play to your strengths!
8. Flexible Learning Structure
Learn at your pace, ask doubts, and address your concerns! Public speaking coaches are quite flexible in the teaching structure they follow. Feel free to interact and mold the sessions according to your learning pace because, at the end of the day, all that matters is your progress. Ask doubts no matter how silly it sounds in your head. Don’t let any barrier in communication hinder your learning experience. Make note of this!
Tips on How to Get the Most Out of a Speaking Coach
Here are a few tips for you to get the most out of your sessions.
1. Take out a pen and paper, and start making notes! Don’t shy away!
2. Open up! Speak out your concerns, experiences, and fears only then the coach can help you out in the truest sense
3. Set short-term and long-term goals to track your progress and discuss the same with your coach
4. Learn to say yes and grab most of the public speaking opportunities your coach and peers have to offer you
5. Practice your speech delivery in front of your coach to seek his constructive feedback and points for improvement
6. Read, read, and read! Only then, you will be able to improve your vocabulary, ace grammar, and effective communication skills
7. Take inspiration from the famous TEDTalks and great speeches by drawing public speaking lessons from the same
8. After every stage performance, share your experience with your coach to derive essential learnings
How to Find the Right Speaking Coach For You
Here are 11 factors to consider when selecting the best coach for you:
1. Public speaking and presenting challenges everyone on multiple levels
Some coaches are intellectual; some psychological; others focus on the physical; and some are highly imaginative. Ask questions to figure out who they are, how they work, and what will work for you.
2. Do they have expertise in your specific area of need?
For instance, you may need to improve the expressive power of your speaking voice. Do they have professional experience as a voice instructor?
3. Ask them if they’d be willing to sell by doing, instead of by telling?
In other words, would they be willing to set up the sales call as a coaching session, so you could take their coaching skills for a test drive?
4. Is industry knowledge one of the criteria you will use to assess them?
Or will you be satisfied with a coach who simply addresses style issues?
5. Find out if any of them have a developmental process that they use in a flexible manner to assist you
You don’t want a coach to walk you from “A to B” when you’re already up and running from “L to M to O.”
6. Do they know how to listen?
Coaching is more about listening and observing than talking.
7. Is your executive coach capable of giving negative feedback in a positive way?
Using harsh words to characterize less-than-optimal performance can derail your trust in them and their effectiveness with you.
8. Can the speech coach be flexible in terms of the format of the engagement?
Or are they dogmatic in their insistence that the job can only be done one way?
9. Find out if they have a background or education in rhetoric, which is the DNA of public speaking and presenting
Rhetoric is essentially the art and science of influencing others through the effective use of language. Delivery is important, but only as a support to highly effective messaging.
10. Some speech coaches work for larger firms
They are given a fixed program to deliver and have limited ability to improvise or meet your distinct needs. Find out if your speech coach is reading from the script, or ready for prime time.
11. Are they strong enough to push you through your resistance to change?
Or will they back off, fearing they will be out of a job if they push too hard?
Sources:
The content herein is provided for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Medical information changes constantly, and therefore the content on this website should not be assumed to be current, complete or exhaustive. Always seek the advice of your doctor before starting or changing treatment. If you think you may have a medical emergency, please call your doctor or 9-1-1 (in the United States) immediately.
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