Graham Bennett – Presentation Skills, Train the Trainer and Building Business Relationships
Presentation Skills, Train the Trainer and Building Business Relationships
I lead a double life.I love helping people to develop themselves through the work I do at Impact Factory. And, throughout the last 10 or more years, Impact Factory has helped me develop also.
I have been an actor, theatre director, and improviser for over 25 years, and in that world I am professionally known as Graham Christopher. I am at my best working with groups of people where I can toss away the manual in order to create programmes that are just what the delegates want and need where they have a good time, with plenty of fun, and go away ready to put it all into practise.
I am an improviser - by inclination and in practise. I used to improvise for a paying audience, as a performer. Then I ran my own improvisation classes. Now I'm doing it for a paying audience - as a trainer. I am an advocate of "keeping it fresh", keeping oneself on one's toes and the audience awake. Impact Factory has encouraged me to relish and develop this approach in all my work.
I tend to specialise in Presentation Skills & Public Speaking work (particularly to large audiences), Train the Trainer, Customer Service, Leadership, Development, and Building Business Relationships. More recently, I have led a very successful Video Conferencing Programme for Barclays Bank. As well as Barclays, I have led programmes for many of Impact Factorys clients, including American Express, Aviva Investors, BP, Capita, GlaxoSmithKline, Lindt, Merrill Lynch, Tellabs and Westminster City Council. I also deliver Executive Coaching on a one to one basis to a variety of clients.
I was, for nine years, a practitioner with the Globe Education team at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. I led workshops and gave talks for all age groups as well as appearing a few times on the stage. It was after I joined Impact Factory that I had the courage to develop my own inter-active public talk about playing Shakespeare in daylight, which alongside my workshops I have subsequently toured in America as well as across Europe. I directed my own theatre company, Daylight Players, in Romeo & Juliet in Sweden, Denmark, England and Ireland, and as a result was invited to direct Twelfth Night in Swedish for the excellent Gavle Folk Teater in 2006. Both these projects helped me to draw on my Leadership, experience a great deal, both enjoying the rewards of success as well as learning some more of lifes difficult lessons.
I was instrumental in the development of Impact Factory's Train the Trainer and Building Business Relationships Open Courses, and regularly lead them for many enthusiastic participants. I have also tailored these programmes for client organisations to great effect.
I have always been interested in Building Customer Relationships and Client Relationships over the telephone as well as face to face. Therefore I was genuinely pleased to be asked to manage all the training we ran in 2005 for the entire new team of customer response advisors at Huntingdonshire District Council. They have subsequently been awarded one of the Governments Charter Marks for Excellent Customer Service.
This page as you can see - is an introduction to the many faces of Graham. For me, personally, the last 10 years at Impact Factory have been "more than just training..."
Read Graham's Words of Wisdom Articles below
Short rants and other interesting stuff from our very own experts. Read about issues Graham Bennett is always banging on about to our delegates.Chit Chat and the environment (sounds like a good name for a 70's band!)
One of the things I bang on about is that the feeling of new business meetings with existing or potential clients can be strongly influenced by the environment.
Presenting Skills - The Power of Eye Contact
There is an exercise we do which helps to demonstrate the power the listener has in any face to face conversation.
To blag or not to blag
Another thing, I think it best never to "blag" in a professional setting particularly in a presentation, or a meeting because you'll always be found out.
Read Graham's Customer Service Stories
...they acknowledged immediately that I had been forgotten, and in good humour explained why it might have happened... I felt good, cared for, my inconvenience understood and I will go back there again.Read Graham's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Customer Service Stories
Graham Bennett, Senior Consultant
I spent a few years working at the Globe and then directed a couple of Shakespeare plays, and built up a better understanding of Shakespeare.
Consequently, when my old college friend Roger Williams, who is Chairman of his local amateur theatre group, the Attfield Theatre in Oswestry not to mention regular director, star actor, and plenty else besides asked if I would consider leading a weekend workshop with them to prepare for a forthcoming production of "Macbeth", in which he was to play the title role, I was tempted.
The brief given to me by the director of the production was to help them all gain an understanding of using the blank verse, as it's called.
And this is what I attempted to do, throwing every fun and lively game and exercise I had ever used with students and actors over the years.
In a June weekend in 2008, the actors some with experience of Shakespeare, others with none were to be found stamping out iambic pentameters and throwing words across the stage at one another with dynamic energy.
