Julie Wales – Presentation Skills Training Coach

Presentation Skills Training Coach

Okay, I'll try and substantiate that claim.

1. Our focus is always upon what is do-able for each person in their future presentations. Do-able even when the stakes feel ridiculously high. Do-able without a lobotomy. Do-able. So that may sound quite lame. It may seem to imply that we don't ask people to stretch and flex to present to their optimum capacity. We do. We just do it differently.

2. Our participants get to reflect on their natural style and to develop their existing strengths – how they work already and what comes easily to them. From here it's a hop and a skip to how can they then exploit those skills, turn them up or down as necessary to persuade, impress or inspire their audiences. Because we work on positives, hand on heart, 90% of the time our participants leave our workshops looking forward to their next presentations, the other 10% feeling far less anxious. 100% of our participants leave feeling more confident that they have a whole range of future choices.

3. Like the best presentations, our practical workshops are fine-tuned to those in attendance on the day. So whatever is going on in their heads about presenting, including those nightmare scenarios or characters they find challenging or those dry topics that seem impossible to truly bring to life – whatever they present before us, that becomes our practical agenda. And why do I presume to say that people tell us what is really going on for them? Because we make it easy for them to do so. We don't preach, nor offer prescribed generic lists of things to do better - rather we offer grown-ups more choices.

4. People laugh on our training courses. For the right reasons and not at anyone else's expense. Usually our participants laugh because they get to recognise the games people play and the ways we can be unconsciously complicit, playing our own in our presentations. So why is laughter a good thing – especially when serious money has been paid to achieve some tangible returns for a day away from work? Changing ingrained and safe behaviours is hard – why would you even practise new behaviours if you felt foolish and vulnerable to do so? Light-hearted training atmospheres mean people tend to be more relaxed and more open to trying out some new ideas.

5. We don't just 'talk the talk', because everyone gets to talk. Instead, our aim is to 'walk the walk' of best practice presenting. As Impact Factory trainers we enjoy working creatively, thinking on our feet, adapting to the dynamic of each different training day. How do we smell if someone is going through the motions or trying to engage us? The mirror is held up to us all here, trainers and potential presentation skill 'trainees' how do we already speak with passion about the messages we present?

Anyone who signs up to our Presentation Skills courses can expect an authentic training experience with real human beings who are passionate about what they do - but then of course, I would say that.

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