This time it was a course in ‘voice confidence’ run by the extremely talented Alix Longman and it was very good indeed.
I underwent voice coaching several years ago as part of my interpreting training and thoroughly enjoyed it, but today’s course was quite different. Both were excellent in different ways.
The training for interpreters was quite holistic – our coach, Ailsa Gudgeon (her bio is on the left margin), taught us each week for several months and was able to impart on us a range of skills including relaxation and pronunciation techniques as well as things like projection, which I guess you’d expect. Ailsa is fabulous and hilariously entertaining company – I’ve met up with her at parties a few times in the years since the course, but not nearly often enough!
Today’s course was much more focused – not surprising as it was only four hours long. Alix (who is also wonderfully entertaining) paid a lot of attention to breathing and (not unrelated as it turns out) authenticity. Apparently, it's all about the 'poo muscles' so there you have it!
I signed up at the last minute because, although I know I used to have a pleasant, authoritative-sounding voice (largely thanks to Ailsa), I recently became conscious that I’d lost it. Worse, in a few meetings over the past year or so, it dawned on me that I was sounding hesitant and unconfident when the reality was that I knew my stuff and should have impressed my audience. I’m not being too navel-gazey here, because I recently pushed my boss into a corner and asked him about my performance in a meeting where I felt I’d not done too well. He confirmed that I seemed to “lack confidence” when he knew that I should have sounded like an expert.*
Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and obviously I have yet to put Alix’ teachings into practice in a real situation, but I can say that right now I feel a lot more confident about speaking in public.
One of Alix’ devices is to have her students speak (or sing) in ‘the old way’ and compare it to ‘the new way’ ie to compare the results of the course with how one spoke (or sang) beforehand. The difference was tangible – there were three singers on today’s course and each of them sounded richer and more powerful when they applied Alix’ lessons. The ‘speakers’ among us sounded more genuine and immeasurably more compelling to the listener. Personally, when I tried speaking in ‘the old way’ I could hear myself as I was in a recent meeting – not nice… not nice at all.
As I said, the proof of the pudding, etc. but I have a hunch that my performances in meetings will be massively improved thanks to Alix’ seminar. If you want to know more, don't ask me, sign up to one of her courses; it's worth every penny!
*Let this be a lesson to all the wonderfully empathetic PR chaps that I know: my skin is pretty tough AND I’m generally prepared to do something to fix my problems. So don’t be overly polite towards me when I need to sort something out… TELL ME!!!
Many thanks to Steve Wilson, an Aussie mate who lives in Winchester, but who parties all over the place (what do you mean we’re too old?). He sent me a link to a Mozilla add-in that’s transformed how I keep up with the goings on in the football world cup (that’s soccer, in case you’re wondering).
It’s great; I’ve got a sidebar to the left of my screen that gives me the scores for all matches that took/will take place yesterday, today and over the next two days. When a match is on, I get a little pop-up when anything significant happens, i.e. goals and yellow/red cards (is it just me, or are the referees giving yellow cards out all over the place?).
Better still, it comes with a bunch of mini-clips with players like Ronaldinho and Rooney showing some of their fancier footwork.
Right now, the sidebar is telling me that I’ve got less than 30 minutes to wait before Australia take on the mighty Brazil. I’ll be watching that one in a local pub: after the Wallabies stuffed the English rugby team again yesterday, I’ll take revenge where I can get it!