“After our two meetings
together I felt confident and relaxed in the days before
the presentation and I was not at all nervous in front
of the audience. In fact it was fun. I really enjoyed
it.”
Ruven Liebhaber:
Architect,
Project Development Advisor and
Motivational Speaker! (full
testimonial) |
Develop a compelling authentic leadership presence through
public speaking coaching
Our confidential, one-on-one coaching — which can
be done either by phone or in person — of individuals
in any leadership capacity focuses on their unique needs as
influential people and their desire to build a strong authentic
leadership presence.
Some people are looking for a place to talk more privately
about the anxiety they feel speaking in public and want to
develop a personalized strategy
for being more relaxed and confident in a variety of public
settings. Others want to organize, polish and/or practice
for a specific presentation.
Still others have a vision
of what they want to speak about and need a place to articulate
their goals, organize their thinking and develop a strategy
for accomplishing what they envision.
In every case, our clients are seeking to develop their own
unique and authentic presence as influential leaders within
their organization and industry.
Our work with individuals helps them develop personalized
and fully integrated leadership skills that they can draw
on for key presentations, meetings or any important communication
event. They gain the confidence and leadership presence necessary
to deal with challenging presentation and communication situations.
These can be encountered in typical leadership initiatives
such as:
- Managing major organizational restructuring
- Seeding an idea, proposal, or product
- Building organizational consensus
- Generating venture capital
- Inspiring commitment to a change process
- Seeking creative solutions to complex organizational challenges
- Conveying important new concepts
Personalized
speaking strategies
Carla brings a unique blend of stress
management expertise and public speaking experience to her
private coaching. The ultimate goal of her work with clients
is to develop, practice, and implement a set of personal public
speaking tools.
Coaching sessions can include helping
clients understand of the mechanisms of stress and
to help them begin to recognize this response in public speaking
situations.
Together we identify specific stress
management tools that can be implemented on a daily basis.
Preparation
for specific presentations
Often the hardest part of a presentation
is the anxiety that arises during the time prior to the event.
For some people, once they are launched into the presentation
the anxiety eases and they are able to relax into the experience.
For other people, the entire process is painful, from the
moment they learn about the presentation until the event is
over. In preparing for a presentation, many people have found
that private coaching sessions with Carla have helped them:
- Considerably reduce their pre-presentation
anxiety
- Develop an organizing metaphor that
can serve as a roadmap for their talk
- Develop powerful and effective openings
to their talks
- Design strategies for engaging the
audience
- Organize the content of their presentations
- Develop compelling materials, such
as slide shows and handouts, that support but don't overwhelm
the presentation
- Repeatedly practice the delivery
of their presentation while being coached and videotaped.
Long-term public
speaking goals
Some people are yearning to share their knowledge and vision
with others, but because they are so close to the material
don't know how to organize their thinking so that audiences
can "get it". It often helps to have a sounding
board — someone who can listen to your ideas, identify
themes and help you organize your thinking so that your audiences
will feel moved, inspired and motivated.
Carla's broad background in business, technology, the arts,
and the healing professions as well as her ability to grasp
complex ideas, provide an invaluable backdrop for you to articulate
and organize your thinking.
Often, people with a vision also need a strategy for how
to take their material out in the world. Carla can help you
identify venues and strategize an effective plan for for presenting
your materials.
Who has benefited from our coaching services?
People often ask what kinds of clients do we serve. We have
found that our client base consists of anyone who wants to
be more effective as a leader, and this is not limited to
any particular field. Here is a sampling of the types of clients
that we've worked with:
Coaching format
Our coaching program is entirely customizable to meet the
specific needs of the individual and organization. During
our first meetings we will discuss your concerns and goals.
We will then design a program to meet your exact needs.
While most coaching sessions occur in-person either at your
office or Carla's office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Carla
can also coach by phone if it is not geographically possible
to meet in person.
Please call (617-232-3644) or email
us to talk about your specific needs or for more
information about this program.
Testimonials
Here's what some of our clients says about their coaching
experiences:
Ruven
Liebhaber
Architect,
Project Development Advisor
Motivational Speaker!
I have a desire to be able
to convey my thoughts to an audience in a way that can
touch them. I have struggled with this for a several
years. Having entered a new field of work and written
a manual, I knew that being able to both write and speak
well was important.
I recently had an important
opportunity to speak to a national audience. It was
essential to me to go into that experience making a
impression and to feel confident and connected. Having
attended several Speaking Circles with Carla and seeing
how she worked, I decided to seek coaching from her
on an individual basis.
Carla creates a very safe
space. Her openness and encouragement allowed me to
feel comfortable during our time together and to carry
that experience into my presentation. By learning to
feel confident and relaxed in our meetings and visualizing
myself being successful, I then had an experiential
memory to draw on when standing in front of the audience.
Carla was able to help me identify and embrace all my
internal and external resources. She encouraged me to
work with my own personal images of success and to develop
a strategy for staying centered and balanced throughout
the presentation. While our work together had an immediate
impact on the presentation at hand, my work with Carla
ended up being not just about giving this specific talk.
It was also about personal growth.
After our two meetings together
I felt confident and relaxed in the days before the
presentation and I was not at all nervous in front of
the audience. In fact it was fun. I really enjoyed it.
I found the place where I was comfortable being me and
not trying to be someone I wasn’t. I found my
element and didn’t just stand there, but was able
to move around, bring in some humor and use a variety
of props.
Since that presentation, I’ve
had a couple of opportunities to speak to groups as
large as 200 people. I found I felt a very close connection
with what I was saying and who I was talking to. I spoke
without notes, speaking from both my head and my heart,
and felt much more spontaneous.
Perhaps one of the most important
lessons from my work with Carla is that I learned that
there isn’t one perfect way to say what I have
to say – there’s a whole universe of possibilities
and that whatever I say in the moment will be just right
for that audience and that context.
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Charles
Knight
co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives at
the Commonwealth
Institute in Cambridge, MA, and father of three
and grandfather of two:
I’ve participated in
Speaking Circles on and off for about a year and just
completed [a] small group coaching program. In both
of these programs, I have always been impressed that
what I think I’m about to learn is not what I
end up learning. People used to tell me that I was a
good speaker but I knew I would be much better if I
didn’t simply read from the written text that
I had prepared in advance. When I began Speaking Circles,
my goal was to learn to get used to speaking using just
notes rather than reading a fully written text. I had
no idea that I would not only become comfortable speaking
without my text, but that I would also find myself confidently
speaking without any plan at all!
After participating in Speaking
Circles for a few weeks, I realized that I didn’t
have to rehearse what I was going to say; that I would
learn more of what I needed to learn if I threw away
all my ideas about what to talk about. Eventually, I
found myself daring to do just that. With practice I
gained confidence that there are things that I can do
when speaking that really work. I’ve been able
to practice them in the real world where I’ve
gotten great feedback from the people in the audiences.
I can actually do that! It feels important that I now
feel so good about it. I found that I didn’t just
wait for the others' turns to be over so that I could
have my turn. I was seeing people really working with
the issues that were holding them back. They inspired
me to take more risks. We were all dealing with different
things. But seeing others getting over their hurdles
inspired me to do the same.
In [our group coaching] program
I gained confidence that I had all the information I
needed and that it was, after all, easily accessible
without elaborate preparation. I could work without
even having notes and still have something valuable
to say. Going into this experience I would have said,
“No way. I can't do that.”
This experience took me further
than I had imagined was possible. And, contrary to what
I expected, the steps weren’t linear. The route
there was often totally unexpected. In the past I’d
been pretty good at avoiding public speaking situations.
I would compare myself with the really good speakers
and say to myself, “Unless you’re that good,
don’t even bother.” Now I’m enjoying
myself and I'm letting go of my self-judgments. I’m
hooked! I can now put my skill level in a much better
perspective and that makes speaking exciting and rewarding
rather than something to avoid.
A final, but very important
note: This experience has been really meaningful to
me well beyond public speaking. In the past I had a
few experiences with eye contact that felt far too intimate.
I saw so much in a person’s face that it felt
overwhelming. For many years really looking at someone
was such a powerful experience that I shied away from
it. The Speaking Circle practice allowed me to be more
comfortable with eye contact and be more comfortable
with its power. When I choose to, I can now make meaningful
connections even in the most inconsequential encounters.
I also can choose when it’s appropriate to do
so and what level of connection feels right in the moment.
This feels like a very significant change for me and
its possibilities permeate throughout my life.
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"Carla
developed a dynamic and riveting slide show
for me and coached me in the delivery of a
powerful, meaningful, and extremely well received
presentation at the International Symposium
on Health Care Design."Susan
Frey, PhD, ND, RN, Founder
Avalon
Health Associates |
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