Speakers Club
The Public Speaking Course in More Detail
This public speaking course is all about equipping you with essential tools and techniques that you can put into action straight away. This class is practical, fun and taught by professional communicators from stage and screen. People who have been there and done it, a thousand times before. Most of all, this course is about building your confidence. Slowly but surely allowing you to overcome your fear of public speaking, so that you are never held back by it again.
The ability to confidently and engagingly speak in public is a huge asset in any career and in anyone’s life. You’ll leave with this invaluable gift and be able to communicate with a group of strangers as easily and naturally as you do with your family and friends.
You’ll leave our courses with a tonne more confidence, new skills, and huge self-awareness of what your strengths are when you speak.
Here is a more detailed breakdown of what you’ll learn on our public speaking courses:
Week 1: How to Overcome Your Nerves
This first public speaking class is all about helping you get a grip of the anxiety that can block your flow. How do we do this? Firstly, by getting you out of your head and into the moment through the power of play. Secondly, by changing your attitude to mistakes so you drop the perfectionism which amplifies your inner critic. And thirdly, by reminding you that you’ve got many of the answers already. We do this by showing you how some simple tweaks to how you frame speaking can immediately unlock your most fluent, confident, and engaging self.
The key-takeaways for week 1 include:
- Treating mistakes not as show-stopping disasters, but as a way we can establish connection and trust with our audience.
- Techniques for preparing and rehearsing for your speech, to ensure you are in the most confident mindset possible.
- How to reduce your self-judgement and re-connect to a flow state.
Week 2: How to Own the Room
This second public speaking class is all about how to gain the trust of the audience. Fundamentally, while our content needs to be credible, if the way we deliver that message when we speak is not congruent with this content it will not land with the audience. So, this workshop is all about the role of body language and voice in presenting.
The key-takeaways for week 2 include:
- A ‘Body Talk’ audit: gaining self-awareness of your non-verbal communication and the impact of these habits on your public speaking impact.
- What confident body language looks like and how you can use it to project authority to an audience.
- How to use your voice to project light and shade, energy and authority, passion and presence in your public speaking. Using the 3Ps: pace, pause, and prosody.
Week 3: How to Make Your Point
In this public speaking class, you’ll explore how to structure your presentations and speeches to make them as clear and impactful as possible. You’ll also learn the importance of signposting to guide your audience effortlessly through your ideas. Plus, we’ll look at the art of the edit: what to cut from your presentation to aid clarity and memorability.
The key-takeaways for week 3 include:
- Get 3 different options for structuring your content. So that you can keep a coherent and easy-to-access narrative running through your presentation.
- The one big mistake everyone makes when they prepare their presentation – and what you can do instead.
- The Impact Audit: how to test your presentation’s clarity and impact before you deliver it, to ensure your key point lands.
Week 4: How to Tell Great Stories
This public speaking class explores the art of storytelling. This is all about hooking and holding an audience’s attention through the power of narrative. And also studying wider storytelling techniques – such as anecdote, metaphor, and imagery – to bring your message to life and make it stick with your audience. As the ancient Greeks taught us: great public speaking is about balancing head with heart, the logical with the emotional, and compelling data with a moving story. In this class you’ll look at how you can make your audience care.
The key-takeaways for week 4 include:
- The simple shape of all well-told stories and the key ingredients they include.
- How to use structure to create narrative tension so the audience wants to know: ‘what happens next?’
- Different techniques to present complex information in an interesting and easy-to-digest way (such as explaining technical content to non-technical audiences.) Including using ’empathy maps,’ ‘weekend language,’ and finding your own emotional connection to your content, so you can access your authentic energy and passion.
Week 5: How to Start and End with a Bang
In this public speaking class, you will experiment with different ways to start and end your speech so that you can capture your audience’s attention from the first word – and have them remember your last one. You’ll also explore different forms of evidence you might include in a presentation to help you build a persuasive case while avoiding death by data.
The key-takeaways for week 5 include:
- Different techniques for ‘hot starts’ and impactful endings so you’re prepared for any sort of audience.
- How to involve your audience in your speech with practical audience interaction techniques.
- Why ‘moments are messages’: creating memorable moments in presentations to have your message stand out.
Week 6: Impromptu Speaking
A huge amount of the speaking we do in our lives is spontaneous and unprepared. Perhaps you’re asked to give a team update in a meeting, or you’re asked a question at the end of a presentation, or someone turns to you at a birthday party and says, ‘Do you think you could say a few words?’ How do you thrive in these scenarios? This public speaking class is all about thinking (and speaking!) on your feet, so you can be articulate under pressure. Including lots of practice in exercises that simulate real life impromptu speaking situations, so you can build your confidence and adaptability.
The key-takeaways for week 6 include:
- Structured spontaneity: useful frameworks to organise your thoughts quickly and deliver impactful in the moment responses.
- Keeping calm in difficult or unexpected situations when you are presenting, including how to handle difficult questions.
- Finding the fun: how to balance the serious and the playful in your public speaking – including bringing more of your personality into speeches and presentations.
Testimonials
Honestly, it has surpassed all my expectations. I’ve done multiple public speaking courses and they’ve all been quite dry and tedious. This is fun, practical, gets your practicing and makes you face your fear and get over it in a supportive environment. Love love love it.
– Tania Steere
Huge thanks for developing this course! I’ve been to a few public speaking courses, and this has been the funnest of them all! The coach was amazing and did such a great job at leading the course and providing valuable feedback. I wouldn’t change a thing!
What would I say to someone thinking of taking the course? Just click the button and sign up – the amount of practice you get in the course is enough to stop listening to the voices in your head that you can’t do this! It’s doable and it’s super fun.
– Yancy Jensen
I learnt more in the 6 sessions of Speakers Club about how to engage an audience, tell a captivating story, and garner authority than I have in 8 years of working in sales. The skills I learnt are so actionable and have already hugely impacted the way I present. Although presenting numerous times a session can sound daunting, it is done in such a fun way and without taking yourself too seriously you quickly realise the value in messing up and trying again in order to perfect it.
– Sophie Radford
I certainly expanded my comfort zone in terms of speaking in front of others. I also feel calmer when being in an uncomfortable “speaking” situation which in turn makes me feel and appear more confident. Great course!
– Jonathan Kleingarn
Thank you so much for this course. I thoroughly enjoyed each lesson and have learnt a lot.
Jodie is a wonderful teacher and encouraged each of us to step out of our comfort zone and reach our potential. I have attended similar courses in the past, but nothing compares to these lessons!
– Rayshum Notay
Every Monday evening, I was doing something I really disliked – speaking in front of a big group of people – but our facilitator made it so fun. I’ve taken away so many tips and theories. And above all, the regular practice has shown me I can speak well in front of other people. The coach nurtured an open and supportive atmosphere, so we all felt comfortable learning and being silly.
I highly recommend this course, (I already have to many people!), you’ll come away from it feeling so much more confident and it is excellent value for money.
– Talia Levitt
Meet the Coaches
Octavia Gilmore
Octavia Phoebe Gilmore is a public speaking coach and team trainer. She equips speakers to authentically connect with an audience, enabling them to inspire action through engaging and effective communication.
In her coaching, Octavia draws on her experience in acting, writing and improvisation. After reading philosophy at university, Octavia trained in acting at ArtsEd. As an actor and improviser, she has toured nationally and internationally. She has also worked in film, both on and off screen. Her writing includes a sellout play and sketches featured by the British Comedy Guide.
She is passionate about empowering speakers to find their unique voice, refine their message and share their big ideas.
Max Dickins
Max Dickins is a published playwright, actor, presenter, comedian and author of the best-selling book Billy No Mates. On the page, Max’s writing has been featured in the Observer, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, and GQ. On the stage, Max’s critically acclaimed play Man on the Moor has toured nationally. On the airwaves, his radio show on Absolute Radio was nominated for a Sony Award. While on screen, Dickins has appeared numerous times on BBC One’s Michael McIntyre’s Big Show.
In his other life, Max is also director of Hoopla, the UK’s first dedicated improvised comedy theatre and school. In these unprecedented times, he believes that improvisation is THE key skill that all of us need both at work and in our personal lives. He spreads the gospel in interactive workshops and keynote presentations with amazing clients like Google, Facebook and Accenture across 4 continents, with The Financial Times dubbing his work ‘transformative.’ His book Improvise! will show you how to use the secrets of improv to achieve extraordinary results at work.
Phil Yarrow
Phil is a performer, puppeteer, presenter and improviser. Phil has toured nationally and internationally, and has a passion for developing projects for younger audiences. He was part of the devising and performance team for the Olivier nominated ‘Room On The Broom’, and has worked at The Polka Theatre, Wimbledon for ten years.
Aside from performance, Phil has carved out a career as an educator and a career coach. He thrives on unlocking potential and has coached thousands of students through application processes for companies such as EY, Ofcom, Ford and Pernod Ricard.
Phil has worked as a presenter, and facilitator, for such companies as Eon, Jaguar Land Rover and The GLA. Phil is a regular presenter for events with Bright Network, and was the original host for the ‘Internship Experience UK’ programme, which live streamed to 80k students around the world during the first lockdown.
Lauren Silver
Lauren is a clown, actor and theatre-maker. Her work has played national & international venues including London’s Vaudeville Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Leicester Square Theatre, Theatre by the Lake & the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. Lauren uses her training and experience to specialise in cultivating confidence in others. Through her career, she’s uncovered a convertible toolkit of expertise in purposeful play of which she now brings to facilitating corporate teams and leaders, including BBH Zag, Saatchi & Saatchi, ITV, Wizz Air and Accenture.
She enjoys working with companies and communities to develop creative, productive and supportive teams with a focus on the importance of improving and maintaining their collective mental health and wellbeing.
Speakers Club for Business
We offer private, customized, internal public speaking courses and classes for teams looking to build their skills and confidence. With flexible dates and times, we’ll work with you to create a bespoke presentation skills class that works for your employees and builds a storytelling culture in your business.
Email us at [email protected] to learn more.
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