How to Keep Both Feet on the Ground and Out of Your Mouth
In today’s fast-paced professional world, the bottom line is that anyone wanting to move up in his or her organization must be able to stand up in front of a group and speak with credibility and impact. These are the people who will get ahead the quickest. And they know that if they need skill development to get where they want to go, they need to get it FAST!
Communication Excellence Institute has developed a revolutionary method for helping busy executives speak better faster. Group Video Coaching: How to Keep Both Feet on the Ground and Out of Your Mouth™ offers your organization or conference an exciting short-term way to convey presentation concepts and techniques to larger groups while still affording participants the opportunity for instant individual feedback on their presentation styles.
Group Video Coaching is an informative and entertaining event consisting of up to three activities that can be combined to customize the training experience to the unique needs of your organization.
- A session on presentation skills to your entire group, led by Drs. Janet and Neal Larsen Palmer, specialists in presentation style and techniques as well as nonverbal communication.
- Coaching of volunteers before your full group, and/or
- Individual private coaching sessions in a separate room.
We conduct this program most often in two formats:
Format #1: Plenary session followed by volunteer coaching. First, the Palmers share with the whole group their distilled experiences, ideas, and tips for speaking in public, especially from the world of nonverbal communication. Topics the Palmers cover include:
- Building a speaker’s personal credibility through the effective use of nonverbal communication.
- "Reading" body language and attitudes of their audiences and adjusting their own verbal and nonverbal communication to the situation.
- Conquering stage fright and "getting your butterflies flying in formation."
- Exhibiting the signs of professionally trained speakers.
Following the Palmers’ presentation, volunteers from the group give a two-minute presentation on some professional or business topic they know well, making advance preparation unnecessary. The Palmers videotape the volunteers, then during playback, they zero in on things the speakers are doing well and things they could “tweak” to make them even more effective. The benefit of using this format is that the non-volunteers in the group pick up many valuable tips at the same time the speakers do. As they coach, the Palmers bring humor and support to everyone involved.
Format #2: Plenary session followed by private individual coaching (in pairs). The opening session is just like the one in Format #1. Then the Palmers meet with pairs of volunteers from the class in a separate room. The Palmers encourage the speakers to come in pairs, so that one can serve as the audience and provide “moral support” while the other is on camera. Each presenter speaks for about two minutes and is critiqued from a strength-centered positive base. Then, the second speaker presents and is critiqued. The Palmers typically spend about 40-60 minutes per pair of speakers.
As with all other CEI programs, Group Video Coaching is based on solid research in communication theory and practice, and involves each participant in an interactive “hands-on” learning experience.
This celebrated method brings amazingly quick results. Through the Palmers’ “no-nonsense” but supportive approach, participants improve their speaking impact by 200-300 percent in less than a half hour! Managers who have offered this activity comment that participants’ radical improvement showed up immediately in their presentations and significantly enhanced their impact in meetings with co-workers, superiors, and customers.
Jan and Neal Palmer make a dynamic training duo that has been voted time and time again “the top program presenters” in a wide variety of conferences and academies. They bring to any group great excitement, knowledge, and humor, making learning how to present better an easier and quicker task than anyone can imagine!
Because groups vary in size and needs, we have additional ways of customizing this activity to your organization. Please call us to discuss how we can tailor a session of Group Video Coaching exactly to your specifications and what the costs are likely to be.
For more information on Group Video Coaching: How to Keep Both Feet on the Ground and Out of Your Mouth™ and other CEI communication programs, please call the Institute at (800) 410-4CEI (4234) or e-mail us at cei@talk2cei.com. |
