Workshop Review: Presentation Workshop

This week, we\’d like to share with you a review of our Presentation and Confidence Building workshop, written by George Luke, based on his recent experience with us.

This is our signature workshop and can be run in-house or as a public workshop. It is suitable for new and experienced presenters, and is also a part of our new Wedding Speech package. So if you like the sound of this, why not get in touch for more information, to see if we can help you.

George Luke lives in London. When not writing articles or making radio programmes, he\’s usually either swimming or learning to play the piano.

To find out more about George Luke, visit www.georgeluke.wordpress.com or connect with him on Linkedin by clicking here.

My day with Partners With You

\’When I agreed to attend one of Partners With You’s presentation workshops, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I had been on workshops before which had claimed they could sort out every problem I had with communicating confidently, and was none the better afterwards. How would this be any different?

Well for starters, it was a lot more personal than the other ones I’d been on. You had a sense of that even before it began, when Sally Hindmarch (the founder of Partners With You) offered participants lifts from the Tube station to the venue – a very Hogwarts-like golf club in Moor Park, Middlesex.

The workshop was led by two actors, one male, one female, and both with several years’ stage and screen experience between them. They covered issues such as posture, breathing and its effect on speech and psychological aids such as ‘envisioning’. Right from the start, we were giving presentations – either to the entire room or in pairs or small groups.

One unique thing about this workshop – and one of its greatest strengths – is that it did not involve role-playing. It wasn’t like other workshops where you’re given a hypothetical situation and have to pretend to be someone else. In those ones, there’s always a “but this will never happen to me in real life” thought niggling away at the back of my mind. But in this workshop, the only character you’re playing is yourself. Everything you say on stage comes from your own life experience. And as such, it feels more ‘real’. You can start applying what you learn immediately because you connect more with the advice that you have received.

Our coaches gave critiques of our presenting style in such a way that we were encouraged to do better, rather than have our confidence completely crushed. The advice covered both the physical and the psychological. By the end of the day, we had all made good progress; It was interesting to see how quickly people’s presentation skills picked up just from taking on board the advice they were given.

It’s now been a month since the workshop, and I can say confidently that I have noticed a difference in the way I communicate with people in those settings I used to do anything to avoid before. I’m glad for the way the tools the workshop provided have empowered me to become a better presenter (and yes, I have got my lemon in place!)\’

More information on this workshop can be found here.

If you\’d like to book a place on a future workshop, please click here.