7 meaningful ways executive speech coaching can help you
Whether you’re an executive or a budding leader, here’s why you should invest in executive speech coaching.
The other day I got a call from a business leader who’d just agreed to speak at a conference of peers in the fall. While she’s spoken in public occasionally, she confessed that this time, she was more than a little anxious.
“I know I need to get better,” she told me. “I can map out most of my content, but my delivery needs work. And I really need to be a lot more persuasive.”
If you are motivated and committed to improving your performance as a public speaker, working with an executive speech coach will help you get better faster. Done well, executive speech coaching is a positive, empowering experience with many benefits to executives and budding leaders. You will be able to:
1 – Discover your blind spots
When we speak, we often do not see ourselves as we really are. In most cases, we are completely unaware of what we may doing with our hands, our eyes and our voice, and other mistakes we may be making that are detrimental to our delivery. Executive speech coaching provides the constructive, outside feedback you need to make you aware of exactly what you need to work on.
2 – Use your rehearsal time more effectively
By far the biggest challenge speakers face – once they have a speech or presentation ready for delivery – is rehearsal time. While the most astute know it’s important to carve out time to rehearse, packed schedules are the reality. If you only have a few hours here and there to work on your delivery, be more intentional about how you spend that time. Executive speech coaching is a good way to get more value from the limited rehearsal time you have.
3 – Boost your confidence as a speaker
As an executive speech coach, it’s rewarding for me every time to guide a leader from being nervous and uncertain to being confident, empowered and ready to take on the world. Besides recommending the right fixes to turn your weaknesses into strengths, the best speech coaches will tell you where you shine. Being aware of what you already do well gives you the healthy dose of confidence you need to keep getting better in every way. Putting yourself in an environment where there’s encouragement and progress will change the way you perceive yourself as a speaker, and for the better.
4 – Share and address your fears
Executive speech coaching is a give-and-take process. Are you worried about how well you’ll be able to tell that emotional story that opens your speech? Or whether you’ll be able to internalize your message and storyline as you continue to practice? Executive speech coaching helps you get your issues on the table so they can be addressed. If you keep your fears to yourself, they may cripple your performance. Sharing your concerns out loud is the first step to tackling them one by one.
5 – Avoid embarrassment
What you don’t know can often hurt you and even embarrass you, like:
- How to correctly pronounce a person’s name or an unfamiliar place
- How to get control over any distracting habits, like white-knuckling the lectern or constantly adjusting your hair
- What to do immediately if there are technical difficulties with the audiovisuals, which could throw you off course and make it hard to recover
Executive speech coaching can help you with the checks and double-checks you need to do so you don’t fall prey to embarrassing moments that could have been easily avoided with objective, upfront prep.
6 – Energize your message
There’s nothing worse than a speaker whose voice and body language reveal the truth about how the speaker might actually be feeling during a speaking engagement – perhaps anxious, tired, worried or preoccupied about unrelated matters at work or at home.
Executive speech coaching can help you recognize these potential traps and work with you to inject deliberate, natural energy and enthusiasm into your message. Well-prepared, well-coached speakers are more likely than others to truly immerse themselves in the speaking moment, captivate their audiences and enjoy the opportunity.
7 – Make noticeable improvements
If you make deliberate changes to improve your public speaking savvy over time, people will notice. And they will tell you. Executive speech coaching can give you feelings of pride and accomplishment that will likely encourage you to speak even more often. And the more you speak, the more you can build your reputation as a leader: someone with important things to say.
If you want to feel more positive and become more empowered the next time you speak, executive speech coaching will get you there – as long as you are motivated and committed to putting in a little time and making the right changes to improve your performance.
