services

Voice

Your voice has an immediate and significant impact on how you are perceived and how successful you can become. To be heard and understood, whether in person, on the telephone, in presentations, or in personal relationships, your voice must be clear and melodious. It must reflect your meaning and intent.

Remember when you heard your voice and wondered, "Is that how I really sound?" Now imagine, if you are not pleased by how you sound, then how does that influence your listener? You can polish your voice and upgrade your vocal skills to maintain a healthy voice with proper pitch, appropriate volume, clear articulation, and pleasing resonance.

Also important are the techniques of pacing, correct emphasis, well placed pauses, gestures, and body language that reflect your meaning. We combine these attributes with a series of important, professionally used methods to improve your vocal influence and let your voice be an invitation to listen to your message.

Comminication Skills

Your ability to communicate your ideas, thoughts, feelings, and intentions determine your success in business and interpersonal relationships. Good communication skills have an effect on how you are perceived in the world, and whether your needs are understood and met.

Working together, we identify the specific areas that will help you express yourself effectively, such as body language, eye contact, vocal skills, and ideas and belief systems.

We integrate practices and skills to develop your special qualities, and to communicate information and ideas with confidence and ease.

Presentation Skills

In today's environment of movies, commercials, and video games, we are challenged to captivate and hold savvy audiences with little patience for boring, disorganized presentations. It's simply not enough to be an expert in your field, the president of a company, or have an interesting topic.

A motivating, persuasive presentation is a combination of knowledge, organization, preparation, and entertainment. Your delivery must be polished and properly staged; your visuals concise and supportive. Whatever the content of your speech, it must be engaging and memorable.

As a good speaker you can bring a dry subject to life, and you can breathe new life into a presentation that you've made far too many times. If you are a nervous or fearful speaker, addressing your fears and helping you develop dependable skills and techniques with a supportive coach will give you confidence and make speaking a joy.

Using a combination of acting, performance, and public speaking skills, plus an organizational system, voice techniques, body language, and interpersonal communication tools you will deliver your message clearly and approach your topic with interest and passion, making your next presentation an inspired, masterful performance.

Confidence

Confidence is the internal relationship we have with ourselves. You can be compassionate and supportive with yourself, or critical and inhibiting. You may experience a general sense of confidence, but be challenged by a situation such as making a presentation, interviewing for a job, or speaking up in a group. You may have a general sense of not being enough: pretty enough, smart enough, or good enough.

Developing a sense of confidence is key to communicating clearly and effectively. Your sense of confidence will determine how you sound, the communication skills you use, your body language, visual cues, and the information and ideas you are able to access and deliver. Building a sense of confidence is a process. Through discussion and breathing exercises, and by generating dependable tools, you will develop a positive and validating approach to difficult situations and your overall experience of self worth.

Private Coaching

The Speaking Bridge offers private, personalized training and coaching in the following areas:

• Voice development and management
• Confidence and life skills
• Developing and delivering presentations
• Communication skills for interpersonal and business relationships

One-on-one sessions are arranged to fit your schedule.

Distance coaching is available.

Corporate and Business Services

The Speaking Bridge offers workshops for teams and individuals in the corporate environment that include:

• Individual and executive coaching
• Special event coaching
• Business communication
• Keynote speech preparation

Workshops are always designed to meet the goals and needs of your employees.

The following formats are offered:

• Half and full day sessions
• Two and three day workshops
• Ongoing sessions
• Weekly and monthly sessions

Distance coaching is available for individuals.

Click the menu item on the right for a Sample Program for your Business.

Sample program for your business

When we meet with your organization for the first time, we discuss the needs of your group and what you want to get out of the workshop. Perhaps you have a certain focus that you'd like us to concentrate on. Everyone doesn't need the same thing, so we can customize the workshop to the individuals participating.

In addition to evaluating and coaching each individual, we provide a menu of possible areas to improve the overall presentation skills in your company. A sample menu that can be tailored to emphasize your needs might be as follows:

Vocal presentation - The sound of the voice represents one third of the impact a person has. Vocal health and manageability, volume, expression, pace, articulation, resonance and clarity are some of the significant factors in vocal delivery. Annoying habits such as filler words, monotone quality and sloppy speech are also addressed. With exercises and practice we help you improve the quality and influence of your voice.

Visual cues - Cues include body language, gestures, facial expression, eye-contact. If your visual message does not compliment what you say, you will fail to communicate your message. By bringing cohesion to your words and demeanor, you offer a more effective presentation.

Organization - The organization of your presentation, and use of visual aids guide your listener to your desired goal. You are the leader, the person with the map and directions. You can define and introduce your topic, arrange your information and supportive material, and handle questions in ways that keep you and your audience on track and to ensure you define and address the intended scope of your topic.

Delivery - The delivery is the performance phase of your presentation. Although you want to speak with your audience as individuals, you must upgrade your communication style to performance level. The qualities of theatre, professionalism, and aliveness will stimulate and draw your audience to your message.

Within these main categories are several sub-topics that your group might want to emphasize. Some individuals might want to address other factors such as stage fright or self-confidence. We evaluate your overall performance and stated goals and design the workshop so that you achieve the results you want.