I had some presentation training last week.
My friend Dan from Greenbang has, for a long time, been swearing by James Hutchinson, The Verbal Coach.
So impressed is Dan, that he and James regularly collaborate with Dan’s media training business Erbut Media*. As a freelancer for the FT, Dan is rather nicely placed to nail you to the wall (in a nice, practice way) whilst telling you how best to speak to the media.
So if Dan is your media training genius (amongst other things), James is your powerpoint supremo.
Or not.
Indeed he’s not necessarily a big fan of Powerpoint, especially if the slides are basically an array of talking points for the speaker (see: PowerPoint – what not to do, part 2).
I fancy myself as a pretty decent public speaker, particularly as I swiftly lost the apparent natural fear of speaking in public way back in my early teenage years. Getting up in front of folk and screaming about how badly designed the [insert phone brand] user interface is has never been a challenge.
But… am I any good?
That’s basically the question I put to James. Dan suggested I try out a one-to-one class with him.
“Let’s do it!” I thought.
We met at Dan’s offices in a meeting room. James briefly introduced himself and asked about me. I sat there and fired him a machine-gun list of things about me. Although, to be fair, I didn’t think I was doing this. I didn’t think I was speaking really fast. I thought James was following my every word.
He wasn’t.
Which is good news. He very accurately pointed out that when I was talking to him — not even presenting (just sat down at the desk!) — I was chopping and changing sentences mid-stream and not finishing points, as new ideas and trains of thought came to me.
The result? A total jumble.
Shit.
If it’s presentation help you’re looking for, James explained that he likes to work with a real life presentation — a real life scenario. So I was meant to bring along one to practice with.
But I forgot.
So we improvised. It turned out that this was rather useful given the varied roles that I have.
3 hours passed in no time and James totally revolutionised how I view presenting and talking in public.
It was an absolutely fascinating experience. If I had 100 employees, I’d make sure they each got the James Hutchinson treatment.
And he’s a University College London man like me.
If you aim to improve your communicating and presenting skills, talk to James. His rates are wholly reasonable and I thoroughly recommend him.
You can find out more about him via his LinkedIn profile or at his blog The Verbal Coach.
Plus you can get him on Twitter here.
* Erbut Media — ‘er, but’, the two words people use when stuck for something to say — get it?
