Powerful Presenting

Persuasion, Engagement and Confidence

The purpose of a presentation is so much more than just imparting information: it’s about persuading, influencing and embedding learning.  To achieve these ends requires not only the ability to deliver clear, concise meaningful content, it also calls for the confidence to engage and connect with an audience.   And at the same time overcoming any doubts and self-consciousness, in order to present oneself as calm, grounded and authoritative.

This programme equips participants with the ability to present powerfully, to go beyond just “getting the message across”, to inspire action and maximise learning outcomes.

Topics include:

• Arrival, breathing and centring
• Clarifying your purpose
• Developing 4 fold awareness – physical, emotional, mental and external
• Handling questions and objections

Participants will be able to:

• Adopt the beliefs and attitudes of a successful presenter
• Be calm, grounded and professional
• Deliver clear, well structured presentations which engage the audience
• Connect with the audience and hold their attention

Presenter: Simon Lawrence and Team

Tutor/Delegate Ratio: 6 – 1

Duration: One day or two days

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The Power of Words

Structure, Language & Imagination in Presenting with William Ayot

Do your presentations confuse rather than enlighten? Do you start with a bang but end with a whimper? Do people fail to retain what you say? These and other questions are addressed and answered in this enjoyable, experiential programme. Dynamic communication is a fusion of art and science. Great presentations, be they a full political address, a keynote speech, or a short team briefing, hang in the mind, shaping our thoughts and behaviours long after the speaker has departed. This programme looks at the essential building blocks of a great presentation: structure, language and imagination.

The Power of Words examines the techniques used in powerful art forms such as film, drama, radio and poetry, and applies them to the construction of engaging and gripping presentations. Using the skills of the screenwriter, the broadcaster, the storyteller and the poet, we learn to make the most of our message, to meet and engage our audience, to create pictures in people’s minds, and to shape our content into compelling narratives that are both memorable and effective.

Topics covered include:

• Shaping and structuring a good presentation
• Maximising your material
• Employing the skills of language and rhetoric
• The powerful benefits of story and image
• How to increase audience attention and response
• Writing for the ear, not the eye

Presenter: William Ayot – Numbers flexible – Duration: Half day or One day.

The Power of Words forms a natural pairing with our Leadership Communication Masterclass. It can be booked as a half day introduction or a stand-alone module.

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The Poetry of Leadership

Keynotes, Readings & Interactive Poetry Sessions with William Ayot

Succession planners and leaders the world over are coming to understand the importance of whole brain thinking and decision-making, of releasing the imaginative and empathic qualities of the right brain to balance the logical, focusing powers of the left. Poetry uniquely brings these faculties together. It combines structured thinking with creativity, manages complexity, and distils ideas to create clarity out of diffuse data and facts.

Poetry re-affirms our humanity, augments emotional intelligence, helps us to hold a paradox, and re-awakens our inner wisdom. It also challenges tyrannical ideas that can arise in any organisation when it becomes overly focused on outcome and profit. By adding breadth and depth to our thinking, poetry makes more rounded leaders. Furthermore, at its very best, it can help us to re-experience what Joseph Campbell called “the rapture of being alive’.

William Ayot’s enjoyable, interactive readings and poetry sessions explore these humanising aspects of the leader’s experience. Reading his own and other’s poems, William opens spaces for discussion and reflection, helps delegates to explore their own creativity and re-introduces them to overlooked or forgotten parts of themselves.

Duration can be tailored to client needs and can range from 90 minute readings, to four-hour sessions, and one-day Art of Leadership programmes. Topics can variously include:

• Creativity, Imagination and Language
•  Integrity and the Human Shadow
•  Attention, Power and Authority  
•  Authenticity and Communication
•  Isolation, Art and the Inner Life
•  Nature, Culture and the Soul at Work

Poet William Ayot = Numbers flexible

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Personal Impact & Communications Coaching

These bespoke coaching sessions take their cue from an understanding that leadership presentations call for ever-increasing levels of authentic performance. The goal is to create greater competence in all areas of leadership communications, including keynote presentations and set-piece conference speeches. We will be drawing on over a decade’s experience of coaching senior leaders from all over the globe. As Michael Watkins, author of “The First 90 Days” put it, “These guys are among the best in the world at what they do”.

Using tried and tested performance and rehearsal techniques, the client is introduced to a range of skills commonly employed by actors, performance artists, and top-class athletes. The coach also helps the client to address particularly harmful blocks to effectiveness, offering techniques to maximize impact and increase audience engagement. This advanced polishing process moves the client from self-consciousness to self-fulfilment and creates the foundations of a sustainable practice that can lead to genuine excellence.

This is a highly practical and interactive process, involving intensive periods of coaching, appropriate challenge and honest feedback. It offers senior leaders an opportunity to practice key skills in a safe and discreet environment.   

Coaching topics can be arranged to include:

• Coaching for Specific Upcoming Events
• Tools for Relaxation
• Voice Work, Tone and Variety
• Opening, Arrival and Initial Engagement
• The Uses of Narrative and Imagery
• Practical Self-Awareness & Self-Command
• Techniques to Manage Anxiety
• Body Language, Gesture and Expression
• Methods to Build and Sustain Confidence
• Overcoming Inhibitions and Self-Consciousness
• Presence and Authenticity
• Maintaining Audience Contact & Engagement
• Maximising Content, Shape and Material

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NaCOT Presenters and Coaches

William Ayot is a poet, creative consultant and chief executive of NaCOT. As a co-founder of Olivier Mythodrama, he helped develop mythodrama as a high-impact, experiential methodology for executive education.  As a personal impact and leadership teacher William has worked with political, church and business leaders at the highest levels on four continents. His clients have included international agencies, ministries, blue chip corporations and many of the world’s top business schools.

Deborah Clarke is an experienced presentation, personal impact and life coach. Her years in the theatre as an actor and director, and her time in arts and education development inform her insightful communications work. She is a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and a graduate of Coach U. Her work is informed by Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor, a powerful methodology which “enables people to become who they truly are”.

Juliet Grayson is an expert teacher, facilitator and personal impact coach. Her work comes out of a twenty-year exploration of the ways people limit themselves at work, both personally and professionally. A fully qualified psychotherapist and supervisor, she combines extensive business experience with a profound knowledge of Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor, as well as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and a deep understanding of systemic thinking.

Simon Lawrence is a personal impact coach, presentation teacher and public speaker with over twenty five years’ experience of working with individuals to improve their presentation and communication skills.  He has worked with senior leaders across the public and private sectors, delivering high-impact seminars and workshops for IT and Financial Services giants, alongside local and national government bodies and agencies at home and abroad.

Mo Rye is a practiced and insightful tutor, coach and facilitator who specialises in working with individuals to overcome personal and organisational blockages, capitalise on their strengths and make every communication yield positive results.  She combines substantial business experience in both the UK and overseas with being a fully qualified psychotherapist to bring practical know-how and insight to her impact and communications coaching.