communication skills for humans

We start with a ‘serious game’ which examines that exact moment when you’re asked to perform.

Perhaps you’re told you need to make a speech, appear on camera, make a sales call, conduct a difficult 1:1, deliver a pitch, make a presentation at a team meeting.

In this opening session, you’ll begin to notice your default response.

With most of us, it looks and feels like one of these:

• Force
• Fidget
• Freeze
• Fawn

The best result is NOT to banish your nerves completely. In fact, if that happens you may be in trouble.

We help you start to become Your Own Best Judge, where the best result is noticing your pattern and learning how to manage it positively.

A “mark” is a spot you have to hit for lighting, sound, and framing — and it’s amazing how one tiny technical instruction can make you tighten up and lose your flow.

But the opposite is true too: you can feel totally free… and then the mic is wrong, the room is echoey, or the wind ruins it.

In business, your “mark” is any moment you need to deliver clearly.

This session is about balancing technical control with natural freedom, so you stay human and effective.

This session uses the classic “elevator pitch” idea but makes it more performance related.

You decide on your material (clients, leadership, selling, content) and I teach you how to go home happy with your choices.

The outcome is that you stop sounding too listy:

“it does this, and it does that, and she’s got experience in this and that and this and then and then…”

…and you reduce the negative self-talk that you’re “going on” or “doing too much” (the dreaded ‘third eye’)

…and you stop waiting until it’s “perfect” before you speak.

At Sixes and Sevens

A practical rehearsal exercise for gaining command of both your material and your audience.

Six prompts, cold — tests your command of the content.

• Cut your brochure, slides or talking points into six separate prompts.
• Put them in a hat and draw one at random.
• Begin from that point, cleanly, without needing the opening or the previous slide.
• Work through all six until you can start anywhere and remain useful.

Seven moments to amaze and astound — tests your command of the audience. Inspired by Laurence Olivier: choose seven moments that must land — moments when the audience should understand something, feel something, remember something or decide something.

They needn’t be theatrical flourishes. They might be the opening that earns attention, the question that changes the conversation, the proof that creates belief, the pause that gives something weight, or the close that secures movement.

The Secret

A deceptively simple presence exercise from Scott’s training at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.

1. One person steps into the space in front of the group.
2. They receive one instruction: “You have a secret. That’s it.”
3. No character, no line and no further direction. They simply hold the secret.

Something present, specific and unshared changes the person’s interior weather. Their attention comes on. Their eyes become alive. Their presence returns without them having to manufacture a performance.

Applied to business, it is useful before a pitch, presentation, filmed session or difficult conversation when somebody feels flat, tight or disconnected. The secret does not need to be revealed. It simply gives the person something real to hold.

• Leadership is presence
• Sales is presence
• Performing is presence

In this session we work with the energy you can create and tap into, so you choose how you want to come across (instead of defaulting to negative habits under pressure).

Professional prep, without the drama‑school mystique.

Well, maybe a bit.

Warm‑ups, focus, pacing, and practical rehearsal habits you can actually use.

A final practical challenge.

You speak up to 3 minutes in a scenario you choose (stage, camera, meeting).

We record it, and you keep it.

It’s a strong way to finish, and a useful artefact to take away.