Your brave voice- A Program for Women
Speak from Your Soul and Sound Like a Professional.
A Program for Women.
With Paddy Kennedy, Professional public speaking trainer and Coach
What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.
-- Oprah Winfrey
ABOUT THIS COURSE
This is a 15-hour program and is rolled out in 10 sessions. It is taught in both Groups and Privately. This program is for women only.
A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.
-- Melinda Gates
For women to succeed in today’s world, it is more important than ever that we stand-up, and speak-up; that we speak not only to be heard but also to be seen.
We can no longer defer to our male colleagues to take the lead; gone are the days of us remaining silent when we feel the urge to speak. Women hold up half the sky, as the saying goes. Now is the time for us to build up our confidence, to raise our voices, to speak-up to be heard and speak-up to be seen. .
But first, we must find our authentic voice! We must speak from the heart of the matter. Then, we must lift our voices up, so they resound loudly and clearly.
There are two critical and pivotal aspects to finding and then raising our voice.
- First, we must look deeply within ourselves to discover our truths, our values, those aspects of life we hold near and dear to our hearts. What we know what we hold to be True, Beautiful and Good. We can call this our Inner or Authentic Voice – the foundation upon which we stand and from which we speak to the world and articulate who we are and what we stand for at our deepest level. This is where the seeds of our vocal confidence are buried.
- Secondly, we need to develop our Spoken Voice. The human voice is the most magnificent of all instruments and yet it is the hardest of them all to play. We must educate the voice into the union of self and body. The voice that originates deep in the body goes far beyond the speaker. As a matter of fact, when we master the resonant qualities of our voice, the vibrations of our sound actually have the ability to create new thinking patterns in our audiences. This is the power of the spoken voice and is an influential and formidable tool for women when we speak. In this way, not only do we speak and are heard but we also speak and are seen!
How do we do this? It is much easier than you might think. Holding back words or emotions can cause tension in your throat and jaw. We work to free your natural and beautifully unique voice. Through a series of vocal exercises and by answering deeply ‘evocative’ (from the Latin ‘to bring out the voice’) questions, we quickly begin to clear emotional blocks and tensions that are interfering not only in what we want to say but also the way in which we are saying it!
To free the voice is to free the person.
-- Kristin Linklater
skills covered
We begin the course with deep discussions from the participants on their experiences speaking up. In my many years as a coach, having worked with women from over 90 countries, I can say that I have never met a woman who did not have some kind of negative experience as she expressed herself. The purpose of these discussions is to help women recognize that they are not alone as well as to support one another on the road to self-expression.
Then, we take a deep dive into uncovering your Authentic, Brave Voice. Through a series of evocative exercises, the women begin to find their own Truths, their own sense of Beauty and Goodness. They begin to delve into their Value Code, where those values come from; which ones are negotiable and which ones are not.
We end the program learning and practising the Secrets of a Radio Journalist. The human voice IS the most magnificent of all the instruments; it is also the hardest instrument to play. In this segment, we work on developing our voices, focusing on breathing, elocution, articulation, tone, and sound development.
The last session is all about Meditation and Visualization. We focus on the power of seeing ourselves Speaking Bravely. Speaking Our Truths. Speaking Her story. Telling the stories in our Courageous Hearts.
what will you take away
If you are in the Group Sessions (recommended) you will come away with the support of a community of women who have done the same work as you have.
You will have uncovered the deepest parts of your self-expression; your confidence not only in speaking but in life generally, will grow beyond your imagination.
Most people, women especially, hate the sound of their voice when they first begin to really listen to themselves speak.
You will learn:
how to uncover – or perhaps – discover your True, Brave, Authentic Voice
how to master your speaking voice
how to control the sounds you make
how to harness the power of elocution and clear articulation
how to use the power of words and say them the way they want to be said
how to use tone of voice to clearly state your intended message,
how to speak with conviction and command your audience’s attention
I consider this program Performance Art. Not because you want to become a famous actor but because, William Shakespeare was correct: All the world’s a stage and we are merely actors, each one of us playing our part. The point remains: we are always judged by how we perform on that stage. A lack of confidence, inauthenticity, and poor vocal quality undermine more women than I prefer to count. We get deemed weak, or indecisive, unclear. Or, if we speak up loudly, we get called aggressive, pushy, and other names I choose not to repeat here.
In Your Brave Voice, you will learn to love and trust your voice – both your internal voice and your speaking voice.
You will learn to stand at the front of the boardroom, or in front of your team, colleagues, and peers, or wherever you use your voice and hear yourself speak with power, eloquence, and beauty. You will speak to be heard. And, equally important, you will speak to be seen!
