The Presentation Clinic has worked with TEDx Cape Town to assist TEDx speakers to perform at their very best!

TEDx is an initiative we are honoured to associate with. All participants work purely from an altruistic place of empowering the future movers and shakers to get their great ideas out there. It is such a privilege to have assisted TED these last two years as speaker coaches.

During the process, we’ve learnt some very important lessons. The first speakers we assisted in 2015 where a husband and wife couple, tackling the controversial issue of Marijuana prohibition. What we learnt from this talk is how to assist speakers when they are sharing a platform.

Our two speakers were quite accustomed to being in the public eye, however one had a little less confidence and was overshadowed often by her very charismatic partner. Her comfort zone lay in reading her material. We had to work to balance the communication and help each speaker become comfortable interacting with the other as opposed to a rout tennis match where they simply took turns in bouncing the message between them.

What we learned about coaching more than one speakers who are presenting is the following:
• Get speakers to interact with each other. The interaction is crucial for the audience. Let it be a conversation they are sharing.
• When the one speaker is presenting, the other must observe the other instead of focussing on what they are planning to say next.
• Ensuring the speakers are comfortable interacting is very useful, as if the one forgets what they were planning on saying, the other can remind them in a fun conversational manner and so a dialogue can take place which is much more natural, and also much more enjoyable to observe as an audience member.

We would like to congratulate Jules Stobbs and Myrtle Clarke for their excellent presentation and hard work. We thoroughly enjoyed this rather unusual challenge!

We hope you enjoy this video.

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