Public speaking · participant workbook
Speak so they remember.
The full workbook I hand to participants: the programme, the method, and every exercise we run in the room. One and a half days to turn good work into a talk that lands.
44 pages, A4, printable · English
Before we start
You already have the content.
The people I run this for know their work better than anyone in the room will ever know it. That is not the problem.
The problem is the gap. The gap between what is true in your head and what arrives in someone else's head after eight minutes, in a room where half the audience is tired and the other half is reading the agenda for the next session.
This workshop does not touch your expertise. It touches the delivery: how you build the talk, how you open it, how you use your voice, what you do with your hands, and what happens in the two seconds of silence after your most important sentence.
The room we build
Seven rules.
Everyone speaks, three times
No exceptions and no observers. If you are in the room, you are on your feet.
Notes are allowed
Read from a script if it makes you feel safer. We work on progress, not on performance.
Feedback is on delivery, never on the content
If someone comments on your method or your data, I stop them.
Feedback follows the protocol
One thing that worked, one thing to change, one sentence each.
What happens in the room stays in the room
Nothing said here leaves it, and nothing is repeated outside.
Discomfort is the exercise, not a side effect
If you feel awkward, you are exactly where the learning is. Stay there thirty seconds longer.
Laptops closed, phones face down
Except during the writing blocks, when you will need them.
Your preparation
Everyone brings a three minute talk. Topic is free: your role, a project you are proud of, a lesson learned, something you care about. Bring it as it is, unpolished. We need the honest starting point, because on the last morning you will want to see how far you moved.
The programme
One and a half days. Most of them standing.
Day one · full day
- 09:00 Welcome, expectations, ground rules
- 09:20 Speech round 1: three minutes each, as prepared
- 10:00 Icebreakers and confidence, standing
- 10:45 Foundations: values and T-shaped culture
- 11:05 Audience, purpose, message
- 11:30 Structure and storytelling essentials
- 13:15 Speech development workshop, coached one by one
- 14:30 Voice, presence and body language
- 15:15 Speech round 2: rebuilt version, full feedback
- 16:30 Reflection and one change for the evening
Day two · half day
- 09:00 Warm up and speaking exercises
- 09:30 Final preparation, coaching, peer rehearsal
- 10:15 Speech round 3: final version
- 11:15 Individual feedback and development actions
- 11:45 Handling questions, nerves, and closing
Nobody improves by hearing advice. People improve by doing the same thing again, immediately, with one variable changed. Three rounds in a day and a half is more repetition than most speakers get in a year.
Module 1
Foundations.
Two things that give your communication weight before you have said a single word.
Your values
What you believe as a person and as a professional, and how you want to be perceived. They steer your talks, they can be named inside them, and they attract the people who think like you.
The exercise: scan a list of seventy values, circle fast, cut to the three that matter most today. Then find where one of them shows up in your talk as evidence instead of as a claim.
The T-shaped speaker
The vertical bar is depth in your subject: it gives your delivery a calm no technique can fake. The horizontal bar is everything outside your field: it is what lets you build bridges and reach a wider room.
The exercise: take your most technical concept and write it three times. For a colleague, for someone from another field, and for your grandmother in two sentences. Version three usually belongs in your opening.
Module 2
Warming up the room.
Confidence is not a personality trait you were born with or without. It is a state, and states can be triggered on purpose, in about ten minutes.
Two truths and a lie
Three statements about your work or your life, one invented. The group votes. You hold the room for forty seconds on delivery alone, because the content is deliberately trivial.
One word at a time
The group tells a single story, one word per person. No planning, no skipping. It trains listening instead of rehearsing your next line.
The object pitch
A random object from the room. Sixty seconds to convince your partner it is essential to their work. Second round: thirty seconds, one number and one story.
The energy ladder
The same short sentence at five levels, from a whisper to the back wall of a lecture hall. Then back to level three, where most talks should live and almost none do.
Ninety seconds on a stranger
Interview your partner, then present them to the group in the first person. The strongest antidote to self consciousness is talking about someone else.
Cold sixty and the forced bridge
Sixty seconds on a topic drawn from a hat, with a beginning, one point and an ending. Then ninety seconds connecting two unrelated cards. This is metaphor production on demand.
Module 3
Audience, purpose, message.
Most talks fail before a single slide is designed. They fail in the ten minutes of thinking that nobody does.
Audience
We always communicate to someone specific. "The industry" is not an audience. "Forty people, two thirds of them outside my department, at 16:30 on day two of an offsite" is, and it tells you immediately what to cut.
Purpose
We communicate because we want to obtain something. What is my task, what do I want to obtain, and what is in it for them. The third question is where talks are won.
Context
Where you stand, in front of how many people, with what. Every choice is a decision. "Slides because everyone uses slides" is not a decision.
Duration
One idea needs roughly three minutes to land. A twelve minute slot holds three points plus an opening and a closing. Not seven points.
If they remember only one thing, it should be:
One sentence. Under fifteen words. No sub clauses. If it needs an "and also", you have two talks. If you cannot finish that sentence, you are not ready to build the talk.
Module 4
Structure and story.
The opening · seven ways in
Pick one, do not stack three. Thirty to sixty seconds, one job: make the room decide to stay with you.
- A question, real or rhetorical
- A striking statement, then a pause
- A quote, only if it is genuinely yours to use
- A story: thirty seconds, one scene, one person, one problem
- A slide or an image, with no text, that you talk over
- The word "imagine": it moves the audience into a scene in four words
- An object you hold up: rare, and the thing people describe afterwards
The body · three points, five at most
- Arranged in rising order, the strongest one last
- Attention decays through a talk, but memory favours the end
- What you cut goes into your answers, and makes the Q&A look effortless
- Signpost between points: "that was the first of three"
The closing · four ways out
- A quote, a striking sentence, a reflection, or your values at the centre
- One call to action: clear, simple, specific
- Say the last line, then hold two seconds of silence
- Never end on "thank you": it gives away your most valuable four seconds
The three I's
Inform, involve, inspire. Every talk should do at least two of the three on purpose.
The three magic tools
The story is an emotional bridge, and people remember it far more easily than a concept. The metaphor is a translator: use it the moment before the difficult idea, never after. The concrete example is your anchor to reality, and it is what makes numbers believable.
Module 5
Voice and pause.
Paraverbal language is not what you say. It is how you say it, and it is the fastest thing to change in a day and a half.
The four voice colours
The pause
A pause is not a gap in your talk. It is a piece of your talk, and it is the only one the audience uses to think. It gives weight, it gives time, it kills fillers, it reads as confidence, and it buys you thinking time in the questions. A two second pause feels like ten seconds to you and like half a second to the audience, which is why we drill it with a timer instead of by feel.
The full stop
Read a paragraph out loud. At every full stop, stop completely and count three. It feels absurd. Your partner will tell you it sounded normal.
The filler buzzer
Ninety seconds while your partner taps at every "um", "so", "basically". You replace the next one with silence. Count the taps in round one and round two.
Breathe on the comma
Every comma becomes a breath, every full stop a pause. This fixes the speed problem for most people: it removes the reason you were rushing.
The landing
Say your most important sentence, then hold eye contact in silence for three full seconds. The group stays silent too. Uncomfortable, and unforgettable.
The slow motion opening
Your first thirty seconds at half speed, then again at normal speed. The second version is roughly the right speed, which was never your normal speed.
Mark them like rests
Write pauses into your script the way a musician writes rests. A double slash where you stop. Three or four in a twelve minute talk is enough.
The warm up, and its two minute corridor version
Breath, straw hum, jaw, articulation, volume ladder, colour switch. Six minutes in the room. In real life you will not have a group and a hat, you will have a corridor: six long exhales, "red leather yellow leather" three times, your opening line out loud twice at level four, shoulders rolled back once. That is enough, and it beats standing still rehearsing your fear.
Module 6
Body and presence.
Everything that is not the words and not the voice. The audience reads it first, and faster than you can talk.
- High energy. Slightly above what feels natural. It always reads lower from the seats.
- Openness. Nothing crossed, no barrier between you and the room.
- Stable on two feet. Both heels down, weight distributed.
- Gestures serving the narrative. If the hand is not saying something, it can rest.
- Movement with intention. Move, stop, speak. Never pace while you talk.
- Connected to the preparation. The body follows what you built, it cannot rescue what you did not.
Find neutral
Feet under your hips, weight on both heels, knees soft, shoulders rolled back once, hands hanging. This is home. Every gesture starts here and returns here.
The hands problem
Sixty seconds with your hands behind your back, sixty with oversized gestures, sixty normally. Round three is where your real range lives, and it is always wider than round one.
Move, stop, speak
Ninety seconds using exactly three positions. You may only move between sentences, never during one. It looks deliberate because it is.
Thirds and anchors
Split the room into three zones, pick one specific person in each, land at least three full sentences in each zone. Never scan, never talk to the screen.
Module 7
Rehearsal, nerves and questions.
Rehearse. Out loud, standing, timed.
Reading your slides silently is not rehearsal. Six ways that work: facing a wall, in front of a mirror, recording the audio, recording yourself on your phone, while washing dishes or walking, and in front of two trusted people.
Learn two parts by heart, and only two: your first thirty seconds, because that is when the adrenaline is highest, and your last thirty, because that is what stays. Everything in between should be known, not memorised.
Fuel pointed the wrong way.
Fear and excitement are almost identical in the body. Four things that work: a long exhale, moving before you speak, renaming it out loud, and finding three friendly faces before you start.
Three that do not: telling yourself to calm down, rehearsing the disaster, and apologising at the start. The audience sees roughly ten percent of what you feel, and the one thing they reliably notice is speed.
Your talk is twelve minutes. The questions are three. Most people judge you on the three.
- Pause and acknowledge. Two seconds of silence, then repeat the question so the room hears it.
- Answer the question that was asked. First sentence, direct answer. Not the context, the answer.
- One layer of support. One reason, one number, or one example. Then stop.
- Check and close. "Does that answer it?", then move your eyes to the next person.
When you do not know: say so, say you will look at it, and stop. That costs you nothing and buys you credibility. Guessing costs you everything. When it is hostile: stay in the green voice, lower your volume rather than raising it, agree with whatever is true, then answer the part that is not. A room always sides with the calm person.
How we speak to each other
The feedback protocol.
Feedback that is vague is useless and feedback that is personal is harmful. One format, every time, for everyone.
- What worked: "when you ______, I ______." Name the moment and its effect on you.
- What to change: "next time, try ______." One thing, the one with the biggest return.
- The keeper: "the thing I will remember is ______." Almost never what the speaker thought.
What we watch for
- Did the opening make me want to listen?
- Can I say the one message in a sentence?
- Were there three points, and did they climb?
- Was there a story, a metaphor or an example?
- Did the voice change at least three times?
- Were there real pauses?
- Was the body stable and open?
- Did the ending land, and did I know what to do next?
Slides, demoted to support
- One idea per slide. There is no shortage of slides.
- The title is the message, not the section name.
- Nobody reads and listens at the same time.
- Build complex figures: axes first, then one series.
- Say out loud what to look at.
- Press B for a black screen when you want the room looking at you.
Take home
The recipe for your next talk.
Ten steps, in this order, every time. The whole workshop compressed into something you can use on a Tuesday morning.
Start from the foundations
Your values. Your depth. Your width.
Know your audience
Specific people, not a category.
Define your purpose
Task, outcome, and what is in it for them.
Use the context
Room, equipment, moment in the programme.
Set the duration
And plan to finish one minute early.
Use the structure
Opening, body of three, closing.
Add a story, a metaphor, an example
And simple slides, one idea each.
Work the voice and the body
Colours, pauses, stance, three zones.
Rehearse
Out loud, standing, timed, at least twice.
Deliver it, and enjoy it
Let yourself feel something. They will feel it too.
Whatever I do on the pitch, I spent hours training it first.
Want this workbook in your team's hands?
The workshop runs in house, in English, Italian or German. Everyone speaks three times, and everyone leaves with a talk they have already delivered.