How I work out what is actually wrong, in thirty minutes

Most people arrive at the first session with a diagnosis already made. “I’m terrible at presenting.” “I get too nervous.” “I need more confidence.”

Ten years in, I have learned to take almost none of it at face value. Not because people are unobservant, but because you cannot hear your own voice, so the self-assessment is being made from the one seat in the house with the worst view.

So the first thirty minutes are not coaching. They are a diagnosis, and this is how it runs.

What actually happens, minute by minute

Minutes 0 to 3. You tell me why you came. I listen, I write it down, and I treat it as a hypothesis rather than a brief.

Minutes 3 to 8. You speak. Four or five minutes of real material, standing if you can, while I record. Not reading. This is the part people dread and it is the only part that matters, because everything after it is evidence rather than opinion.

Minutes 8 to 22. We watch it back together, and I stop it. Repeatedly. Not to make a point about every fault, but at three or four specific moments where something happened that you did not know happened.

Minutes 22 to 30. I tell you what is actually in the way, in order, and what I would work on first. You get that as a written list afterwards, along with the recording.

That is the whole thing. No exercises, no theory, no warm-up games.

Why I record before we talk

Because I need to hear you before you have been told anything.

The moment I say “watch your pace”, your pace changes for the rest of the hour, and I have lost my only sample of how you actually speak when nobody is watching. First recordings are the most honest data in the whole engagement and you only get one.

It also removes the persuasion step. I do not have to convince anyone they are speaking too fast. We play the tape and they hear it, usually with an expression I have come to recognise, somewhere between recognition and betrayal.

The four questions I am answering, in this order

The order matters. Working on the wrong layer is the most expensive mistake available, and it is the reason people spend money on coaching and improve at nothing.

1. Can I understand every word, first time?

This is the floor. If I am reconstructing words from context, nothing above this layer is worth discussing yet.

If the answer is no, your issue is not public speaking. It is elocution, and it is a different service with a different method. Two people can have identical structures and identical nerves, and if one of them is asked to repeat themselves twice a meeting, that is the problem to fix first.

I am listening specifically for word endings disappearing, consonants collapsing at speed, and whether clarity holds when you get animated. Most people are perfectly clear until they care about what they are saying.

2. Could I write down your three points?

If I have listened to five minutes and could not tell you what you were arguing, you do not have a delivery problem. You have a structure problem, and no amount of vocal work will fix it.

This catches more people than anything else on the list. They arrive convinced they are a nervous speaker and the recording shows a calm, articulate person with nothing to hold onto. The nerves, when we get to them, usually turn out to be an accurate response to being unprepared rather than a temperament.

The test I actually apply: at the end, can I say your point back to you in one sentence? If I cannot, the room could not either.

3. Which of the four dials is off?

Only now do we get to the voice. There are four things about it you can change while you are speaking: power, pause, pace and pitch. Everything else is a combination of those four.

What I am listening for in each:

• Pace. Are you faster than you think? You are. The real question is whether it is constant fast, which reads as anxious, or whether there is variation. Change of pace matters more than average pace.
• Pause. Where do you breathe? At punctuation, deliberately, or when you run out of air? And are there any silences at all, or is every join filled?
• Power. Does the volume hold across a sentence, or does the end fade? The end is usually where the point lives, and fading is breath rather than conviction.
• Pitch. Do your sentences finish downwards? Rising intonation on statements turns a recommendation into a request for permission, and it is almost always unconscious.

Almost nobody has all four wrong. Most people have one, badly, and a second one downstream of it. Fixing the upstream one often takes the second with it, which is why the order of work is decided here rather than by preference.

4. Does it survive pressure?

The last question, and the one that decides how long the work takes.

Anything that only holds in a calm room is not a skill yet. So towards the end I will usually interrupt you, or ask something you were not expecting, and watch what happens to the three answers above.

Structure that collapses under interruption is a structure problem, not a nerves problem, and it has a specific fix. Pace that doubles under a hostile question is a breath problem. What people call “going blank” is nearly always one of these two wearing a disguise.

The specific things I write down

Unglamorous, and this is the actual list:

• Roughly how many words a minute, and whether it varies
• Where the breaths land
• The first filler word, and whether fillers cluster before hard words or at every join
• Whether any sentence ends in silence
• Volume at the start of a sentence versus the end
• Whether the last word of a statement goes up or down
• Whether you look at the camera or the corner of the screen
• What your hands do when you reach something you are unsure about
• One thing that is already working, named specifically

That last one is not politeness. Some of what people do under pressure is worth protecting, and if I cannot name it I am not diagnosing, I am performing rigour.

What I am not assessing

Your accent. Unless it is costing intelligibility, and usually it is not. Accent and clarity are different things and conflating them is how a great deal of bad coaching happens. If it is genuinely getting in the way, that is accent softening, which keeps the accent and removes the friction.

Whether you are a natural. There is no such assessment and I would not know how to make it.

Your personality. Introversion is not a speaking problem and I will say so. Nor is being quiet, or serious, or not funny.

Your slides. Bring them if the work is presentation-specific, but they are not part of the diagnosis. A deck cannot tell me anything about your voice.

What would make me say no

I turn work away in this session more often than people expect, and it is worth knowing before you book.

A stammer, or any diagnosed speech condition. The right professional is a speech and language therapist. I am not one and coaching is not a substitute.

Anxiety severe enough to be clinical. If the fear makes you avoid work entirely, produces panic symptoms, or does not settle at all once you have started, a GP is a better first call than me. Ordinary nerves are a different thing and those I can help with.

Children, exam syllabuses, LAMDA. Adults only, and no exam preparation.

Anyone who is not going to do ten minutes a day. An hour a week with anyone will not shift a habit on its own. I would rather say that at the start than discover it in week three.

In every one of those cases you still get the written list. The thirty minutes were free and the diagnosis is yours whether or not I am the person to act on it.

What to bring

Something real. A talk you have to give, a board update, an interview answer you recently gave badly. Real material makes the session diagnostic rather than theoretical, and it is much easier to speak about something you actually care about.

If you have nothing scheduled, that is fine and quite common. I will give you something to talk about on the call.

Book it, or do the first half yourself

The free thirty minutes is recorded, and you keep both the recording and the written list whatever you decide afterwards.

If you would rather not talk to anybody yet, you can do a rough version of questions one to three on your own. Record two minutes standing, then listen three times: once for pace, once for pauses, once for whether your sentences finish downwards. You will not catch everything, but you will catch more than you expect, and the free course covers what to do with what you find.

Common questions

What happens in a public speaking coaching session?

In the first one: you talk for two minutes about why you came, you speak for four on real material while I record, we watch it back together, and I tell you what is actually in the way. You leave with a written list. It takes thirty minutes and costs nothing.

Do I need to prepare anything for the first session?

Bring something real you have to say, or recently said badly. A talk, a board update, an interview answer. If you have nothing scheduled that is fine, and I will give you something to speak about on the call.

Will you record me?

Yes, with your permission, and you keep it. The recording is the method rather than an extra. Nobody has ever argued with a playback, and plenty of people have argued with me.

What if you decide you cannot help me?

I say so in the session and tell you who can. That happens most often with a stammer or a diagnosed condition, which belongs with a speech and language therapist, and with severe anxiety, which belongs with a GP. You still leave with the written list.