Human resource professionals invested in identifying and developing their organisation’s future leaders and valuable x-factor “intrapreneurs” are using the skills leveraged by a new collaboration of a group of renowned international public speaking masters, a leading business school and a foremost speaking bureau.

Senior management or professional client-facing teams with latent and semi-developed expertise in winning over an audience now have the opportunity to test their mettle and sharpen their swords against the best in the business-to business conferencing industry.

Aspiring entrepreneurial public speakers will also be accessing the mentorship and mindshare of these highly successful professional speakers.

The masters, who between themselves, boast the experience of presenting and facilitating at over 4 000 conferences worldwide. Michael Jackson, Lynn Baker, Ryan Hogarth and Shelley Walters have taken the initiative to publicly share their trade secrets.

International public speaking guru turned periodic tutor, Michael Jackson himself has mastered his art through facilitating well over 2 800 conferences to date.

The collaboration is unusual given how carefully speakers at their level protect their trade secrets and art form. All involved have carved out significant reputations for themselves on local and international stages and say they are willing to do so because they are excited about developing both entrepreneur and blue chip corporate “intrapreneur” speaker brands who in turn develop South Africa’s public speaking industry as a whole.
A platform for collective success.

Intrapreneurship, the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organisation, is gaining traction as a corporate management style and practice that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches. It also encompasses the reward and motivational techniques that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.

Paul Mc Connon, Director of Unique Speaker Bureau, has been scouting for emerging talent and finding ways to develop it for seven years. “The art of delivering dynamic business presentations and successfully influencing an audience is vital for business success – but few practice the real art,” he says.

“Whether presenting results at a board meeting, making a sales-pitch to clients or delivering a keynote speech at a conference, he maintains that this is when an influential professional and the message, is compromised the most,” says Mc Connon.

He highlights that the process culminates in giving delegates the stage to deliver a 10-minute presentation to the best of the best: all four trainers, along with Henley Business School Management and staff as well as top management of the Unique Speaker Bureau Management.

“When it emerged that Lynn, Michael, Ryan and Shelley were willing to sharpen each other’s words and share a stage we knew it was time to help raise the bar of the industry as a whole. Henley Business School immediately appreciated how essential executive presentation skills are and came on board immediately to partner with us in this initiative.”

“We want delegates to leave the course as better speakers, better business presenters and better masters of influence,” says Mc Connon.

Through experiential exercises and small group activities, delegates will have the opportunity to put new techniques into practice and enhance their ability to speak with confidence, poise, clarity and conviction. In addition to this, delegates are encouraged to foster these skills through the unique opportunity to present numerous times in front of peers and coaches and receive immediate feedback on content and delivery.

Furthermore, the course will explore what successful speakers do right and what needs to change. It will outline dynamic delivery skills including voice projection, tone and vocal pace and how posture, stance and body language has the ability to either increase or decrease credibility.