The Key To Being An Excellent Communicator
I’m Paul, the voice and communication coach for Heart-led Celebrant Training, and I also work with celebrants who’ve trained elsewhere but haven’t had the vocal and presentation training they really needed. In fact, I work with all sorts of people who want to improve the sound of their voice, how to communicate with it, and to generally improve their confidence.
I particularly enjoy tutoring celebrants, showing them how to make their ceremonies come alive. I’m a rare breed. We should be a protected species.
I enjoy working with celebrants-in-training because they’re new to it, and they’re something of a blank page (in the nicest possible way 😊). But despite the fact that they know that they’re in for some voice training when they’re with Heart-led, and they kind of know that what I teach is essential for them to become fully rounded celebrants, it’s not specifically why they came to us.
I also love working with celebrants who’ve already trained elsewhere (or haven’t trained at all), and are already doing the job. They almost certainly haven’t had in-depth voice and communication training either. One of the reasons I get a lot out of coaching working celebrants is that because they’re experienced, they have an inkling of what’s missing from their ceremonies.
But think about this (and read it slowly 😊). In any field, most people know what they know. And they have a notion of what they don’t know… but for all they know, there could be whole world of things that relate to what they’re interested in that have never entered their minds. And that’s what happens in my sessions with working celebrants – and why I find it so satisfying.
The comments I get are along the lines of “I’d never thought of that”; “Why hasn’t anyone told me that before?”; “That makes so much sense”; and “What a great tip!” The result is that each person I work with ends up having the tools at their disposal to improve how their voice sounds, and even more importantly, to be able to dramatically improve how they communicate their carefully written words. They’re able to bring their ceremonies to life.
Usually, a celebrant reads a ceremony to the people listening, and that’s a huge potential stumbling block. An alternative to reading is using ‘bullet-points’. That can work reasonably well, but there’s a risk that the speaker won’t be completely accurate with names and dates. And it’s easy to miss out other important information, events and carefully crafted turns of phrase. Another alternative is to learn the ceremony by heart. Good luck with that –
especially if there’s a quick turnaround, which is often the case for funerals and cremations! And anyway, a lot of people sound just like they’re reading when they’re speaking from memory (or using bullet points). The more a person sounds like they’re reading, the less interesting they come across. Even someone who reads very well won’t attain the element of sounding spontaneous which enlivens the best speakers.
How can you read a script out loud while sounding spontaneous but as if you’re not reading it? Well, that’s one of my specialist subjects! The techniques are almost too simple to believe. Putting them into practice takes… practice, but once you have that skill under your belt, it will lift your presentation out of the ordinary.
I divide into five the styles of how I hear celebrants present.
1/ Flat and boring with repetitive falling inflexions
2/ Especially in funerals, a false, almost pious veneer of concern. Again, this is dull and repetitive! The celebrant doesn’t communicate with the audience, and because of the pious veneer, deprives the listeners of their right to make up their own minds of how to interpret and respond to what’s being said.
3/ The short-story style. This can work quite well, but it still sounds like the celebrant is reading. It doesn’t have the air of spontaneity that lifts the presentation off the page.
4/ The recalling/considering style, where the celebrant honours each change of thought as they move through the ceremony, which results in a natural, lifelike presentation.
5/ This is the same as the previous style, except that the celebrant is open to reflecting (subtly) any feelings which may arise as they consider what they’re about to say. This can lead to a rich, multi-layered presentation, full of natural variety.
Take a look here to get an idea of how to be able to do style 5: Top Tips for Celebrants – 4 – Paul Robinson Voice Coaching
A while back, I worked with a celebrant who’d trained with one of the many organisations that don’t give any worthwhile guidance about voice and communication. After some sessions, she wrote:
Paul, despite being a celebrant for three years, no matter how much care and creativity I’d put into the writing, I felt that my presentation style was missing something. It didn’t engage the listener as much as I’d have liked, or me, in the delivery.
Since working with you, my perspective and scope in relation to celebrancy has totally transformed. You’ve helped me to add a quality to my delivery that I previously had no idea about. I don’t think I’ll even call it delivery anymore.
Someone who came to one of my recent funerals said to me “Were you reading that? Well, of course you were, you must have been; but it just didn’t seem like you were.”
To have such a marked change within a month is a massive testament to your teaching style – which felt informal, open, tailored to my needs and rooted in so many years’ experience that you have with voice and communication. The toolkit you’ve given me (which will keep me busy and improving for years to come) has given the whole celebrant journey a new layer to it. I feel more engaged in the art of presentation, storytelling and communing with the listener than before. Which in turn makes my work feel more personally fulfilling as I continue to grow within the role.
Areas I’d assumed which just came along with the package of the celebrant role are actually rich in their possibility. There’s a lot more to it than I’d even thought about before. A. C.
I offer a free no-obligation chat (phone or Zoom) so you can see whether you’d benefit from working with me. I work on a session-by-session basis. Some people book just one, and take it from there. Others commit to between two and four sessions. I charge £70 for a one-hour session. (And as someone remarks in the testimonials, I’m generous with my time.) I send an email after each session with a summary of what we worked on. If you get to four sessions, you get a fifth one, free of charge.
This blog tells you why I’m highly qualified to be a celebrant voice,
presentation and communication coach. https://paulrobinsonvoicecoaching.co.uk/my-background-and-celebrant-training/
And here’s a link to the first blog my Top-Tips series. Top Tips For Celebrants -1 – Paul Robinson Voice Coaching
Website: https://paulrobinsonvoicecoaching.co.uk/
07469 957 199
For full two-on-one celebrant training, in person or on line, see Heart-led Celebrants – Heart-led
Celebrants (heartledcelebrants.com)