Deborah Khan -- Creative Inspiration: Why do we listen?(or six key themes)

What my clients say about me

John Birch - BA
“I was really impressed with the way Deborah Khan delivered training on the subject of communication skills to us at BA Pensions. She took time to fully research and understand how we worked and what our specific concerns were. She designed a programme that matched not only our collective requirements but was also flexible enough to cover individual development needs. Her methods, being performance based, ensured that even the most introverted of us participated in the programme and our subsequent delivery in formal presentations has improved significantly"
Tom Powell - DLKW
"I participated in a one-day session with Deb Khan last year and would strongly recommend it for both novice speakers and those looking to hone their skills. She (gently) picked apart our strengths and weaknesses and by the end of the day, the results were tremendous. Everyone left with a range of practical skills and it's been a huge benefit for presentations"
Kai Vacher - Specialist Schools Trust
"Deb has incredible foresight, emotional intelligence and a razor sharp focus on specific outcomes to plan programmes/workshops of outstanding quality. Her ability to work with a group of people so that very quickly they feel at ease with each other is unsurpassed in my experience. Deb uses a varied range of interactive strategies to provide the prefect balance of challenge and support for workshop participants. Post event, course participants often contact me to express their overwhelming sense of achievement having worked with Deb, and want more; for themselves and colleagues.”
David Mikhail - RHM
Deborah is fantastic. I’m afraid she had to suffer both of our last pitches – but after her input we just flew, winning really important work from both of them. She is practically our fourth partner now. In spite of all our training (7 years at architecture school) I realise now we were taught nothing about presenting. Deborah helped us to communicate successfully, but she is about much more than communication skills. She goes straight to the heart of what we are trying to say, what are our best ideas, and feels her way into the audience. She works us hard but she’s great fun and our business is booming thanks to her.
Simon Beckett - Five TV
"..this morning was most useful – so often in my experience creative workshops are all enthusiasm and no substance but yours was a refreshing change and I actually had to work at thinking about what you were saying and what I was thinking (I love metacognition)"

Or more pertinently, why do we remember. The title of my gig at Interesting 2007 was presumptuous. My intention was to not be prescriptive but to share a bit of what I have learned working as a director, corporate workshop leader and coach.

I wanted to model how I like to work- facilitating experiential learning. I am certain that the majority of people learn most effectively through experience. What I do is deconstruct models, theory and re-present it in a practical, hopefully more creative and engaging way. Stick to what you know, always. I tried to be true to myself. The audience yesterday would be hearing a lot of fantastic speakers. I wanted to shift the dynamic and involve them, encourage them to speak and hopefully explore why they listen though a real experience. Rather than the often misty eyed nostalgia of “I listen when…”

I wanted to try something ridiculously ambitious with an audience of 300. High risk, high reward. I wanted everyone to draw, share their images with a partner and then recall what had stayed with them from what they had heard. Minus qualification or explanation. Oh and I needed to warm them up with an exercise that democratised drawing.

Phew.

Think I pulled it off . Can't pretend I wasn't terrified. The fantastically game audience all channeled their inner Rolf Harris by drawing at speed. I was, as well, trying to move them into immediate right brain directed territory, avoiding the creative constipation that often appears when we begin to listen to our inner critic and judge our work too much.

How we connect to an audience is a central issue for any director. And disconnect. It is the eternal dilemma for live performance related art forms.

I wanted to try to see that even in this crude and simplistic version of a far longer exercise, the same themes would emerge.

The things we remember tend to fall into the same categories again and again. Irrespective of audience, situation or context. Every time. They are:

Empathy. Emotional resonance. Material that connects on a fundamental, engaging level. We participate in their dilemma.

Humour. Always memorable. Real humour as opposed to token gags. It can diffuse, release, highlight and humanise in an extraordinarily powerful way when done well.

Unexpected. Can be data, statistics, information, references, perspectives. Anything that avoids the formula of what they were expecting

Challenge. Stretches and extends our thinking. In some form.

Image. Really is worth 10,000 words. Stunning images yesterday that really did augment, not be, the presentations. They take us into complex, rich, emotional territories where words can often be a barrier.

Delivery “If it matters to you, it matters to them” Patsy Rodenburg, Head of Voice at The National Theater. Our voice is an external reflection of our internal state. Our inflection, pace, intonation, tone and pitch change in a subtle but important way. We hear it as an audience. Those words and phrases leap out and grab us. We also hear it when they don’t care.

The challenge now is to try and remember these themes when we are shaping content. It's all about connections.

Comments

Deb, you were great. I am only cross I missed the first half.

Posted by: matt d'ancona | June 18, 2007 at 12:27 PM

Hi Deborah

I really enjoyed your talk,and meeting you after. I hope there's another Interesting so you can maybe split us into groups and do more stuff together.
And thanks for the kind words below.

Posted by: np | June 18, 2007 at 01:17 PM

Thanks again for the experience - I carried home my shield with pride!

And thanks also for putting up those words on here. As I was standing behind them, I didn't get to take them in so it's great to see them now and reflect upon them.

See you soon
Emily

Posted by: Emily | June 18, 2007 at 03:48 PM

Yep, tough as it may be to transform an audience from passive to active in the first five minutes of a session, you managed it just fine. Thanks for the twenty minutes of fun.

Posted by: Tony | June 27, 2007 at 10:34 AM

Thanks Tony. It felt risky, I have to be honest. Generally that is how I work i.e I am a huge fan of active learning as a method of exploring thinking.A lot of planning is about how can we explore this other than talking.
Hope you enjoyed the whole day

Deb

Posted by: Deborah | June 28, 2007 at 03:41 PM

I think you are not quite right and you should still studying the matter.

Posted by: Music_master | September 25, 2010 at 10:17 PM