Cat Clancy from City Academy talks to Findcourses.co.uk about how companies can use performance-based training to harness their employees' skills and knowledge.
Can you tell us about your professional background? What brought you to professional training?
I trained as an actress at The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, (now part of Central School of Speech and Drama). In between acting work, I sought out employment that made use of my professional skills and exercised them, and this led me into teaching voice and communication skills freelance for business professionals. The more work I took on, the more convinced I became that acting skills are really life skills, and useful for anyone who needs to hold attention and meaningfully engage with people. I found business coaching so rewarding that I began to actively pursue it alongside my creative career, and gained experience working alongside professionals in neuroscience and psychology, whose knowledge enriched my performance skills. In 2007 I joined City Academy as an Acting Teacher, but in the last few years I have taken a leading role in their burgeoning Learning and Development branch and I’m now one of their Senior Tutors, coaching professionals in companies such as McGraw Hill, Fidelity and Shell.
What are some of the driving principles of acting and the performance arts that you draw upon for teaching?
Fundamental to performance is the understanding of how the voice and body works and how to control the messages you are sending out with your speech and body language. Underpinning this is the key role of breath and how breath links to thought and personal presence. Other principles include; the necessity of being clear in your intention and knowing which choices vocally and physically to make in order to convey it. The art of engaging the audience and knowing how to read their responses. Overcoming nerves through physical and psychological approaches is also central to all public-speaking. And finally, principles used in improvisation can be applied to negotiation and conflict resolution.
How do they relate to business and management?
Content is crucial but the message is in the delivery. If you need to persuade a client, motivate as a manager or simply make an impact in a meeting, it’s the voice and body language that are key to communication. Plus, with the increasing use of conference calls, Skype and video conferencing, where the voice bears the burden of communication, it’s essential to be able to speak in an expressive, well-paced and articulate way. Psychological techniques that maintain connection with the other person are also invaluable when it comes to managing teams, convincing clients and networking with other business professionals.
What sets acting-inspired courses apart from traditional professional skills training?
Performance-based courses are experiential as well as theoretical. They give the delegates a chance to see what a technique sounds and feels like, before taking it back into the workplace. Also, more and more in business, people are called upon to deliver presentations and the biggest obstacle to these is nerves. Nerves are an occupational hazard for an actor and no other profession has such a repertoire of strategies to overcome them!
Why should businesses explore performance arts training for employees? What are the benefits for individuals?
The more practical, experiential style of performance arts training challenges people in an utterly different way to sitting passively in a PowerPoint presentation, and opens up different pathways in the brain. It encourages them to get their voice and body fit for purpose, and eradicates anything that is getting in the way of their impact. This in turn helps them to represent their expertise much more effectively, meaning that companies are really able to harness the individual’s skills and knowledge.
How important is it that delegates have a good time during a training course?
Having fun is integral to a training course. If the training is not enjoyable, then the delegate won’t be prepared to take a risk and try something new. They need to feel that they can experiment without consequences and that playfulness is in itself a skill that promotes learning.
From your experience as a trainer, what is the difference between facilitating performance arts training with business professionals versus trained actors?
They’re often concerned with time and deadlines, so sometimes it’s a challenge for them to step away from their phone and give themselves permission to "play". Once they realise that the play is constructive and illuminating, then they can be as creative as any actor, but it’s making this transition into a different space with different objectives, which can take time to adjust to. The other main difference is that most of time business people sit behind computer screens, so they develop hunched posture, shallow breathing and expressionless faces, all of which get in the way of effective communication. However, in reality their muscles have simply gone to sleep and it’s a case of waking them up and demonstrating how re-connecting to their bodies can have a profound effect on their focus, impact and confidence. And the joy of a non-actor making that discovery can be incredibly rewarding to witness.
© Catriona Clancy 2015
| City Academy offer unique business training courses that are built on their long experience in the performing & creative arts industry. |
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