BESPOKEN Training Facilitation, Voice & Speech Coaching has launched a new service, Time to Think. This service helps people clarify their thinking, enabling them to make decisions, take action, and create the changes they long for.

A story of ineffective communication Sometimes we do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Other times we do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Recently though, I did the right thing for the right reasons, but it was still the wrong thing to do. Why? Let me tell you the story so that you might

With the kind help and support of John McGhee of the Swindon Speakers’ Club, Fiona Brennan-Scott has been able to set up a school club where she works in West Berkshire.

Do you have enough hours in the day? I struggle to quantify the benefits of time spent on social media versus the time lost.

‘Adapt or die’ is a rather harsh summary of the need to change, but the truth is that we constantly need to adjust in order to thrive. Success is about more than surviving, and we all want to succeed, don’t we?

Customer Service Manager is perhaps the new name for the Senior Flight Attendant on my British Airways flight to Dublin today. It is therefore ironic that her voice catches my attention due to the level of boredom she is communicating to her captive audience. I would love to pass on two or three techniques to help her

Can you identify a moment when you had an epiphany that changed the way you thought or did something forever? It happened to me, Fiona Brennan-Scott, when I was running the precursor to Bespoken and teaching English at a co-ed secondary school. On break-time duty one morning, five of my Year 10 students, girls, approached me to

Credit Where Credit is Due In 1997, Kurt Vonnegut delivered an MIT commencement speech that became known as the ‘Everybody needs to wear sunscreen’ speech. Or did he? Published on August 3rd, 1997, it was apparently one of the first written pieces to go viral in the late ’90s, just about the time going viral became possible

What do you think of the rise and popularity of face-to-face networking in its current format? Networking is as old as community and economics, but it has taken a deliberate turn in the 21st century to cope with a more individualistic society and more transient and mobile communities. Some don’t like the evolution and find it contrived

How Often? “Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out,” wrote Mary Schmich in a column for the Chicago Tribune in June 1997. She continued in the article to offer advice, including “Do one thing every day that scares you.” I would love to live by that maxim, but I have to admit that,

Here’s a simple tip to improve your public speaking if you like/need to use notes, with a couple of other tips thrown in for good measure: Most of us type up a speech, so printing it on a card isn’t always convenient. I don’t recommend using paper, as it’s far too easy for pages to stick together,