We love whenever our members share about how our program has helped them build their speaking confidence and achieve an important professional or personal speaking milestone.
Speaker Spotlight Series celebrates members who’ve participated in our training and have gone on to reach a speaking goal that – at one point, – felt virtually impossible due to the intense feelings of nervousness and anxiety they experienced while speaking.
Today’s Speaker Spotlight showcases Amanda Yeo’s Journey. We ask her why she started training, what has helped her to improve and what advice she has for those getting started. Way to go, Amanda!
What do you do for work?
I am a product marketing manager at a company called Sonatype, where we develop products for the software supply chain.
Why is having strong communication skills so important in your role?
Why did you join Speak for Success?
For me, it is definitely more about being able to make presentations, not in front of my customers, but in front of my colleagues and peers. Although I do have a fairly confident presence when I speak to my customers, often I find that I can’t make those points distinct when I’m making and having plenty of conversations with my colleagues. So I joined Speak for Success to be able to come up with tactics to be able to sort out my thoughts on the fly and be able to make sure that my points are also synced when I talk to them.
How has training and practicing helped improve your communications skills?
Training for Speak for Success has helped me with improving my skills at work in ways that are not so much about being polished at my presentations, but being able to help me create frameworks for the way that I speak to my colleagues. There’s a lot of times in which I’m at work, I will know the information, but being able to get to the point has not always been the easiest. They give me not only just presence about how I speak, but also about how I could be able to point out filler words, which is also very common in the way I speak when I speak to my colleagues. So it’s actually been really helpful to be able to actually get practical, speaking training. Speak for Success really gave me a lot of great ways to think about a problem that I never really had before.
What advice do you have for someone just starting their public speaking and communications journey?
I think there’s actually a lot to consider. But I think the one thing that I will say is just just don’t be afraid to practice, especially inside this, this training group. They’re really kind, they’re really supportive in every single session that I’ve had. I think that there is a lot of times we read through our theories. But at the same time, there’s nothing that truly replaces being able to practice and run through it. Because you start to notice a lot of the filler words and areas that you have, when you’re actually talking. And even for myself, there’s a lot of moments in which you’ll never really see where these issues are until someone points it out to you. It’s also helpful to get that feedback in real time. So just take it slow. Practice one by one, practice with yourself at first if it’s too nervous to be able to do with others. But in in a lot of ways, just finding some ways to practice, I think, is really big!
Interested in becoming a member or partnering with Speak for Success for your team?
👩🏻💻 You can register today or book a call with one of our Learning Specialists to find out how we can support you or your team.
