What we can learn about how to work smarter, based on how we feel and behave in speaking situations where we don't deliver

Speaking French and trying to perfect my pronunciation gave me some great insights into how to work on accent reduction and still feel confident and authentic

This post is all about me. No really, it is all about how it’s all about ME

Does it work to have 'two voices'? Or do you have to settle for one sound, one accent, in order to truly be yourself?

Using tongue twisters to gauge whether someone is too drunk to drive is just another way of telling us what we already know: people judge our competence based on how easy it is to understand us

There's some challenging ideas here for me as a practitioner of what I still call 'accent reduction' and sometimes 'elocution'

This week I was featured in an article in the Daily Telegraph, one of the UK's main national newspapers, to talk about politicians' voices, and whether it’s possible to tell if they’ve had public speaking coaching.

Working with voiceover artists, I’ve learned that ‘authenticity’ is everything: it’s the same for people I see one-to-one for accent reduction and confident speaking

'Brain fog' is another way of describing how it feels when we lose focus. How do we stay ‘in the moment’ and keep focused on what we want to talk about?

Bias: you can try to be colour-blind, but how about accent-deaf? I took a quiz on accent bias to find out whether I can overcome my own inherent biases…

If you avoid public speaking, but can’t when it comes to weddings… here’s my favourite thoughts or tips about how to give the big speech on the big day - and make a special day even more special

People often tell me about someone at work whose accent they can't understand. But almost never mention their difficulty to the strongly-accented person. Why not?

I’ve recently come back from my first trip to Northern Ireland, and I learned some things about the famous accent… especially when I tried to do it myself…

Results: why changing your speech habits isn’t like getting a nosejob

Everyone has an accent. I don’t believe there is such a thing as a ‘correct’ way to speak English: it just needs to be clear. Most people around the world are familiar with the ‘RP’ accent - but what is it and how do you make that sound?

What we call ‘public’ speaking doesn’t have to feel like performing - it should feel like a conversation where you do most of the talking