The Magic of Mentoring – part 3: Are you being heard?

A special lunchtime seminar with film & TV actress Debra Lawrance. 

Debra has worked extensively in film, theatre and television.  
She is perhaps best known for playing the central role Pippa in the hugely successful Australian soap Home and Away.  
More recently, she played Rose in the internationally acclaimed comedy Please Like Me as it continues to stream worldwide. In 2015 Debra was the recipient of the AACTA award for Best Performance in a Comedy for this role, and in 2017 she won the TV Week Logie Award for Most Outstanding Supporting Actress.  
More recently she has been playing Professor McGonagall in the Australian production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. 

Since 2005 Debra has also been teaching communication skills to people from across all sectors of the work force, with a particular emphasis on women’s communication issues in the workplace. Overwhelmingly, the main challenge that women confront at work is their reduced ability to be heard in meetings, presentations, discussions, and in general. Women have a different vocal capability from men and, as a result, face different challenges when trying to communicate effectively in the workplace.

Everyone, however, can benefit from vocal coaching. Complex language spoken with lazy speech patterns causes poor communication; this can then lead to misunderstanding. Conversely, clear language spoken cleanly and persuasively creates highly effective communication that can lead to successful outcomes.  

For most people “nerves” can be a huge issue when presenting or trying to be heard in meetings, but this can be overcome with the right guidance Debra’s practical workshops are strongly focussed on understanding and using the voice; they are highly experiential, thoroughly enjoyable and have proved to be a transformative experience for those who participate (and most importantly, clients still sound like themselves.