What I do

Ben Livingstone by David Michael Photogr

I've been running workshops focusing on how we communicate for many years. Three things are at the heart of it:

Firstly, however good we are at our work, however developed our technical skills, our knowledge or our expertise, we usually have to interact with others and communicate about it in some way.

It’s my experience that many people at work limit themselves in this respect even though when with friends or family they’re freely expressive, broad in their thinking and uninhibited in their creativity. There are sometimes so many imperatives in the workplace that people’s range of communication skills can be straitened or stunted.

Lastly, when communication is challenging, when the stakes are high, or there’s conflict or pressure, people easily resort to their default behaviours. Practising alternatives in the safe space of a training exercise can begin to shift habits and enable people to try more fruitful approaches to exploring ideas or resolving differences with their colleagues.

The work I do is almost all practical. As an actor, I draw upon techniques from that work to inspire what I do in the training room. Acting is a creative but pragmatic craft and we dispense with everything that doesn’t directly serve the work. In training this allows me to combine easily-graspable, practical approaches with exercises that bring more of our potential and inventiveness to the situation at hand.

Over the years I’ve worked as a trainer, and also as a role-player, with a wide range of companies and organisations including:

most European Central Banks
Apollo Underwriting
Poplar Harca
the European Banking Authority
the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority
many European banking regulators
the European Stability Mechanism
King’s College London
University College London
Guy’s Hospital
the NHS
Cappagh Browne
Specsavers
Inchcape Fleet Solutions
Northcliffe Media

This includes work on:

presentation skills and talking to an audience
building confidence at work
international meeting skills
strategic networking skills
intercultural communication
overcoming personal and institutional barriers
how to achieve consensus in conflict
management and leadership styles
voice and body language in communication
clinical examination and patient interview techniques
health and safety