Today is the final day of our interview with Rich Hopkins.
Question: How has Toastmasters and more specifically evaluations helped you with being a professional speech coach?
It has made me an active listener, taught me to critique on the fly, and exposed me to a large diversity of both speaking styles and audience needs. The broader one’s experience, the greater help they can be as a coach.
Question: What skills does a speech coach need to possess and why?
A coach must be able to discern what is inside the speaker, and be able to coach them to bring what’s inside out to an audience in the way the audience needs to hear, it, as opposed to how the speaker wants to say it. Coaching is a balancing act of ego and efficiency , listening and communicating, guiding and inspiring. Coaching is sales – your client must want to buy what you’re saying. Once you know how they like to buy, you can sell them all the way to the highest stages.
About Rich Hopkins
In addition to finishing 3rd in the 2006 WCPS, Rich has been a 5 time District Evaluation Contest Finalist, winning 3 of those 5 times. He has been a Toastmaster for over 10 years and has expanded significantly on Toastmaster evaluation theory as a professional speaker and presentations coach.
Visit Rich’s blog to see his current progress towards making it a 3rd time to the WCPS and also follow Rich on Twitter.
Posted under Interview
This post was written by john on May 1, 2009
