Imagine you are sitting the audience of the events hosted by Smart Coaching & Training Ltd Associates’ Jessica Breitenfeld and Alba Lucia Hincapié on February 15.  What can you expect to see and learn ?

Speakers Luisa Montalvo, Darren Lacroix and Mark Brown are all Toastmasters’ World Champions of Public Speaking.

What is Toastmasters ?

Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that builds confidence and teaches public speaking skills through a worldwide network of clubs that meet online and in person. Founded in 1924, the organization has approximately 270,000 members in more than 14,000 clubs in 150 countries.
Why are Jessica and Alba hosting these events? Jessica Breitenfeld , Alba Lucia Hincapié and SCT’s Clair Aghassipour and Caroline Dream are Europe’s Top female speaker, División champion of evaluation of speeches, European Champion, District Champion. They know how difficult it is to become a world champion, competing and winning through club, district, country, area and finally world competitions. And before that going through all the stages of the Toastmasters learning methodology before they are even allowed to compete. And all three presenters are prepared to show how they did it.

So you are going to learn some of the tricks or skills they learnt to get to the top.

All this sounds very academic, and in a way it is. But also remember these are public speaking champions and so they are also experts at entertaining and motivating the audience.
You can join Toastmasters just with a desire to learn to speak in public and the members will support you all the way to the top. You can do all the exams or just go along to polish your skills or just to support others. Many clubs are bi-lingual, so you can join a club which speaks in the language you are learning and become confident enough to present on stage in another language. Smart Coaching & Training’s founder David Rigby  has done that with his Spanish.

Professional Speakers Association

The Professional Speakers Association is another way of developing yourself as speaker. In this organisation there is opportunity to develop your speaking business. There are many different national organisations, some of which belong to the worldwide organisation. Being a member of the PSA is a chance to mingle with and befriend people who make a good living public speaking.

Smart Coaching & Training associates Ian Gibbs and Caroline Dream created the Professional Speakers Association in Spain which now operates in both English and Spanish.
The Toastmasters methodology and membership of Professional Speakers Association does not guarantee you will earn a fortune as a professional speaker As PSA Spain says “Not Everyone wants to be a professional speaker but everyone needs to speak professionally “.

The Toastmasters methodology and membership of Professional Speakers Association does not guarantee you will earn a fortune as a professional speaker. As PSA Spain says “Not Everyone wants to be a professional speaker but everyone needs to speak professionally “.

Smart Coaching & Training offers coaching from our champion associates and also has delivered training in public speaking in several countries. Some, like Ricardo Cabete  are full time professional speakers. Of course our associates have delivered speeches at conferences and events throughout the world . See https://www.smartcoachingtraining.com/speak .
Do you want to learn some of the tricks to get to the top of the speaking business ? Get your tickets for the events Tickets: For Luisa https://www.eventbrite.com/o/american-society-of-barcelona-1706033218  and for Darren   https://forms.gle/kFRrVfkGFQM5M2Ua6

Smart Coaching & Training works with 27 associates, in four continents speaking 14 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Written by David Rigby © 2025 Smart Coaching & Training Ltd

Celebrating the success of just some of Smart Coaching & Training’s remarkable Associates in recent months in 2024

There are now 27 associates within Smart Coaching & Training Ltd. And we are asked all the time “Can I be an Associate please ?” We also have several people on the reserve list – particularly specialists who are vetted and so can be called on when opportunities arise.

The main requirements to be an associate are that you are qualified and a team player as you have to take the time to get to know other associates. So that when opportunities arise you are able to work as a team to satisfy the needs. Another requirement is that you are interesting – you have something to say and you do interesting things outside work. See our associates here

Who is in the photo ?

From top left

Peggy Li – here on Dubai TV talking about Chinese Hospitality in Dubai

Sheona Della Fort – At Change Days in Barcelona running workshops on Spirituality

Caroline Dream – At Change Days presenting on Failure and currently in South America running a series of classes on Clowning

Jessica Breitenfeld – Organiser of Change Days, TEDx Speaker and winner of countless Toastmaster awards on her world wide trip

Maxine Barnett – Giving the ‘Maxine Barnett award for HR Excellence in Trinidad while being extremely busy in Washington

Carol Glynn – Winner of “Most Impactful Financial Literacy Project” in Dubai

Clair Aghassipour – Winner of First Prize in the Toastmasters International Speak Contest and her work on Interculturality with Sietar

Helen Morris – personally invited to celebrate UK King Charles’ Birthday at the UK Embassy in Dubai

Ricardo Cabete – setting fire to his Wallet at the Professional Speaker’s Association in Barcelona

Ian Gibbs – getting continuing success with Learning Clubs, and his work with Professional Speakers Association

Marc Mekki – special mention for his amazing presentation on Artificial Intelligence in Seville. Watch here. And to Mahmoud Assy and Pari Namazie for their podcasts and interviews

David Rigby – particularly proud of being guest professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona talking about Cognitive Diversity to Interculturality Students and getting confident to speak rubbish Spanish from a big stage.

It’s difficult to choose from al those successes . So much talent from everywhere and who have been everywhere . Posted before the Christmas rush

Smart Coaching & Training works with 27 associates, in four continents speaking 14 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Written by David Rigby © 2024 Smart Coaching & Training Ltd

Having a cognitively diverse team gets the best results

Many organisations have an HR department that ticks boxes on whether they enough women, gays, colours and nationalities and they think they have diverse teams. In general they only care about the law and diversity and pay scant attention to inclusion, interculturality, neurodiversity and generational diversity as it is not a legal requirement.

Who Needs To Make Money?

McKinsey have proved over and over again that having a truly diverse team is the best way to improve profits. And to develop customers it’s better to have someone who has similar characteristics to serve those customers.
No amount of ‘diversity’ in any of the above categories will be successful if everyone thinks the same way. And a recruiter’s in-built bias will ensure that they still recruit people who will ‘fit in’ rather than challenge the status quo. Your customers don’t all think the same way so neither should your team.

Holistic approach to recruitment

Recruiting a diverse team requires a holistic approach, recruiting the best person for the team is way more important than recruiting the best person for a particular job. Not an approach even thought about by most recruiters who still look for hard skills and experience rather than the soft skills required to work in a team.

FREE EVENT 23rd November 2024

DISCulturally Decoding Human Behaviour with Clair Aghassipour – see below to get tickets

How do you go about this?.

Some people are more extrovert (or Active) than others and some are more introvert( (or Reactive). Some people absolutely rely on logic ( or Task Orientated) and have no time for emotion, others think emotion and behaviours such a empathy are very important (or People Orientated). Putting them all together which brings four combinations.
In reality everyone is a combination of introvert/extrovert and of logical/emotional but tend to be predominantly one combination such as ‘emotional/extravert’ , which can be expressed as through the colours red, yellow, green and blue.

Profiling Tools

There are many tools available to assess individuals as to which personality types. There are tools based on the work of Jung which include Insights, C-me and the variants of DISC. Others are MBTI, Enneagram which take a different approach.
Within Smart Coaching & Training we have expertise on many of these tools. And in order to gain an understanding of the concepts of DISC, SCT associate Clair Aghassipour is running a three hour workshop on Colour Profiling using DISC. This will cover the concepts of the understanding of individuals as well as combining to build a truly diverse team. (see details below)

Don’t believe all the stereotyping by Interculturalists

Many interculturalists believe that there are characteristics and behaviours based on nationalities,  such as The Dutch are very logical and the Spanish are very emotional. To an extent this is the case, and is a good starting point. But given and even split of cognitive characteristics only half of the Dutch are logical and only half the Spanish are emotional. So the works of Hofstede are a good starting point , but also considering the way people think is a much more useful way of thinking.

All about Human Behaviour

DISCulturally Decoding Human Behaviour Workshop 23rd Nov 9.45 CET with Clair Aghassipour – FREE EVENT but you have to reserve your place . Send request to info@Smartcoachingtraining.com

Read also about Profiling in general here Read also about Cognitive Diversity here

Watch David Rigby give an introduction to Colour Profiling  here and also …

• David presented a 7 minute test speech for Madrid Toastmasters on Cognitive Interculturality here
• Watch is webinar on Cognitive Diversity with DG Talks here
• Watch his ‘hot seat’ interview on Cognitive Diversity for GLEAC  here.

Smart Coaching & Training works with 27 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Written by David Rigby © 2024 Smart Coaching & Training Ltd

Change Days Barcelona, Valencia Digital Summit, Professional Speakers Association – Grow Convention Barcelona

Last week I attended Change Days Barcelona and Valencia Digital Summit(VDS), back to back .
Change Days was attended by 40 people VDS by several thousand. Next week at Professional Speakers Association Grow Convention Barcelona.

Presentation Skills

I have learnt that less is more. As a member of the Professional Speakers Association we learn that it’s better to use no slides, but if you must, use slides with very little content especially words. But at VDS these are techies . Every slide a wiring diagram, no time to read given by the presenter, or the presenter read it to you. – and you are supposed to know all the acronyms . No facilities for slides at Change Days. Each presenter drew you in by the force of their personality.

Levels of participation

In both cases, at certain times, there were 6 events going on at once. A stark contrast was, at Change Days everyone was totally committed to fully attend each offering, phones off, no laptops . In the auditoria at VDS– whether a panel was exchanging views or a single speaker was presenting almost 80% of the mainly male audience was not only browsing their phones but actively using their laptops. Hard to believe that hardly anyone found a compelling presentation given the great choice. I admit to not being enthralled about “How many microchips there are in the world” or “how I rescued a failing e-bike business” but those are personal views. However at Change Days learning about KungFu Breathing and How to Marry Yourself was totally engaging.

At VDS the most interesting person I met – placing females into the Techie industry – knew many of the people at change days. At Change Days there were four Smart Coaching & Training associates, all of whom presented , Jessica Breitenfeld, Caroline Dream, and Sheona Della Fort , and several other people I already knew. I this safe environment the best thing to do was to develop connections with people I didn’t know and we will be great friends next time!

Professional Speakers Association (Spain) – Grow Convention Barcelona 9 November 2024

The next weekend it will be my third Professional Speakers Association Convention. I am pleased to presenting on Diversity along with fellow Smart Coaching & Associate Ricardo Cabete and 15 other speakers. It will be like a combination of the two previous events.

It’s worthwhile to have invested the time in the past to know these experts and to be fully confident in their presence. Why not come along on November 9th and improve your confidence? https://psa-spain.com/convention/

Smart Coaching & Training works with 28 associates, in four continents speaking 14 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Speaking

Many of our associates learned how to speak via Toastmasters and Professional Speakers Association Read more

Written by David Rigby © 2024 Smart Coaching & Training Ltd

“Do you want to develop a leader or do you want a course?”

“Can you give us a course on Leadership Development ?”
“What kind of people need the training? “– “Various, different experiences and locations”.
“How many people will there be?” – “We will tell you an hour before the training.”
We have been asked to provide courses and trainers. It’s useful to know about the background of the trainees and, indeed, how many there are. You see the responses. These recent conversations were guaranteed to make the course generic, the trainer’s life difficult and the trainees’ experience potentially irrelevant.

Who Needs Leadership?

Organizations whether private or government bodies or countries need to have leadership. To do this they need leaders who are not just positional power leaders (placed there by their buddies in government). They have past leaders, current leaders, and to ensure the long term, they need future leaders. “If you always do what you always did, then you always get what you always got.” Keeping a steady hand is useful but is it as useful as preparing the organisation for its future in an ever-changing global world? So you need to develop leaders who can cope with the future.

Leaders are at different stages of development

Developing leaders is not just a case of attending a standard 5-day content training course and then you are an expert. Leaders will be at different stages of development in their life and have had different backgrounds and experiences. The leadership journey is never ending and you can never know it all. Leaders need to know different things, at different times, for different situations and types of evolution. Education needs to be forward looking, inspiring and visionary.

Leading starts with leading yourself

Some of Leadership learning is about acquiring skills but a lot of leadership learning is about developing your self understanding and your personality.. To be a leader you need to have followers and the first person you need to lead is yourself, hence the importance of “Know thyself” and your psychological makeup.

The stereotype of a leader

A leader does not need to be an old white privileged dominant male though many of those are brought up to think they ought to be and follow the command and control style. Leadership style should depend on who you are , where you are and who you are trying to lead. Organisations have their cultures which often clash with country cultures. And remember that 75% of people do not follow their country stereotype in the way they think or behave.

The marginalised leader

Some of those who are being lead may belong to marginalised groups, such as LGBT+, Neuro, generational, women, the poor, the working class, colour, living in a different country from where they were born, different religions. Some may be intersectional. And of course the leader may themselves belong to many marginalised groups.

It depends on the roles of those you are leading

Leading a country is different from leading a football team (maybe). Leading when you have authority (i.e. do what I say) is different from where you don’t. Try leading volunteers! Try being a consultant in an advisory role! Try being a nurse leading your patient on they way to recovery. Try running a committee where you (and indeed they) don’t have the authority to decide anything. Try dealing with a child. They all require leadership skills, the power of ‘follow me’ and persuasion skills, and getting someone to follow ‘your vision’.

Leading is different from Management

Comparison can be made with Projects and Programmes. A manager’s task is about delivering a set of objectives, to perhaps a set budget in a set time in order to achieve the key performance indicators (KPI’s). They manage people to achieve this. They may also be interested in ensuring that they will have people who can deliver in the future, or they might not care. A leader is measured by the benefit they deliver and not what they did . Leaders determine the way and encourage and inspire  others to follow. New leaders often start with a lot of management focus and a little leadership knowledge, but gradually become leaders.

Western Wisdom

Western Leadership teaching is often not appropriate for the location of the trainees. And whether they are in their country of birth or elsewhere. Leading diverse cultures is not easy when one where the staff never have had to take responsibility and others where the staff challenge authority .

There are many cases where Delegates have ‘learnt’ leadership from Western trainers and have said “this is great but culturally we cannot apply any of it in our home country.” The Westerners may think their method is better but is that just arrogance. In may ways it’s like saying women never invented anything.

Smart Coaching & Training works with 20 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Leadership Development

We work with you to build a plan to deliver your Leadership development. This can involve courses and workshops and one-to-one coaching. It can be a continuous process. The facilitators who mainly do this are :

• Malcolm Lewis
• Pari Namazie
• Clair Aghassipour
• Martin Kubler

They, like many other associates have experience of Leadership in many countries.

Conventional Leadership Training

SCT offers conventional leadership training in courses such as the ones below

• Leadership and Team Management: Creating and developing teams and leading them *
• Diversity, Interculturality and Cultural Intelligence for Remote Leaders Be successful with many diverse groups at the same time. Understand the many strands of diversity and what it takes to take advantage of it 
• Manager to Leader: Change your personality to that of a leader .
• Manager as Coach: Learn how to coach and develop the attitudes that enable you to coach well
• Building your Personal Brand: Develop your personal brand based on your Behavioural Profile, strengths and wishes,
• Achieving personal success with international teams. Building and running international teams to demonstrate leadership competence
• Transformation using Psycho-social Vertical Adult Development and Spiral Dynamics – for experienced leaders

See them all here

We also have many short courses to develop specific skills

Written by David Rigby © 2024 Smart Coaching & Training Ltd