Does speaking at work feel harder than it should?
A 9-week programme for capable professionals whose voice doesn’t always match their ability.
Our summer cohort is currently underway.
If you’d like to join The Speaking Gym, you can sign up to the waitlist today and be the first to hear about upcoming programmes.
You’re up next. All eyes turn to you.
You start and you're doing OK (or at least you think you are). And then you feel it: the thumping in your chest, the heat creeping up your neck, the muffled ringing in your ears.
You're still talking but somewhere underneath it a voice has started – oh f**k, it's happening again -and now you're doing two things at once: trying not to forget what you were saying, and trying to ignore what’s going on in your body.
But you can feel yourself going red. You know they can see it. The harder you try to push it down, the louder it gets. Somehow, you get to the end. Someone moves on to the next point. Afterwards you're drained in a way that's hard to explain. And you’re so frustrated that it happened again.
You’re actually quite conscientious at work and what some might call a ‘high achiever’. But you’re carrying this fear and it almost feels like a secret. People assume you’d be a natural speaker - it’s all part of how you got to where you are. So why do you feel anything but?
Maybe you've tried things. Up at midnight googling why you get so nervous in meetings. The podcast someone recommended. Telling yourself “you've got this”, “you've done it before”, “it’s only a meeting.”
Maybe you’ve never known where to start.
Perhaps it’s started spilling into situations beyond work – out for a meal with close friends, making small talk with the barista at your local café.
And somewhere along the way you’ve started to think: maybe this is just who I am?
You've heard the usual advice.
For some reason, it doesn’t work for you.
The traditional wisdom- prepare more, power pose before you go in, record yourself and watch it back - wasn't built for you. It was built for someone who's basically fine and wants to be better. It assumes you can access your thinking when the pressure's on. It assumes your body is broadly cooperating.
When it's not, all the preparation in the world doesn't quite reach it. You can know your content inside out and still feel your stomach drop, and your chest tighten the second your name is called.
Your body learned this. It can unlearn it.
Somewhere along the way your body decided that speaking in certain situations is a threat. And now it responds accordingly, every time, whether you want it to or not. The racing heart, the going red, the sweaty palms - that's your body protecting you from something it learned to treat as danger.
By tuning into the body and practising in a safe environment that isn’t the actual meeting, we can start to teach the body a new pattern. Over time, the fear loses its grip, and the self-criticism quietens. And slowly, the dread that used to take up your whole week starts to take up a little less of it.
That's what The Speaking Gym is.
WHY THE USUAL STUFF HASN'T WORKED
Nine weeks.
Each one building on the last.
The programme is built on the TRUST Method (Tune In | Regulate | Undertake Safe Practice | Strengthen Speaking Skills | Transfer to Work) a blend of evidence-based body & mind regulation tools, practical tactics, and structured speaking practice. We practise together as a group, but each person is testing and building their own personal toolkit.
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We start by getting to know each other and hearing what situations and scenarios bring it on and how it presents for each person. You’ll learn that competent people feel this too and that everyone experiences it slightly differently. Then we get into the science. What's actually happening in your body and brain when it kicks in, and why it responds the way it does.
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This is where we start speaking. We use simple, everyday scenarios that we all have to face as part of our jobs. The goal is simply to speak and notice - what's happening in our body, what thoughts are coming up while we're doing it. For the first time, we're asking ourselves to tune in rather than resist or push through.
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The scenarios get a little more challenging. We look at speaking up in front of senior leaders, pitching an idea, handling interruptions, chairing meetings, one-to-ones with your manager where you need to defend your thinking. We layer in role play and structures that help you get to the point without losing your thread. We give each other feedback so we can all keep learning, and we keep building on the regulation tools week by week.
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We tackle the conversations many of us find the most challenging - particularly around advocating for ourselves. A pay rise, a performance review, backing your idea in a difficult room or where it gets pushback. You practise those scenarios here, managing the pushback, noticing how you're feeling while you do it. You're giving your brain real evidence that you can handle it.
At the end of the programme, we reflect together on where we started, what's made the biggest impact, and what gaps we still need to close. Each week you'll have been building and testing what works for you, and you’ll leave with a personalised toolkit that you can return to again and again.
Our summer cohort is currently underway.
If you’d like to join The Speaking Gym, you can sign up to the waitlist today and be the first to hear about upcoming programmes.
1,400
people on the waitlist in three months.
FROM OUR PILOT GROUP
“I was very nervous at the thought of taking part as I really didn’t know what to expect. I remember that feeling of relief after the first session when I realised the other participants also suffer from the same speaking ‘hang ups’ as I do. Feeling I could be my true self on the course is a testament to the group and meant I got the most from the 9 amazing weeks.“
— Emma, Assistant Principal & Senior Assessment Manager
“I finally understood where my fear of speaking comes from, which is the fear of being judged. I've also learned to switch off that inner critical voice, or at least push it further into the distance. I now have so many new tools and techniques and I feel 100% more confident than when I first started.”
— Luke, Talent & Development Business Partner
“I'd heard about mindfulness all my life - naming a thought and letting it go. But I never realised how effective it actually was until I had it up against this kind of lens. Before, it would have been days and days of thoughts taking over completely before a presentation. Now I can just acknowledge them and let them go. I can't explain enough how helpful that is.“
— Jo, Communications Manager
IS IT FOR YOU?
Probably yes, if you've read this far.
If you've been nodding through this page with that feeling of oh that sounds like me - then you’re probably the person we built this for.
It's for you if speaking at work costs you more than it should. If you dread it days in advance. If you've spent years thinking it was just you, or wondered if others feel this but just hide it better. If you've sat in a meeting with something to say and let the moment pass. If you've turned things down or taken a more background role to avoid it.
It's for you if you're hesitating because you’ll have to do the very thing you fear which is speak in front of a group of people. We get it, we would’ve had the exact same reservations. But everyone in the group has the same fear. The same racing heart, the same dread. And we speak about this openly from the very first session.
It's not for you if you'd just like a bit of polish. If you present fine and want to be better. If you're comfortable speaking and looking for tips and tricks. There are excellent communication courses for that, and this isn't one of them. The work we do only works because everyone on the course is in the same place. We need to protect that.
WHO'S BEHIND THIS
Built by people who get it.
This programme was built by people who get it, who know exactly what it feels like to dread a meeting, lose their train of thought mid-sentence, or feel their body betray them when all eyes turn to them. Between us we have decades of experience working in communications and hold an MSc in Work and Organisational Psychology - which is what shaped how we built The Speaking Gym and where we went looking for answers.
Your facilitators
WHY THE USUAL STUFF HASN'T WORKED
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Rebecca spent 12 years in communication and change consulting - helping organisations bring people with them through transformation, and working with leaders on how to explain complex strategies clearly.
Speaking with clients and presenting was part of her role. She would have said she was fairly confident, always prepared well, and experienced normal nerves, never anything debilitating. Then during COVID something changed. Mind blanks started happening, seemingly out of nowhere. She starting scripting everything, over-preparing for meetings, trying everything and anything she thought would help. It got worse – to the point that she had a panic attack before a presentation. She was mortified, she worked in comms after all. She barely mentioned she was going through this at work.
She went looking for answers and found the same advice everywhere – know your content thoroughly, drink water, slow down. Advice built for normal nerves, not for what she was experiencing. So she went further, into psychology and into how the nervous system actually works under threat, and gradually pieced together an approach that helped her manage it.
For a long time, she didn't talk about it. Then she started sharing her experience publicly and the response stopped her in her tracks. So many people were dealing with exactly the same thing, privately, assuming they were the only one. She couldn'tget over it. Why is nobody talking about this? And why aren't these tools being taught at work? The Speaking Gym is her answer to both.
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Aoife began her career in people-focused roles within the tech industry before moving into consulting. Her work now spans communication, people, and organisational change, alongside designing learning and development programmes. She is trained in psychometric assessment tools and has a particular interest in the psychology behind how people think, communicate, and perform at work.
That interest was shaped, in part, by her own experience.
From college onwards, Aoife experienced intense physical symptoms around speaking and being put on the spot. Her heart would race, her face would flush severely, she would get pins and needles in her hands and arms, and her mind would become full and cloudy. She always felt far more comfortable expressing herself through writing than speaking.
Despite performing well academically and professionally, the moment attention turned towards her, she often felt unable to access her thoughts clearly or articulate herself the way she wanted to. She coped by over-preparing, avoiding visibility, staying quiet in meetings, or deferring to others even when she knew she had something valuable to contribute.
For years, she assumed it was simply part of her personality. Over time, she became increasingly aware of how overlooked this experience is, particularly in high-achieving professionals. Speaking difficulty is often dismissed as simple nerves or something people grow out of. But when it goes unaddressed, it often compounds.
Together, she and Rebecca came to believe that much of the traditional advice on communication simply does not work for everyone. The Speaking Gym was founded on the understanding that difficulties with speaking are far more common than most people realise, often carrying a significant physical and cognitive toll. With the right support, understanding and practical tools, those difficulties can be managed and improved rather than endured in silence.
FAQs
Before you talk yourself out of it
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The people this programme works best for are the ones who experience a strong physical response - the racing heart, going red, the voice that doesn't sound like theirs. That's exactly what it's designed for. If you were only mildly nervous, you probably wouldn't have read this far.
The people for whom this isn't the right fit are those who are in a more acute place, where anxiety is affecting most areas of life, not just speaking, and where therapeutic support would be the better first step. If you're not sure, the conversation we have before you join will help figure that out.
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Most communication skills training assumes you can access your thinking under pressure. It works on things like delivery, structure, content & body language. That's genuinely useful if your body is broadly on board.
This starts earlier. Before delivery, with what's happening in your body before you've said a word, and why the usual techniques don't reach it. The psychological principles we work from are fundamental, and so is the practice structure.
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Everyone who signed up for the course has had the same thought. We take time to intentionally create trust and safety in the group from the very first session.
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It is, and we won't pretend otherwise. One session per week, plus practice in between.
The in-between matters as much as the sessions themselves. Think of it like the gym: you don't get stronger by turning up once a week and doing nothing in between. The shifts happen because you practise, notice what's different, and come back. Each week builds on the last, and people who've missed a week have told us they felt it.
If that's not possible right now, it's worth waiting until it is. A half-committed nine weeks won't give you what a fully committed one would.
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Only you know your schedule. But ask yourself if "I'm too busy right now" is actually "I'm scared and I'd rather wait". It can feel the same. The moment of calm you're waiting for, where it feels safer to try tends not to arrive.
However, if you're in a period of real overwhelm, not just busy, but genuinely stretched beyond capacity, it might not be the right time. This programme asks something of you in between sessions, and if you don't have that bandwidth right now, you won't get what you could from it. We've had people make the call to not join yet and return later, and that was the right decision for them.
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Nine weekly sessions of approximately 90 minutes each, first session is 2 hours, held on Zoom. Throughout the programme you'll build your own Personal Speaking Toolkit - a regulation plan that's specific to you (breathing, grounding, mindfulness and mindset tools tested and chosen by you), alongside practical communication structures and phrases you can reach for time and again. You leave with something concrete - a before, during and after plan that you've actually tested and know works for you.
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Sessions run weekly, including most public holidays. Where a session falls on a public holiday, we’ll check in with the group and proceed according to participant availability. Any schedule changes will be communicated in advance.
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If you think your employer might cover this, great - we can help with that. We have an enterprise rate and we're happy to handle the conversation with your organisation directly, including any supporting materials they might need. Apply as normal and we'll talk through it when we're in touch.
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The Speaking Gym doesn’t have to end after nine weeks if you don’t want it to. We’re exploring the idea of an alumni group - our pilot members already stay in touch regularly.
And of course, anyone who needs follow up support from us will always be welcome to it!