Are you a student looking to gain valuable personal skills that will make you more employable? Do you want to improve your confidence and presence? I did it and now I want to share my experience so you can too!
Make your Mark with Susan Room® is a coaching programme. It used to be reserved for professionals, such as directors and higher management within companies, but now it is also available to students.
Many students have similar doubts and difficulties to professionals during their working day– nerve-racking presentations, hard deadlines and difficult group work, therefore the skills and tools you learn in this programme apply to everyone. Does this sound like something you’d be interested in? Read on to learn about my experience on the programme and how you can secure a free place for yourself.
Module one (my personal favourite), covers mindset – it’s all about how you think. The inner critic is a phrase that I hadn’t come across before, but it is the perfect description for that little annoying voice inside your head. It’s that voice that will convince you that everyone is looking at you and judging. Sometimes it can often stop you from doing something and hold you back.
Susan’s programme helps you to manage your inner critic by exploring its triggers and how to manage it. This module also explores self-affirmation and how logging some aspects of your life (such as strengths, achievements and qualities) can help to create new positive neural pathways. I love this tool and find myself referring to it all time.
The way Susan talks about dealing with the inner critic - that it’s not something that will magically disappear but you can manage it with practice - is perfect.
The second module covers your body language – it’s about how you look. Susan discusses the difference between confident and nervous body language and how to tackle key areas to take yours towards ‘confidence’. She uses a mixture of verbal teaching as well as practically getting you to practise different exercises to feel the benefits of her coaching.
This module has been particularly important for my presentations. Everyone must present at some point, especially at uni. Unis use presentations to allow their students to practise for the ‘real-world’. But who teaches us how to present and, perhaps most importantly, how to hold ourselves during a presentation? Susan’s teachings about confident body language and how to execute it are an amazing resource to draw on while presenting to be more confident.
Susan's third module is on speech, this one’s all about what you say. It contains lots of amazing tools, all of which I use almost every day.
This module helps you combat unhelpful speech habits and discounting language I didn’t realise how many unhelpful speech habits I had developed over the years. After the session, Susan challenged me to ask someone close to point out when my speech contained unhelpful habits. This allowed me to identify when and how often these words were creeping in and to lessen my use of them. This is and will continue to be, a valuable skill, as when I enter the workplace certain speech habits may make me seem unprofessional. This is another great example of why Susan’s programme is so valuable to students. Addressing these unhelpful habits now, helps us create positive habits for the future.
The last module covers voice – it’s all about how you say something and is the final piece of the Make your Mark puzzle!
This module emphasises the real difference between hearing and listening. Did you know there are actually three levels of listening? I didn’t but Susan coaches you through all this and how to listen accurately. How you listen transforms your conversations - it's a fantastic skill to have.
Personally, this programme has benefitted me massively. I can credit many positive actions from my life to things I learned. Without these skills and tools, I wouldn’t be as confident and I may have turned down opportunities that have subsequently come my way!
Now it’s your turn! Susan is running another student programme this summer and I have a free place to gift to two lucky students. It won’t cost you a penny to participate so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. This programme is usually attended by top leadership teams from some of the UK’s biggest brands and would usually cost thousands. So, if you are interested in securing the spot all you need to do is send me an email by Monday 2nd August setting out why you are interested. Please also confirm you can commit to attending all four modules. These will take place between 17:00 to 19:30 on Sunday 22nd and 29th August and Sunday 5th and 12th September. I'll then award the place to those who convince me they are most deserving!
If you have any further questions, feel free to send me an email - klm8@hw.ac.uk. You can also read my Make your Mark case study by clicking here.
Kirsty Mitchell
Watt Women in STEM Society President