On Thursday, October 25th we had the pleasure of attending a workshop orchestrated by Scott Blick at PLNT in Leiden. Scott is a verbal and non-verbal communication coach, trainer and advisor, including presentation skills, storytelling, and public speaking. The workshop was all about Finding Your Center and how verbal and non-verbal communication can help you reach certain goals, which made for an exciting and most of all inspiring evening.
After a warm welcome of TopFem chairwoman Géraldine Lafeber, Scott started the workshop by talking about prejudices about comments one might hear often. An interactive exercise started, during which Scott challenged our TopFem ladies to think about different meanings we might attach to certain statements. What was very noticeable about this, was that the group of TopFem ladies gave 5 different definitions to the different statements. Scott referred to these statements as “container begrippen”, something he only recently learned of. He talked about the fact that people say certain words, like powerful, assertive, etc., as if everyone understands what they mean. But the exercise showed that everyone can have a different perception or opinion
Amongst other things, Scott talked about perception. During the exercise, he stated that perception does not always equal reality and that you do not need to use your eyes when tuning your body. People often rely solely on their eyes, while our minds do not always need them. Scott ended the workshop by stating that the reason we can all have different opinions or perception, is a matter of communication and understanding.
The evening came to an end and TopFem ladies enjoyed some networking drinks at PLNT Leiden.