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16 | JAN/FEB/MAR 2012
JOE YAZBECK: THE PERFORMER’S ‘WHISPERER’
By Gretchen Cain Wells
As an entrepreneur with a plan for improving your business acumen in the New Year, you may decide to step it up a notch and set performance goals that involve public speaking or leadership projects. Joe Yazbeck, president and founder of the Largo-based Prestige Leadership Advisors, has the wisdom and willingness to help you succeed. He offers a template on how to organize and build a speech that is unscripted and fully expressed.
Yazbeck describes himself as an artist with a lifelong quest for improvement. A jazz vocalist, actor, public speaker and leadership coach, he is no stranger to performance anxieties and understands many factors contribute to the degree of one’s comfort level in front of a group. Yazbeck could be called the performer’s “whisperer,” because with each client who seeks his assistance, he has a strategy to identify and build on his strengths, and annihilate any weaknesses.
Using what he calls his “open and flow” method of coaching, Yazbeck concentrates on correction, not criticism, in order to preserve the individual’s self-respect and instill trust. Yazbeck majored in drama at Notre Dame-affiliated King’s College, and utilizes his knowledge of creativity and self-expression to patiently open the client’s talent and let it flow out. “Together, we devise a workable plan. Our joint-exploration and discovery are the keys to learning and success,” he said.
Yazbeck admires performers such as the legendary Michael Jackson, whom Yazbeck said perfected the art of making an action look effortless. “If a dancer isn’t making the correct moves, the choreographer says, ‘Let me see that again,’” said Yazbeck. “I work on the same principle, by watching the client and eliminating what doesn’t work.” Yazbeck choreographs his clients into perfection through the repetition and rehearsal of customized scenarios, leaving nothing to chance. Yazbeck often videotapes the client, so later they both can critique the performance, always with
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