Drew Sisera - Communication Skills Coaching

One of the things I often remind my clients is that the exercises we do in class are NOT the end goal.

The goal is transfer.

Early on, we might practice pausing before speaking. We might work on organizing ideas, choosing better words, or becoming more aware of pronunciation patterns. At first, these skills require a tremendous amount of conscious effort. They feel slow, unnatural, and sometimes even frustrating.

But as our work deepens together, something interesting starts to happen....

..the skills begin appearing outside of the activities themselves.

A client will be telling me about their weekend, sharing a story from work, or discussing something completely unrelated to our lesson. I’ll pause them and ask a question. “Can you say that more clearly?” “Can you organize that idea differently?” “Is there a better word here?”

Over time, those moments become less frequent because the client starts asking those questions on their own.

This idea is well established in learning science. Practice is most valuable when skills can transfer beyond the environment where they were learned. The ultimate goal isn’t performing well in an exercise. It’s being able to use that skill naturally when the exercise disappears.

That’s why I often compare the process of improving communication skills to the process of learning an instrument. At first, every movement requires attention and intention, but eventually, the music starts to play itself as it flows through you.

The same applies to how we communicate. It's an art-form in and of itself, and as such, it can grow to feeling natural, organic and high quality.

How we move our bodies reinforces what we say when we communicate. If we’re too stiff, we risk losing people’s attention. If we’re too animated, we can become distracting and interrupt the flow of our message.

Finding the right balance isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort. In today’s digital world, most of us are used to receiving information visually through social media. Adding a visual element to your message through body language helps others better understand what you’re saying, especially when communicating with people who speak a different language or who have a different proficiency level than you do.

One of my clients recently pronounced a TH sound perfectly in the middle of a sentence.

That might not sound remarkable, but when we first started working together, he told me that sound felt uncomfortable, unnatural, and almost impossible to produce consistently.

But the interesting part wasn’t the pronunciation itself, It was what that moment represented.

Learning often hides its progress from us. We spend weeks or months struggling with something, feeling frustrated by how difficult it is, and then one day we do it correctly without even thinking about it. The challenge that once demanded all of our attention quietly becomes part of who we are.

Psychologists refer to this as self-efficacy, which is the belief that we can successfully overcome challenges through effort, persistence, and practice. What’s fascinating is that self-efficacy isn’t usually built through large achievements. It’s built through small victories that prove to us that change IS possible.

That’s one of the reasons I place so much emphasis on milestones inside my coaching.

The TH sound was never just about pronunciation. It was evidence that something which once felt impossible had become automatic for my client. And this speaks towards the work I'm doing with them - to help them collect enough evidence that they begin trusting their ability to overcome challenges, both inside and outside the classroom, whether that's on the communication front or otherwise.

One of my clients recently told me something that surprised me...

Before she ever sent me a message, she spent an entire month deciding whether she should reach out to me, but not because she didn’t want to improve her English, but because she was uncomfortable. She said that she's naturally introverted, and the idea of speaking with a stranger every week felt intimidating, especially considering my high energy and passion.

What’s interesting is that this has very little to do with language...

In psychology, there’s a concept known as "the comfort zone". While growth doesn’t happen exclusively outside of it, many forms of learning require us to step into situations that feel unfamiliar, uncertain, or slightly uncomfortable. Over time, what once felt intimidating becomes normalized and comfortable

I think this is ESPECIALLY true in communication.

For many people, the challenge isn’t vocabulary or grammar. It’s the vulnerability of expressing themselves, making mistakes, and being seen while they’re still learning.

As our conversation continued, I told her something she didn’t expect: "I’m introverted too." This totally surprised her!

The difference isn’t that confident communicators never feel uncomfortable. It’s that they’ve spent enough time in uncomfortable situations that those situations no longer feel threatening.

This circles back to my goal, which isn't just to help my clients communicate more clearly. Rather, it’s to help them become comfortable doing what once felt impossible for them.

Behind all of the customized communication-based activities and exercises, that's the engine of our work.

One of the challenges with communication coaching is that communication isn’t a single skill.

It’s a collection of skills working together: grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, listening, organization of ideas., self-awareness, confidence, adaptability. They’re all connected.

I was explaining to my client that over time we’ll be using a wide variety of tools in her Portal account, a custom client account I created for anyone working with me. We might record and analyze speech, read news articles and discuss current events, learn new vocabulary and then challenge ourselves to use it naturally in conversation. We might even put time limits on exercises to simulate real-world pressure.

From a learning perspective, this is important because skills tend to transfer more effectively when they’re practiced across different contexts. If communication is only practiced in one environment, improvement often stays tied locally to that environment.

The goal is to create enough variety that the underlying skill becomes flexible and useful when the activity disappears.

One of the biggest differences between correcting a mistake and learning from a mistake is WHO does the thinking.

In this session, my client wrote a sentence that included the phrase “...introducing about...” Something felt off to her, but instead of telling her the answer, I challenged her to step outside the original sentence and create a much simpler one using "introducing".

She produced, “I am introducing an activity to you.”

Then we added the word "about" back in.

“I am introducing about an activity to you.”

The moment she heard the comparison, the problem became obvious.

Learners tend to retain information more effectively when they generate solutions themselves rather than simply receiving corrections from someone else. The process of actively retrieving, testing, and evaluating an answer strengthens learning in a way that passive feedback often doesn’t.

This is why my sessions often feel less like traditional English lessons and more like guided problem-solving.

My goal is not to help my clients fix one sentence. Rather, I’m aiming for something much deeper. I'm trying to help them build the awareness and reasoning skills required to fix their communication skills on their own.

One of the most common challenges I see in communication has nothing to do with grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation.

It’s awareness.

In this coaching moment, we discussed a concept from psychology and linguistics called metacognition, the ability to think about your own thinking.

When applied to communication, metacognition means becoming aware of what you’re doing while you’re speaking. It means noticing when you’re rushing, recognizing when a word doesn’t quite match your intention, catching mistakes before they become habits, and allowing yourself the time to choose better language.

Most people only reflect on their communication after a conversation is over. Strong communicators do it during the conversation itself.

That’s why pauses are so important. A pause isn’t a sign that you don’t know what to say. Often, it’s a sign that you’re carefully considering how to say it. The best communicators aren’t constantly talking. They’re constantly monitoring, adjusting, and refining their message in real time.

As a coach, one of my goals is to help clients develop that internal awareness, so that progress doesn’t come from my feedback alone, but from their ability to observe, measure, and improve their own communication while it’s happening.

One of the biggest milestones in learning isn’t better pronunciation, better grammar, or a larger vocabulary.

It’s developing the ability to coach yourself.

In this session, my client was reviewing a recording of his own speech. Instead of having me point out every opportunity for improvement, I asked him to take the lead, pause the recording whenever something felt unclear, awkward, or incomplete, and explain how he would improve it.

Why did I do this?

Most learners spend their time focused on producing language, but strong learners learn how to evaluate it as well. They begin noticing filler words, weak transitions, repetitive structures, and moments where their ideas don’t come out quite the way they intended.

This is simply metacognition in action - the ability to think about your own thinking and self analyze what you create. It’s one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning because it allows improvement to continue even when a teacher or coach isn’t present.

At some point, every learner has to become their own coach.

That’s when progress really starts accelerating.

One of the most rewarding moments in coaching is when a client hears an old recording of themselves.

Not because the old recording is bad, but because it reveals something that’s difficult to notice while you’re living through it: progress.

In this session, we compared one of my client’s earliest recordings to a recent one. The difference wasn’t just pronunciation. There were fewer filler words, more organized ideas, better pacing, and a greater sense of comfort when expressing complex thoughts.

The challenge with communication skills is that improvement happens gradually. Because you’re hearing yourself every day, your brain adapts to each small improvement and stops noticing it. Many learners feel stuck even when they’re making meaningful progress.

That’s why recordings are so valuable. They create a reference point. They allow you to compare where you are today with where you started.

During our discussion, I told my client that we’ve reached a point where our conversations feel relaxing. I’m no longer focused on decoding the message. I can focus on the ideas behind it.

But I reiterate - communication isn’t just about being understood. It’s about making understanding effortless.

Most English learners think self-correcting appears unprofessional. They think it makes them sound nervous, weak, or less fluent.

I fundamentally disagree.

Self-correction is often a sign that your brain is actively monitoring your communication. You notice that something doesn’t quite match your intention, so you adjust it before it creates confusion.

In fact, if you start paying attention to strong communicators, you’ll notice they do this all the time. They restart sentences, swap out words, clarify ideas, and occasionally stop halfway through a thought because they’ve found a better way to express it.

They don’t do it because they’re poor communicators.

They do it because they’re paying attention.

The people who worry me aren’t the ones who self-correct. They’re the ones who keep speaking without noticing that their message has drifted away from what they actually meant to say.

The goal isn’t perfect speech, though. Rather, it's maintaining alignment between your intention and your message.

Sometimes that requires a correction and that's NOT a weaknesses. That's communication