Lisa Richards

The Executive Voice: Why Your Presence is a Physical ActLeadership isn’t just about the strategy you present; it’s about the sound of your conviction. In a city like Canberra, where communication is our primary currency, the ability to command a room is often the difference between a project being greenlit or ignored.I recently spent a day leading professional development for the presenting team

A more human kind of workplace workshop A lot of workplace workshops are trying very hard not to be boring.Some of them succeed.Some of them don’t.A lot of team-building still feels like something people get through rather than something they actually get anything from. Everyone turns up, everyone does their best, and then everyone goes back to work.That’s part of why I started offering corporate

December Is a Strange OnePeople are gradually slowing down — or winding up so they can collapse on Christmas Eve and call it for the winter break.Families unravel over Christmas.Drinking increases.Domestic violence increases.There’s pressure to buy the perfect gift — something that somehow surpasses last year in meaning or surprise — even though most people don’t need more things.There’s food

Lately, I’ve been thinking about why humans create. Yes there is creativity that builds a bridge or bakes a loaf of bread — this is what I call ‘ the useful kind  of creativity’ — but what about the kind that makes no clear logical sense? . The kind that calls sound out from the air or arranges colour on a canvas with no promise of function, profit, or survival benefit.We sculpt, sing, write

Hey there,I just started playing live again after a good 18 months away.And I didn’t take that break by choice.What do they say… Life is what happens while you are busy making plans? — an illness took my voice and left me with vocal nodes, then came a fractured wrist… and just as I was recovering, I fractured my tibial plateau. I had to stop. Everything.When you’re offstage for that long,

Hey there,If you're one of the many people who were told to "just mime" during a school choir, classroom sing-along, or 7th grade music performance — this one’s for you.I hear this story all the time in my studio.A grown-up walks in, nervous about their voice. I start talking to them and it doesn’t take long before they say something like…“My music teacher told me to mime in Year 7.” “I was told

Hey friendsIf you're feeling a bit done lately, you're not alone.Burnout isn’t just for overachievers anymore — it’s  the constant background hum that whispers “ do more, be more, have more” mixed with “what is the point?.” It’s the 24/7 relentless flow of information and deadlines, it’s work,  kids, pets, and partners all demanding a piece of you until… Let's face it, you are

 People search weird things online when they’re thinking about singing lessons. I know, because I’ve seen them:“Am I too old to learn how to sing?”“Can you teach yourself to sing or do I need a teacher?”“Voice lessons for tone-deaf adults Australia”“Will singing lessons fix my voice or make me cry?”Hi. I’m Lisa Richards.Singer. Songwriter. Teacher. Human.I help people to use their voices and

On recognition arriving decades after the workSome people are recognised early. And some—often women—wait decades before the world catches up. Think of Emily Dickinson. She wrote nearly 1,800 poems, most unpublished in her lifetime. It wasn’t until after her death that the world finally read what she’d been quietly crafting in her bedroom.Or Anna Mary Robertson Moses—better known as Grandma

Hi friends,I collect scraps.A scrap is small and stubborn. A sentence heard at the shops. The squeak of a trolley. The way a dog lies stretched out in the sun.  The neighbours laugh through a fence at 10pm — too loud, then fine, then kind of perfect. I learned this in New York, you stare out the window and the city tells you what it’s doing: a man in hi-vis talking to a tree; a kid