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All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players

When you think about it, working for any organisation is just like being on stage.

During your normal week there are different audiences to please and your performance is scrutinised and critiqued.

It is why everyone can accomplish more at work and personally by learning some of the tricks of the performing arts trade. Employing drama-based training techniques can be especially useful for anyone who has made, or is keen to make, the jump into management.

Tapping into the performer's toolbox can also get your creative juices flowing again when they dry up.

Practice and preparation

Actors learn early on in their training how to calm their nerves, make inspiring first impressions and ensure the words they speak and the movements they make resonate with whoever is watching them.

Like the members of any department, actors must also learn to trust each other so they get the best results when working together.

The nerves you can feel before making a presentation, for example, to colleagues or external stakeholders are similar to the ones any actor experiences before he or she performs a lengthy monologue.

The secret to conquering these fears is preparation, and being able to relax your body and breathe correctly. It is also vital your body language is sending out the right message so you make a strong impression and have your audience's full attention.

Correct breathing is the most important weapon when attacking those pre-presentation butterflies. The knack is to breath not from your chest but from your diaphragm so you inhale as much air as possible. To find your diaphragm place your thumbs on your last rib and place your hands flat on your stomach. If you are breathing wrongly your shoulders will rise up and down.

Actors also chant mantras before going on stage to feel more relaxed. You can try a similar technique by repeating phrases such as "I am calm" or "I can do this".

Confidence to Shine

How you breathe is intrinsically-linked to how you speak and by employing an actor's vocal warm-up as part of your preparations for any speech or before any important meeting you will calm your nerves and feel more confident.

Before any professional performance or rehearsal you will see actors backstage reciting the alphabet, exercising their jaws by pretending to chew a toffee or reeling off the months of the year backwards with their tongues hanging out. Reciting tongue twisters is also a great exercise because where the tongue is placed in the mouth determines what noise comes out and how clear you sound.

By practicing these exercises you will speak slower and project your voice more effectively during any presentation, whether it's to a large audience or to a small number of people within your team.

Drama-based techniques can certainly give you the confidence to shine in internal and external meetings.

Anyone looking to make their mark in management needs to feel confident enough in their own abilities and views to interact effectively with colleagues or clients in meetings. We all need to know when to listen and when to argue our corner.

Be in control and keep your audience's attention

We also need to know how to hold and captivate our "audience", especially if it is a line manager or important stakeholder. Actors use character building techniques to ensure their body language gives the right message when they walk into a room. If you feel confident you can deal with confrontation and negative questioning. Once again, using voice and breathing techniques will quell any nerves.

This is also about learning to play to your strengths in a meeting so you remain in control. This is particularly crucial if you are having an important one-to-one meeting where the outcome might be crucial either to your organisation or to your personal career development.

Drama is also a fantastic training method for helping members of an internal team bond together or to give a whole department a much-needed boost when morale might be flagging.

When it comes to building team morale and exploring the chemistry between different staff working within a department, drama-based training is a real winner.

It will reveal through role playing and improvisation exercises how individuals deal with difficult situations. For example, who leads and who prefers to shy away from making decisions?

This is a great way for any team leader to identify talent within his or her department and for individuals to demonstrate character traits that their line manager has perhaps never noticed before.

For example, staff can be split into small groups and asked to create three "frozen picture" scenes using just their bodies and no speech to tell a story, maybe a nursery rhyme. They then must each add in one line of speech to the three scenes and re-tell the story. This is great fun as well as encouraging people to work together to overcome a challenge that most of them will have never faced before.

As we grow older many of us forget how to play as we mothball our imaginations and focus on more serious things in life. Yet by bringing creativity into our training we can develop both personally and professionally. Why should actors have all the fun?