First Time Facilitator 8/13/18 First Time Facilitator 8/13/18

Being comfortable (with feeling uncomfortable): My public speaking journey

This is a transcript of Episode 27 of the First Time Facilitator podcast. Usually on the show I interview amazing facilitators, speakers and leaders but I’m going solo for today’s episode. This is the third solo episode I’ve recorded and these ones are usually spurred on by questions I receive from listeners.

“Leanne, how did you get the confidence to speak in front of large groups?”

There's a bit to unpack in that question. Its different for everyone. Interestingly, this question is about confidence; not about developing the skill.I'm going to share the real opportunity I had that lead me to feel more confident and now accept opportunities where I do speak in public. In saying that, I’m still human and continue to question my ability before accepting these opportunities. However, after talking to fellow facilitators and speakers on the podcast, that appears to be a fairly normal response. I guess the good thing about type of response, is that it keeps you on your toes and not operating in autopilot.The definition of large group is also different from everyone. I think anything above 30 is pretty large. From my experience, anything above 30 or 40 requires a microphone, probably a stage and some bright lights. I can give you a short and long answer for this but I took this question as a really good opportunity to reflect on the things that I actually did to position myself to accept large group speaking opportunities, with perceived confidence.

It was October 2014

I was living in a small, coastal regional town in Western Australia called Broome. I talk about Broome in a lot of episodes as I have find memories there. Imagine a place where in winter, you can swim at the beach, in summer it’s too hot to do anything. The population is very small, about 15,000 people. The closest town is a 2 hour drive away, the nearest capital city is Jakarta, Indonesia. You don’t really do things there. Your weekend plans are dictated by the tide times, everyone drives a 4wd and you spend most of your time in air conditioning, down the beach camping and fishing, with a cold beer in hand.It was wonderful! However living there for 3.5 years you can become pretty complacent, and outside of work, I wasn’t really achieving a lot. I wanted to create some more discipline for myself.I thought I would set myself a ridiculous goal, something that would get me out of bed nice and early… literally... and that was to run a marathon. It was a big goal because growing up, I hated running. I loved playing netball, but I loathed the fitness element - I associated running with everything negative in life. However, living in this coastal town, there were no hills, no traffic, and because nothing really happened in town, I had time up my sleeve. This gave me the ultimate entry point to start. So I signed up for the GC Marathon.Not having a clue on how to do this, I enlisted a coach Pat Carroll. He’d won a few Gold Coast marathons. My goal was to simply finish under 5 hours.On a side note, this is a speech I did at Pecha Kucha, Broome about the whole marathon training experience.I’m sharing this story as there were a couple of words of phrases he said, that I think can generally be applied to this question about gaining confidence in speaking in front of large groups.I'm going to drop one of those phrases now and then again later on, in the episode. Pat said that a lot of people approach runs and start cross-training, ie. Do weights, swim or cycle. But HE SAID - and gosh, it sounds so simple - and you’re probably going to think I’m crazy to highlight this as some kind of watershed moment - but it was for me...

He said, "The best way to train for a marathon is, to simply, run".

You need to start banking those kilometres on your legs. You don’t need to do pilates, swim, hike, or play touch footy. Just run. Bank those kilometres on your legs. I loved that concept of banking kilometres. And I banked thousands of kilometre on my legs in those nine months.My most recent podcast guest, Neen James agrees with this. If you listened to my conversation with Neen in Episode 26, you would have heard her mention the phrase ‘Time on your feet.’So my short answer to that question, ‘How did I get the confidence to speak in public?’, well it was really about banking that time on my feet as a speaker.That leads onto the next question:

How do I find time in my feet, so when a marathon-like speaking opportunity comes along, I’m prepared?

If you go through school and Uni, that’s a good start and there are opportunities there, like high school English class presentations or the dreaded group assignment preso at University.I’ve also always loved seeing others kill it on stage. I have always been fascinated by the power of strong delivery, and what brilliant presentation looks like. I guess the difference I brought, was to continually to ask myself, "What can I do that is different? Who is in the audience, what do they want, what is the hook?”When I really think about why I care so much about making sure my message hits… it probably comes back to my philosophy about how life is too short.In Episode 16, I spoke with Adam Mustoe about the Gallup Strengths Finder 2 and my second highest strength theme is Maximiser. The Maximiser theme is really around ‘Do you want fries with that?’ and taking advantage of opportunities…you get caught out sometimes, particularly when travelling as you want to cram and juggle everything into a day. How this theme plays out also is that if I’m given the opportunity to present in front of other people, I want to maximise that moment. I believe you are in a position of great opportunity the second you have more than two people in the room. Life is too short to have your time wasted by boring, irrelevant and un-memorable presentations. When you’re the one in front of that room, don’t waste everyone else's time.And that’s my real driver for doing things differently.

Sport played a role.

I was lucky getting into netball from the age of 10. Through the game, I’ve been given opportunities to speak in front of others at occasions from speaking in team huddles during quarter breaks, to club presentation nights and dinners.In University, I started coaching more junior teams and I believe being a coach had a significant impact on my ability to deliver a message succinctly and projecting my voice - particularly when you have quarter and half time breaks to do that and your audience are 13 to 15 year olds.My first official MC gig was as on-court announcer for the Queensland State League netball finals back in 2003. I called the teams on the court, thanked sponsors, talked through key highlights of the match. Through this, I learned about the importance of time-keeping, how to speak clearly into a microphone, and the realisation that the role of MC is so much more than just the delivery. There is a lot of background work involved in who you need to liaise with, what your backup plans are, etc. Now when you start doing this sort of stuff, the people around you hear about it, and that opened doors as an MC’ing at friend’s weddings.

If you’re ever asked to MC a wedding, please say yes.

For two reasons in particular:

It keeps you off the booze for a few hours so that you can avoid a painful hangover!
The skill to being a wedding MC is about really making it a personal experience. So this experience forces you to tailor your message -for the couple, family and friends. Having that first wedding MC gig again opened up more invites to MC other events.

Can you see from this trail how it all works?

If we’re relate speaking back to running, I believe those school, netball and uni presentations were 5km runs. MC’ing a wedding is a half marathon.And unfortunately, similarly to running, you can’t go cold turkey for 6 months and then expect to run at the same pace you did while training.

So how can you continue to get that speaking experience?

I know a lot of the listeners are split, probably about 50% working in a full-time job and 50% freelance. For those working, there are so many opportunities to put your hand up and deliver presentations from where you stand.While I was working in Marketing for a company called Wicked Campers, we were sponsors of the annual Backpacker travel expo in Melbourne. As part of the sponsorship package, the company was offered an opportunity to run some sessions on travelling around Australia.I put my hand up.In my role working in Government in regional Western Australia, we had a fortnightly Friday morning video hook-up with the other campuses in the region called Communication Corridor. As I needed to share internal messages, I put my hand up and asked to be in the agenda, pretty frequently. I challenged myself to out-do my previous presentations over and over again.When it came to Friday morning, I also felt like whacking myself on the head and questioning myself on volunteering for these sessions and putting myself under undue pressure. It would have been much easier not volunteering and sitting in the crowd every fortnight, But, when we held a Professional Development week for all 200 staff in the region, guess who was asked to MC the event?In late 2016, I was asked to co-facilitate some leadership training in Brisbane. A few months later and I was onboard a flight to Canada to run the same workshop over there.

Time on your feet matters.

Not only does it give you more time to practice your presentation skills and experiment with content, but more importantly, you also get used to that feeling of uncomfortable-ness. You get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It also leads you to good things and great opportunities that you would never have realised. Every time you step up, it’s an opportunity for you to market yourself and build your personal brand. You get luckier. I think the best analogy that sums this up is the one I heard on Episode #49 of the Jordan Harbinger show. In this episode, Jordan chats to Alex Banayan about mentoring. In fact, its so good, I am going to share it for you below:There's no denying that luck plays a role in anyone's success.But it was in conversation with then-Microsoft executive Qi Lu that gave Alex a real understanding of lucks role in success.Qi Lu had grown up in a village outside of Shanghai, China that was so poor to the extent that there was only one teacher per 300 children and people developed deformities from malnutrition. Being very smart and working very hard, Qi was making seven dollars a month by the time he was 27. Like so many other intelligent, hard workers in China, he dreamed of a better life in America — so, he needed an advantage over the competition.As luck would have it, Qi had the opportunity to speak to a Carnegie Mellon professor lecturing at his local university. The professor had been so impressed by the questions he was asking and the papers he had written about the professor's area of expertise that Qi was offered a full scholarship to Carnegie Mellon.How did luck play into it? Under normal circumstances, Qi would have ridden his bicycle to visit his parents on that particular night of the week — but it was raining, so he stayed on campus, attended the lecture, and happened to be the most well-informed scholar in the room on the topic at hand. Thanks to his extra months of productivity, he was prepared when opportunity knocked.To Alex, Qi imparted this nugget of wisdom: Luck is like a bus. If you miss one, there will always be the next one. But if you are not prepared, you won't be able to get on.This encouraged Alex to do a little more digging into the science of luck, and from the research, it seems one thing is clear: luck is a mindset, not a phenomenon.

When I again reflect on that question, how did you get the confidence to speak in front of large groups?

As you can see, it’s an evolution piece underpinned by three things:

Bank that time on your feet.
Put your hand up and find the opportunities.
Every time you have an opportunity to present, challenge yourself to stretch and outperform your previous presentation.

The second piece of advice from my running coach, Pat Carroll was not to be concerned by the fact that your longest training run does not take you near 42.2km. Save yourself for the marathon. Prepare consistently, stay injury free, and your solid preparation combined with race day atmosphere will allow you to go all the way.Nothing will prepare you for that marathon moment in front of hundreds of people with the spotlight on you, but you’ll get pretty close by banking the thousands of kilometres prior, and you can be confident to accept the opportunity, given the success you’ve had in the past.

I'd love to hear how you got your speaking experience.

How will you find that time on your feet? Where are you banking your speaking kilometres? Comment below!

First Time Facilitator 12/6/17 First Time Facilitator 12/6/17

A 45 Minute Workshop Outline on Public Speaking with ImpaCCCT

I met Petra from ImpaCCCT when we presented at the first instalment of Disrupt HR this year. She invited me to share my tips on communication and in particular, public speaking to her Best Talents Meetup Group in the Brisbane CBD last week. And I only had 45 minutes. Phew, such an open topic! There are so many elements to public speaking. I didn’t really know where to start. Upon reflection, I’ve discovered a common pattern to the way I work when I’m asked to deliver a workshop or speech. Download a one-pager checklist that I use to craft any type of presentation. I used this one-pager as a focal point for discussion at the Meetup. This allowed me to give the audience direction, set expectations and also gave them a prompt to ask questions. What was interesting was how the questions that were asked directed the conversation to things I hadn’t even considered discussing that morning.

How the Meetup Started

A photo of Leanne Hughes delivering a presentation during the Best Talents Meetup on public speaking.

Yes, we met in a public space (a café), but that was no excuse. It was 8am and we began by warming up our voices. We all stood up, stretched our arms in the air, sighed, rolled our tongues, sang out some ‘la la la’s’ and introduced ourselves. We then shared what had brought us to the Meetup that morning and outlined details of the worst presentation we had ever seen.Warming up your voice is essential before speaking in any defining moment in your life. If you need tips, watch this video from Julian Treasure: How to speak so people want to listen.

Mastering public speaking - it’s all about the ‘ouch’ moments

After warming up our voices, I shared the Ladder of Learning model. This is one of my favourite Learning and Development models that I use in a lot of workshops.The model demonstrates that the key to any type of Skill Mastery is accepting (and embracing) that you’re going to experience ‘ouch’ moments - times where it’s really uncomfortable. Think back to the time when you were learning how to drive. It was extremely nerve-wracking and frustrating - particularly if you were driving a manual car and navigating a hill-start! It felt like mastering the skill of driving would never happen. Thought, it was worth the perseverance, because the rewards of driving were too great. Driving meant independence and accessibility; graduating to an adult world.It’s the same with public speaking. We can sit back, comfortably stagnant in the ‘Conscious Incompetence’ zone, or we can choose to invest, practice and tackle those ‘ouch’ moments to graduate to the ‘Conscious’, or even ‘Unconscious Competence’ status when we’re at the front of the room.What does the ‘ouch’ moment look like when it comes to public speaking?

Saying ‘YES!’ to speak when your immediate gut response is ‘NO!’
The knots in your stomach the night/week before your big presentation (this is a good signal to buckle down and ensure your preparation is spot-on).
Attending a Meetup about Public Speaking.

New contexts or environments can sometimes slip us down the ladder

I’ve learnt that a change in context or environment can force a slip down the ladder. Again, an example I used was driving. In Australia, I see myself in the ‘Unconscious Competence’ sector - when I drive, I feel like I’m on autopilot. However, when I traveled to Canada earlier this year I slipped back into ‘Conscious Competence’ where I was actively thinking about every action I took when I was in the driver’s seat. I even had a post-it note on my steering wheel reminding me which side of the road to stay on.It’s the same with presentations. Over our career, we can be comfortable presenting in front of the same audiences and in the same room (‘Unconscious Competence’) and suddenly you’re wheeled in front of the Board. The stakes are higher and your nerves are heightened - which may have you slipping back into ‘Conscious Competence’. This isn’t a bad thing - it’s great and gives you more ‘ouch’ moments, which will help you improve over time. To evolve as a public speaker, look for opportunities that are at the next level and continually challenge you.

What about the most high-stakes environment of all time, the dreaded job interview?

An environment where the pressure and stakes are at an all-time high is the job interview.A couple of participants attending the Meetup were in job-hunt mode and were quite early on in their careers. In many job interviews, you’re asked to provide examples of situations where you have demonstrated a particular skill. We have all been asked a question that starts with, ‘So, tell me about a time when…’.My advice is to start collating story examples early in your careers. I would use a simple template like this one:[table id=2 /]If you start collecting your life experiences and transcribing them into a simple Google Sheets table, you can weave them into any presentation - not only the job interview. In future when you’re writing a speech you then have a database of some personal anecdotes you can utilise to demonstrate a point. This is gold. It’s very tricky thinking of those stories off-hand.You can even start a folder in your inbox called ‘Stories’ and drag emails that remind you of a great story to this folder as an even easier way to start.We spent the remainder of time talking through the one-pager handout which included the following information split into three major categories:

Preparation.
Crafting your content.
Presenting with power - for more tips, view my article Disrupt HR: The Creative Process in 7 Simple Steps

[table id=1 /]Download a one-pager checklist that I use to craft any type of presentation.If you’re in Brisbane, join the Best Talents Meetup group and join us for a monthly coffee and 45 minutes of top content!

First Time Facilitator 8/13/17 First Time Facilitator 8/13/17

Disrupt HR: The Creative Process in 7 Simple Steps

Last month I was up in lights at the Disrupt HR event in Brisbane. It’s the first time the event has been brought to sunny Queensland and the HR Community in the river-city came out in their droves, to hear from nine diverse speakers about the Future of Work. The format for the presentations is fast and furious – 20 slides with only 15 seconds spent on each slide. That’s 5 minutes to ignite some interest in the audience, lead them down the road with a story or personal anecdote, throw some stats around and inspire them to take action. Yes, it’s a tough gig.Here’s the video of my presentation ‘How one switch can improve your nine-to-five'’. I spoke about something really simple - office furniture, in particular, the sit-stand desk and its impact on productivity and quality of work life.How One Switch Can Improve Your Nine-to-Five | Leanne Hughes | DisruptHR Talks.When you write for Disrupt HR, you really need to consider your topic. I learnt a lot while preparing for the stage and thought I’d share my tips.But before we start, I want you to put yourself in the ring and:

Back your experience and your public speaking ability - then DO IT. Submit your application.

When I read on LinkedIn that Intelli HR were bringing the event to Brisbane, I thought ‘Geez that event looks interesting! I’ll DEFINITELY grab a ticket and tell my colleagues all about it too’.A few minutes later, my thoughts changed to, ‘Hey…I think I could actually speak at this thing’. I resonated with the tagline of the event: ‘DISRUPT is an information exchange designed to energize, inform and empower people in the HR field.’I love all things disruptive, so I expressed my interest with the event organisers, told them a bit about myself, outlined a couple of topic ideas and then forgot all about it.A few weeks later I received the call up. I was locked in to the program. And I was terrified.

Why did I sign up and why do I recommend you do the same?

Disrupt HR: Magic happens outside of your comfort zone.

I recently listened to this podcast from Pat Flynn – ‘Why you belong on Stage – Pat’s “braindump” of public speaking and presentation tips’. He explains how public speaking changed his life (how it helped to build his personal brand/credibility, led him to new opportunities, and opened his door to meeting other influencers), and other compelling reasons that will have you on the stage in no time. I recommend you plug in those headphones, go for a walk and listen to Pat’s wisdom. But if you don’t have that much time than this image pretty much sums it up: You may be thinking 'I don’t know what to talk about', 'I don’t have credibility in any particular HR niche', 'I can’t memorise my speech' or 'I’m not creative'.And guess what? That’s completely normal. Most (if not all) speakers up on stage have had these thoughts at some stage in our career. It's whether you choose to ignore them and forge ahead, which makes all of the difference.Through this process working on my speech, I went through all stages of the change cycle. Denial, particularly, which manifested in the form of procrastination. Six weeks out I needed to submit my topic idea and a brief descriptor.Here’s a little wrap-up of the 7 step process I went through to deliver my Disrupt HR speech, from topic generation through to performance.

Step 1. Topic choice

By far, for me this was the trickiest of all the stages. I read a lot of blog posts and article on which topic to choose from and spent a while fleshing out ideas using mind maps.My criteria was that I wanted a topic which was fairly pragmatic, meaning that it was useful for the audience and they could take practical action the minute the speech was over.However, after listening to Michael Port’s podcast, ‘Steal the Show’, I realised that I was going about this all the wrong way...

The real Step 1 is: Profile the audience

The event isn’t about you, it’s about serving your audience and determining what’s in it for them.Think about the type of people that will attend an event like this. The brief attracts a local HR professional type audience. Think of a HR professional, one person in particular and profile their demographics - gender, age, education.Map out their career needs, fears, wants and frustrations.Think about:

Why they’re attending a HR event after a long day at the office, when they could be spending time with their family.
Why they’re attending an event that talks about disruption.

The key here is to not think about this criteria too broadly, you really want to target one person. As you work in the HR space, think of a colleague or boss that you could profile.Through this process, I realised that the majority of HR Professionals still work in an office environment and there are common concerns associated with that, such as our lack of movement and collaboration when you sit in the same spot, every day.This linked into something I’m passionate about - which is physical activity and how standing up while working can make you feel great, as well as lift your levels of innovation, collaboration and efficiency.You really don’t want to spend too long in the topic choice stage. Once you’ve made the decision, commit to it and cut off all other options. You still have a lot more work to do.

Step 2: Researching the topic

At this stage you want to use a range of sources, such as:

Your own personal anecdotes and experiences (start thinking of interesting stories related to the topic)
Data/research/stats to support your idea - Spend a couple hours on Google- I’d recommend both academic articles and also researching interesting blog perspectives.
Chatting to other people on their thoughts to validate your topic
Podcasts related to the area (makes it easier when you’re commuting/walking/don't have time to sit down and read)

I spent a few hours over two days, gathering all my stats, quotes and information together. With all of the information collated, I realised there were three broad themes to address;How sit-stand desks improve:

Your health
Your productivity
Your levels of collaboration in an open-plan office.

Step 3: Drafting the speech

I spent most of my time in this phrase, writing and re-writing content, deleting, adding, tweaking and re-inveting… this is unavoidable.The good news is, that the PowerPoint slide auto-advancing speech format isn’t new. I drew inspiration from blog articles based on the Pecha Kucha format (20 slides x 20 seconds), particularly this one: Your Ultimate guide to giving PechaKucha presentations’.I also drew inspiration from the book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience (Business Skills and Development) by Carmine Gallo. In the book, Gallo outlines how Steve Jobs used to sequence his big product talks in ‘rules of three’. He also used simple, visually powerful slides and he used stories to create ‘pain points’. After setting the audience up, he then offered the audience a solution to these problems (eg. the iPhone).As your speech time is limited, you need to use your visual slides to support/amplify your key messages and arguments. To plan this, I drafted my speech in a table with the following column headings:

Slide number (1-20)
Topic (eg. How sit-stand desks support Health)
Content (data, stories to support stories)
Slide image ideas (visual elements that make the content come to life)

I calculated my speech pace at 900 words over 5 mins (pretty quick) and I had written 1800 words. Cutting back was tough - it’s a balance of giving the audience enough to understand your message; but nothing too prescriptive that you’re spoon-feeding them.I dedicated 40% of my speech to setting the pain point (how our lack of movement is slowly killing us). The remainder of the speech was offering a solution. I also spent two slides opening up the presentation talking about something completely unrelated to the topic, the Wallabies recent form in the rugby league. This was to draw the audience in and to start them thinking 'How on earth does this relate to us?'How to defeat that writer's block? My tip for writing a speech is to pretend you’re writing for the rubbish bin. You just need to get those thoughts down, no matter how ridiculous and lame they sound at the time. From there, you can edit – add, tweak, adjust as needed, but building momentum is important.While drafting the speech I was also open to incorporating other concepts (especially after listening to Michael Port’s interview with Neen James on creating contextual models). I listened to another podcast where Michael Port interviewed author, Jonathan Fields. Jonathan was introducing his Good Life Project. He spoke about all of us having three buckets in our lives - our Contribution, Connection and Vitality buckets. I loved the law of the buckets and realised it was the perfect contextual model to align with my topic.I raced back home that night and read more about from Fields on How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science, and Practical Wisdom and figured out how to insert his philosophy into my presentation.

Step 4: Create powerful slides

I think slides are an element that speakers don’t prepare enough for/are understated.Remember, each slide flashes only for 15 seconds, so the slide must be strong, less words (or words with impact), bold, large visuals.Limit collages. Limit low-resolution files. Limit the clip-art.Each slide must support your argument and draw your audience in.Another simple tip - keep a simple visual theme weaved throughout the presentation. I chose a theme through Canva to design my slides.

Step 5: Do your first paper reading

Once you’ve drafted the speech, Michael Port suggests you do a ‘paper reading’. This is where you print your draft speech notes out, sit at your dining table and read your script aloud in a normal voice. This is a really useful exercise where you can determine which words/phrases feel comfortable off the tongue and sound authentic to you. You can extend this further and start ‘blocking’ your speech. This means, highlighting words where you’ll pause, increase volume and change tone. You can also block your movement - such as walking at a specific time, where you'll move your arms to emphasise a point, etc.Once you’ve done a couple of these, lock that speech down and move onto…

Step 6: Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse…Then, rehearse again

If you present at one of these gigs, the biggest challenge is that you can't take speech notes on stage.I don’t know any quick memorisation hacks. For me, it was all about practising when I had the chance. One practical tip I recommend is to record your speech into your Voice Memos iPhone app. I did this and would play it back when I was driving, out for a run or walking the dogs - it was an effective way to rehearse along.When I was getting the ‘hang’ of it, I’d start rehearsing from a quarter/half the way through the speech.I also recommend rehearsing in front of a trusted advisor. I’m lucky I work with a fantastic, HR professional (thanks Jordana) who gives excellent and honest feedback. The external validity and advice gives you confidence that a) You’re on the right path or b) Yes you need to tweak some things but you'll be good on delivery day.

Step 7: Showtime

Try to get a good night’s sleep the night before your performance!I didn’t rehearse too hard on the day, as I knew the time I had invested leading up to this moment had served me well. All I was focused on before the speech was staying relaxed, warming up my voice, and reminding myself to enjoy the moment.One of my favourite videos that I show anyone I help prepare speeches with, is this TED Talk from Julian Treasure – I usually start it from the six minute mark.Pat Flynn said that it's important to arrive early and mingle with your audience. He learnt this from Dale Carnegies’ book ‘Stand and deliver’. The purpose of this is two-fold:

You connect with you a couple of people so it doesn't feel like you're presenting in front of a bunch of strangers (no longer as strangers)
The audience members think it’s pretty cool that they’re meeting someone who is about to walk on the stage.

Conclusion

Phew! A lot of tips and detail there. Finally, just enjoy the rush of being up in lights. It’s an amazing experience and a mega adrenaline rush.Special thanks again to the team at IntelliHR for a superb evening and I will be plugging the next version when it hits Brisbane next time.