Nice To Meet You
Last month, I had the pleasure of giving a talk at the Meetings Show at ExCel London, which was celebrating ten years. It was an exciting event, full of bustle and energy, and really delivered on its claim to be the ‘leading exhibition for event, meeting and conference professionals’
I had been invited to speak by the wonderful people at the Diverse Speakers Bureau, on the subject of ‘The Power Of Communication’. As I move forward in my work, I’m struck by how long we can leave it in so many businesses before we talk .. well, about talking. And to be pertinent, listening.
I only had twenty minutes in which to speak - and what you think about public speaking - if it fills with you abject horror or excitement - will largely have been illustrated by what your gut, visceral reaction was to the phrase ‘I only had twenty minutes’. One might argue that that isn’t a great deal of time to talk about overcoming shyness and a lack of confidence when trying to communicate with others.
It is true that in this TikTok era, advice and wisdom (wether or not you actually think it wise) can be distilled down into sixty - or even thirty - second videos that just might halt you scrolling: you don’t always need a full thirty minutes to Mae your point - and indeed, why you might sometimes need is a ruthless editor.
There is a genuine value to those TikTok videos, if for no other reason that the words within are very likely to reach a much wider audience (and genuinely influence their approach) than the six or eight guru books that are on your shelf right now (you really should open up and read one. Come on, you had such positive energy when you bought them)
But to some degree, talking to an actual group of actual people in an actual physical space is a very different beast - you can’t bound up on stage, make some pithy (but possibly profound) statement and bound off again to be replaced by someone else perfectly lip-synching a quote from Schitt’s Creek. If your presentation is five minutes, or a full hour, there needs to be a journey, a relationship built up between you and the people you’re talking to. That takes time, and the time in which you have do it might only be a matter of seconds.
As I said to the group I was speaking with, the idea that I - me, of all people! - might be speaking to others about confidence in communication could be frankly amusing to anyone who’s known me in real life for any amount of time. Generally, if I arrive in a room with people already in it, I’ll find the nearest available wall and STICK THERE for the duration. Of course, what inevitably happens is that some kind soul will take pity on me, ask me who I am, how I am, and what I do. That last question can be sometimes overwhelming, because like many people, I’ve got a nicely busy ‘portfolio’ career: so when someone asks me what I do, I have to check in on the context, and what answer it is that they’re most likely seeking. Am I a keynote speaker? A workshop facilitator? A coach? A writer? A director? If I give an answer that’s in any way accurate, it’ll just sound like I’m listing my CV.
Despite the fact that I am delivering on average six workshops in any given week, and hosting industry networking events as well as delivering acting classes and writing workshops and much more besides, I don’t consider myself to be a naturally confident person. I’m not alone in this - according to research carried out by Censuswide, 55% of men do not think they are liked by others, and even more are not confident in their ability to do their job well. Over half of men and women surveyed did not believe that they were intelligent.
It would be easy, I think, to be somewhat surprised by these numbers: surely everyone else is oh so confident? Look at them: being loud and speaking over other people. Of course, simply being loud is very far from being a signifier for any degree of confidence (that’s a blog for another day), but it does chime in heavily with two of my current biggest fascinations: impostor syndrome and empathy. Indeed, both of those subjects are going to come up in future blogs (as well as in my classes). The other thing that I spoke about briefly in my talk is what is for me one of the most vital components of speaking: listening.
Communication, we often forget, is a two way street. Yes, I will speak a lot about useful skills and methods to more effectively put your ideas and arguments across, but for me that’s only half of it. A significant amount of the work we have to put in when communicating with others is the moments when we’re not talking, when the other person is speaking to us. It’s easy to forget that ‘listen’ is a verb - it’s an active word, its a thing we have to do. Quite often, a conversation between two people is those two people simply waiting for the other person to shut up so they can have their say. But listening isn’t just hearing, it’s a gift that I believe we have a duty to give to others. Particularly those who we hope will return it.
