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Every time we connect with another human being there is a risk that it wonāt go as planned. The reason: people! There is no guarantee people will receive us as we intend, and if we bluster headfirst into the exchange without first understanding what we need to do to reduce the risk of getting it wrong or putting them offside, it makes it harder to get our message across.
Anxiety is an emotion we often try to avoid or get rid of. Itās uncomfortable and unpleasant. What we know about negative emotions is that they are just feedback to us about what is going on in our world. If we can change the way we see them and relate to them, we can change the power they have over us. Itās less about āgetting rid ofā bad emotions, ācause they will always be around, and more about managing them with helpful strategies.
My client had an epiphany recently. In the middle of a session, he realised that "all my life Iāve thought of myself as a good communicator because Iām comfortable speaking with others. However the truth is, being good at speaking, doesnāt mean Iām good at communicating.ā And there it was; A truth bomb. It was a sobering moment for him, as he reflected on an identity he thought he knew all these years. The insight made him question what great communication really is. If itās not about being good at speaking with others, then what is it?
After 13 years of pounding the stage to serve my clients at conferences, off-sites, conventions and summits, Iāve taken the plunge and applied to become a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP). Gulp. Thatās right, Iām inviting industry heavyweights to adjudicate my speaking abilities, and assess their worthiness at a global level. Yikes!
Every year, at performance review time, I seem to get the same question from my clients.
āHow can I be more āvisibleā at work?"
Letās take the case of Karen. Karen was a high performer in her organisation. Karen was capable, committed and ready for the next step in her career. The only trouble was - Karen was not visible enough. During a discussion with her boss, he had told her that he had to āgo into bat for herā in the talent review forums because most of his peers didn't know who she was, or what she was capable of. He found it hard to fight for her bonus, and recommend her for a promotion, because no one else really knew of her talent and potential. So his developmental feedback to her was to work on her personal branding, and become more visible, in order to fast track her career opportunities.
This has been a journey for me in my professional career, and a lesson brought home to me in my dance class last night. It appears I have come a long way since I was 12. :)
It was an adult jazz class. It started off well. Warm up, tick. Isolations and body rolls, tick. Stretching and limbering, tick. Then, on to the performance part of the class ā the routine. We learn it section by section. Section one goes well. The moves are easy, funky, and Iām loving it. Section two, the pace picks up but I keep up. Iām connected to the music and my body. I am at one with the routine. And then, slowly but surely it begins to go downhill from there. Section three and four are not beyond my technical ability but the pace increases and I fall behind. I canāt remember the steps, I start to miss bits, then I become confused. Iām officially lost.
