Public Speaking, anyone?
“Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight.”
Last week, I ran a goal-setting workshop. The idea was to encourage people to set goals for 2024 and inspire them to try things they didn’t think they were capable of doing. I told the story of how I was bad at sport at school but ended up smashing my limiting beliefs about being bad at sport by running the London marathon.
I’m an employment lawyer and running a live workshop on goal setting for lawyers was unchartered waters for me. I can talk about discrimination and redundancy and TUPE– that’s my job after all. And I am fairly used to public speaking, as it’s always been part of my job.
But this felt way outside my comfort zone. I was suppressing a few negative thoughts:
Who am I to do this?
I’m not a coach
People will think it’s stupid or silly
I’m too Northern
No one will turn up
What if my slides don’t load?
People will heckle or switch off halfway through
Stick to your day job
Those that attended may have perceived me to be confident during the webinar. In reality, I was trying to style it out when thoughts like these were doing the rounds in my head.
The day had started badly and I was already stressed before I even sat down. My husband, who normally does the school run, was away in London. My son’s PE kit, which he needed that day, was in my husband’s car. The keys to my husband’s car were with my husband, in London.
Failure to bring in PE kit results in automatic detention, which would cause a meltdown for my autistic son. I managed to find the spare key in a cupboard after much swearing under my breath. The roads were covered in ice and my car was completely frozen shut. The kids had to climb over the front seats to get in. I struggled to get the car windscreen defrosted fast enough to see out of (I have an old car which doesn’t like the cold very much, much like me). Lydia made it into school with seconds to spare after I’d dropped William off at high school.
Pulled myself together before the workshop. It was at 1pm, after all.
I’d planned as well as I could. This included writing out a full script in case I lost my way.
I’m still scarred from the horror of watching a colleague completely freeze in front of a boardroom full of clients and colleagues years ago, as she completely lost her way during her talk and ended up silently walking out midway through. It was the stuff of nightmares. I was on immediately after her, so couldn’t even check if she was ok. Ever since that day, I’ve made fairly detailed notes before any presentation so, if all else fails, I can at least read the notes and muddle through. Some people can pitch up and just talk really well, with no prompts. I’m not one of those people. And that’s ok.
Over the past few years, as baby brain blurred into perimenopause brain, words are liable to vanish from my head at zero notice. I therefore had pre-loaded my talk on to free autocue software, just in case. If anyone is considering delivering a talk over video, I highly recommend doing this, as it’s very reassuring! You only ever fall to your highest level of preparation, after all.
I told attendees early on that the workshop was outside my comfort zone. Afterwards, I happened by chance upon an article by Jo Elvin (former editor of Glamour magazine) on public speaking. She said you should never tell the audience you’re nervous because then it will put your audience on edge. No one wants you to be nervous; they really want to hear what you’ve got to say.
A good point.
Great, I thought. Something else I did wrong.
I couldn’t figure out how to turn the chat comments on whilst juggling screen share, and so ended up not being able to interact as I would have liked. I’ve attended so many zoom sessions and this has never happened before. I think I was panicking a bit. Still, I made it through. And, in the end, I think it went quite well. My friend and colleague Sam said I was a natural. Thanks Sam!
And more importantly, Female Lawyers’ Club now has a fabulous new cohort of members. We’re a growing community who are supporting and inspiring each other and that feels good.
In her article, Jo Elvin gave her tips on public speaking. Here are mine:
Prepare as best you can, including writing out a full script if you’re particularly nervous. Doing this has always reassured me that, if all else fails, I can read from the script and I at least won’t die on my feet as my poor colleague did years ago. I highlight the main words and phrases in the script and then glance down every now and again to remind me of what I want to say. This has always worked pretty well. You may be able to do it without any notes at all, to which I say – amazing! Go for it! But if you get nervous, like me, this tip will really help you.
Tell a story as part of your talk, if you can. People love stories.
Practice your talk beforehand out loud. It’s important to get used to hearing your own voice talk about things calmly and with authority. You’ll train yourself to recognize that you have useful things to teach people, and this will give you confidence.
Listen to an uplifting song beforehand. Nothing makes me feel more energized faster than this.
Visualize it going well before you go in. How would it look if it went really well? How would you stand? Who would you look at? What tone of voice would you use? Really lean into that feeling of it going well. And then bring that visualization into reality!
The reason I am writing this blog is to encourage my junior lawyer friends that, even if someone appears to know what they’re doing, looks can be deceiving. They may be feeling like a fraud, or like they’re winging it. In fact, scratch that. We’re all winging it, most of the time. Yes, I’m an experienced employment lawyer but I was still winging it last week. And I’m winging it now. I’ve never written blogs before. I’ve never tried to grow a community before. Heck, before last year I’d barely even posted on social media before (I don’t like being visible, lol).
And yet I’m still here doing all of these things because I think this is really important. I’m creating the community I wished had existed earlier in my career. I’m spreading the message that it’s ok for women to publicly take imperfect action and risk failing. The world needs our voices. Your future clients need your voice.
After the workshop, I stumbled upon this quote, by the entrepreneur and writer Ash Ambirge. She said:
“I can promise you this: every single person who’s ever done anything interesting with their lives has done so while feeling mortified.”
That shifted my mindset entirely. I was mortified last week but I’m still here. And I’ll carry on sharing what I’m learning along the way.
If you know a friend or colleague who this blog may help, please forward it on to them.
Thanks for reading. May you find something to be mortified about this week (in the best possible way).
~Rachel