When you’re young you can tell someone what really think of them. You can be brutally honest. You can say things as a kid and get away with it.
It’s like a while back my Mum, sister and niece were visiting the
cemetery where my grandmother is buried. My Mum said to my then 8 year old
niece that this would be the place where she would be buried when she died.
Within a heartbeat my niece just looked at Mum and said, “Well who’s going to
look after us on Tuesdays if that happens?”
Kids say it as it is. They don’t worry about all the niceties that
go with providing someone with feedback these days. At school, if you didn’t
like someone, you told them you didn’t like them. If you thought they were
acting stupidly, you told them they were stupid.
Now, for me I must admit this was a bit of a problem. You see I
was one of those kids whose mouth seemed to move some seconds before the brain
was engaged. Which often meant that I said things that would lead to pain – and I’m not just talking about from
the headmaster’s cane – although that did come into play a fair bit. Even to
this day I can still remember some of the incidents that led me to being on
first name basis with the Principal.
Like the time I told my classmate Roderick the truth - that he
smelled. Now, it may have been the truth, but it wasn’t necessarily the smartest
thing that I could do. To put in in perspective, I weighed about 20kg wringing
wet and Roderick, well Roderick was big enough to grab the cane from the
Principal’s hand and smash it over a desk – and that was in primary school! And
Roderick wasn’t that much into verbal communications!
I used to think it was so unfair at school – why was it that both
of us had to go to the Principal for the cuts – after all, I wasn’t the one who
started the fights. Why did I have to cop it twice?
So my lessons on communications were there from a young age – I
learnt to say what I really thought and I learnt that when I didn’t like what
was said to me than I could take some form of retributive action. I also learnt
that life wasn’t necessarily about fairness
Problem! That approach doesn’t work so well as an adult. And it
definitely doesn’t work at all as a speaker.
You are going to meet some wonderful characters as a speaker and
they will either be clients who have paid you directly or they are somehow
related to the client who is paying you. Often those people will have an
opinion that may not be in congruence with yours.
I raise this as I recently watched a speaker basically tell the
customer they were…….. well let’s just say wrong.
Dr Phil, of the TV Dr Phil, made one comment I agree with. He was
talking to a mum about her relationship with her daughter. He asked her, “Do
you want to be right or do you want to prove that you are right?”
It’s a lesson I could have done with in the schoolyard. And it’s
one I think about often when confronted with someone who holds a different
belief to me; do I want to be right or do I want to prove that I am right?
I was right about Roderick – he did smell. But proving I was right
was far more costly to me than him.
Being a professional speaker is not just about what you do during
your presentation, it’s also about how you handle yourself off-stage.
You may be at a conference and hanging about during the post
dinner drinks. Someone approaches you to “discuss” how wrong you were. Choice: Do
you allow them to have their opinion or do you set out to prove yourself right?
Learning how to let people have their say does not mean that you
give in or contradict your beliefs. I may ask leading questions in order to see
if this person is open to thinking differently, but I don’t need to get into an
argument with them about it. Sometimes it’s best to just let it go. You can be
right and you don’t have to prove it all the time.
Hopefully the place you do prove it is in your presentation.
A professional speaker has to be a bit of a diplomat and be
capable of holding a conversation with a range of people on a range of topics
in a range of settings. Learning how to interact with people in a professional
manner off-stage is just as important as preparing for your presentation
on-stage.
Just a quick point on the scenario above that involved alcohol. I
have attended my fair share of conference dinners and both pre and post dinner
social sessions – all of which involved some level of alcohol. Trust me some
people handle it better than others. But as a professional speaker?
This is just my belief, others may tell you differently. Never
consume alcohol before a talk; usually I’ll have water or a soft drink in my
hand. During the dinner – and only after the speech, I may have one glass of
wine and water or soft drink the rest of the time. In the post-dinner social
event, again I’ll have no more than one glass of wine the whole evening – it
can last a long time that one glass.
Why? You are “on” at all times. People will be watching you at all
times and they want to see whether your words match your actions. There is
nothing worse, I believe, and I have seen it happen, where a professional
speaker has had far too much to drink in their quest to be “one of the boys”. At
an event you are there as a professional. Act it.
That does not mean I’m aloof or don’t enjoy a glass of wine. I
hope I am always friendly. I enjoy mingling and talking to people in these
social settings – it is amazing what you will get told! But I am there to do a
job.
What you do away from the spotlight is your choice. What you do in
front of a client is the professional choice. One pays. One doesn’t.
Inspire The World With Your Words
Colin
Do you like this article from Speaking TODAY! on Tuesdays: Thoughts,
tips and stories on speaking and presentations? Feel free to share it with your friends also.
Or, why not join us for other articles on my TODAY! Seminars’ Facebook pages on Leadership, SME
Business, Good Health, Public
Speaking, Networking
and Living
Life. Alternatively you can see them
on LinkedIn, Ecademy, Twitter or my BlogSpot page or at Google+. This article is copyright to TODAY! Seminars (2011)
and cannot be reproduced in any form without written approval of TODAY! Seminars.
.jpg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment