That was not the first time I helped out the Strategy team with a project. But after I talked them through my work, the leader suddenly said we were presenting it to the client in two hours.
My first reaction was “Me?“. When the leader confirmed it, I tried to get away from it by saying how I’ve never done one before and to let the strategist lead the way instead.
What a response!
I easily turned down a great opportunity just because I had no confidence in my presenting ability when I did all the work already.
Since then, the incident stuck with me. That’s why last weekend I decided to take a public speaking course with ample opportunities to practice.
The course taught me technical skills such as utilizing body language and intonation, but my biggest revelation was how much caring for other people's opinions hindered me from being a good speaker.
Thinking that people would pinpoint every single mistake that I made and with fear of losing people’s interest, I usually develop an Eminem like skill when speaking to an audience.
Once I realized that nobody was talking about my mistakes and instead gave compliments on my natural speaking ability during feedback time, I quickly got over myself and became a lot calmer. Plus, seeing how other people in the course went through ridiculous exercises like reading a news script in a mickey mouse voice and practising tongue twisters without being embarrassed gave me the courage to care less about what people think.
Although we focus on the audience when preparing a presentation, the crowd should be the last thing on our minds when we’re under the spotlight.
Oh and btw, I ended up doing the presentation after my colleagues convinced me to. The client was super impressed with the quality of work we presented in such a short time too 🙌
From now on, I intend to take on every opportunity that comes my way!
Abstract: The Art of Design
This design series from Netflix is fantastic. You can dive into the world of each designer, how their upbringing shaped their lives and skills, and hear their design philosophies.
My favourite part? Getting a glimpse of how these people see life and things through their artistic minds.
Reflecting Quickly
I was guilty of not taking time to reflect on my life or digest information that I’ve consumed. Finding time to do reflection would be ideal but realistically it’s just another thing that’s stuck on my to do list.
That’s until I discovered these two reflective, yet actionable prompts:
Write down 2-3 things that I’ve learned
Write down 2-3 things I’ll do differently
It takes less than 5 minutes to do this, yet it helps me metabolise the day and act on information.