The future is very much on her mind, as Nicola Cairncross has been speaking for the International Coach Federation at County Hall on this very topic. What do you need to be thinking about in order to futureproof your business? She gets some tips on public speaking from her mate Pete Jenkins who is Chairman of GamFed and get’s flown all over the world to speak on Gamification. One of Pete’s colleagues ended up on the very next chair on stage with Nicola in London – small world, isn’t it?
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Mentioned in the Vzine
- UK ICF Conference in London
- Pete Jenkins – Gamification Plus
- Clicks And Leads Academy – mentoring with Nicola Cairncross
- Nicola’s free app for your mobile device – Clicks & Leads
On the blogs
Vzine 067 | Lessons From A Mossie Net
Vzine 066 | Catch Up, Will You?
Own It! 180 | Starting Again In Business
Own It! 179 | Mental Models
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Nicola here and I’m at the ICF Conference and I’m talking to you live from the stage. Welcome. What I’m gonna cover today is how to be very confident speaking live on camera. Someone in the audience has just pointed out that in fact I am not live and that is correct. Because it’s much better if you record things in advance, properly.
So, I’m actually just going to do a live demonstration. I’m showing people how to create a bit of content that can then go everywhere online in under 10 minutes a week.
(video reel sharing highlights from UK ICF)
So, as you can see we’re out here in the sunshine and we’re having lunch. I’m having lunch today with one of my very good friends, Pete Jenkins, who is a gamification expert. He’s got his own company called GamificationPlus.
And, interestingly, I ended up on stage yesterday with someone who knew Pete and his colleague Vacilis. Which was a real coincidence, it was really very strange. But it’s auspicious I’m having lunch with Pete today.
So, I thought It’d be really cool if I asked Pete to tell you as he does travel the world speaking live about all sorts of topics, but mainly gamification. Then he’s going to give you his top three tips for making speaking live more fun, more enjoyable, and easier to do.
So, I’m going to turn the camera around and ask Pete right now for his tips. Tell us where you’ve been recently speaking, and where you’re off to.
Pete – Oh let’s see, three days ago, four days ago, I was in Canada, in Toronto, speaking at a serious games conference on the topic of big data and gamification. The week before that I was Mumbai, in India. My next trip, I think you asked me, is Romania.
Nicola – Wow, cool.
Pete – So, I do travel around a bit.
Nicola – Yeah, absolutely. And what makes it easier for you, what tips would you share with my viewers?
Pete – Well I’m still the sort of person who gets really nervous before going up and speaking. But I do find that one tip, which I read somewhere, it really works for me, which is just before you’re going out is tell yourself you’re really excited about the opportunity, not nervous. And it just, the newer science is good, it tells you that you’re actually, all those symptoms of nerves are actually more about excitement.
Nicola – Oh yeah, I came across that one recently and it really works, yeah.
Pete – I did used to do that whole breathing, and stretching, and power posing and stuff. But quite often you’re in the audience, in the front row, or whatever, and you’re about to be called onstage and that can be quite disconcerting to anyone else who’s speaking. So, I wouldn’t always recommend that. So, you can’t rely on that in a pinch.
Nicola – Do you do any visualization techniques of any kind?
Pete – No, I don’t actually.
Nicola – Oh.
Pete – But one thing I actually would recommend is I like to practice my talks as much as possible.
Nicola – Really?
Pete – Yes, because my biggest fear when I’m talking is a mindblank, when you suddenly can’t remember what you were talking about or where you are in a story. And I do find that the more you practice the more likely that’s not gonna happen.
Nicola – I’m complete opposite, I just completely wing it. Because then you don’t go blank because you’re not trying to remember what you’re trying to remember.
Pete – Which that leads to my next tip, which is what I kind of like to deliver a good talk is to take people on a story, a journey. So, you start them somewhere, you build them up, and by the end of it they’re really excited and ready to do what you want them to do. But to do that you have to remember all the steps of the story, which means if you miss one everyone goes, that didn’t make any sense. And if you get distracted and go off on a tangent, you have to know how to bring it back.
Nicola – Yeah. And do you prefer speaking to bigger crowds or smaller ones?
Pete – Ooh, I love training, so that’s a nice small crowd. I can wing that, if needed. But on a bigger crowd, I like the whole feedback that you get from an audience. And to be honest, being in gamification, I really like adding some sort of audience interaction, or participation to help them get the point. Particularly if you’re like the last speaker or the first one after lunch.
Nicola – Oh, first one after lunch, terrible.
Pete – Well if you talk about gamification, you often get that slot ’cause they’re like, oh, that’s fun, that’ll wake everyone up. So, you get the tough spot.
Nicola – Yup, I found myself dropping off yesterday in the after lunch slot, which was really difficult.
Pete – There, you see. So, I try and find ways to get the audience to stand up. Mix together, introduce each other. There’s lots of different ways and my secret to that is I always try and make the exercise I’m giving them relevant to the talk I’m giving. Yeah, so they’re still learning a concept at the same time. That way nobody feels like they’ve just been distracted for the sake of it. ‘Cause I’ve seen that, an audience participation thing where it just didn’t seem relevant to the talk at all. I’d rather not have that.
Nicola – Yeah, yeah cool. Okay, so thank you very much. I really appreciate you spending some time with us today, And giving us your tips for brilliant live speaking.
Pete – My pleasure Nicola.
Okay. So, what’s on the blog and the podcast this week, you might be asking yourself. On the blog last week we talked about how you need to become resourceful if you don’t have much resources. You need to think about how could we do this, rather than I can’t afford this. And the more resourceful you get, the better it’ll be, and the more you push your business forward.
And you’ve got to remember, nobody else is gonna do it for you. So, if you haven’t got many resources, you’ve got to become more resourceful. So, that’s on the blog at NicolaCairncross.com/Blog.
And on the podcast this week with Judith Morgan, Own It, the podcast. We talked about mental models and how everything from the lower retraction to the theory of constraints.
And we talked about how if you’ve got some really useful mental models in your back pocket, when you’re facing a difficult dilemma or decision you can just pull out one of your favorite mental models, run your challenge through it, and come up with a good answer, hopefully every time. So, that’s OwnItThePodcast.com, come and check us out over there.
And as always, you can come over to the Facebook page, at NicolaCairncrossUK. That’s it for this week, bye.
Find out more about Nicola’s Clicks And Leads Academy and get the help you need to start your online business today
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