Mic'd Up with Me, Myself and I

Rachel Washington, founder of Enabled by RW, shares her journey into public speaking. She gained confidence from being involved in sports and holding leadership roles. Through various career experiences, she learned to adapt her style and find her own voice. Rachel emphasizes the importance of preparation and making the content authentic to oneself. Her advice includes consistently practicing public speaking, finding one's own style, and seeking feedback for improvement. She suggests video recording oneself to become self-aware of vocal tics and areas for growth. As part of my series, I thought it would be interesting to add my own thoughts to the questions that I've been asked. So the first one, who am I, what my role is and my journey into public speaking. So my name is Rachel Washington. I am the founder of a company called Enabled by RW. I've been in business for just over 12 months and come from a background of working in sport and then in corporate learning and development with a little bit of client work in between that. I am a confidence coach, a consultant and an event show caller. My journey into public speaking, I think, or being able to stand up and speak in front of people definitely comes from having been involved in sport. I have always been involved in sport from a very young age. I have been a captain of teams. I've been a coach of teams. I worked as an athletic union officer at university. Once I finished my degree in sabbatical, I worked for a national governing body and worked with sports clubs. And a lot of those roles required me to stand up and speak, not necessarily in front of lots of people or hundreds of people, but actually be able to talk to groups of people and find myself being heard and also being able to get people's attention. I think that's where my journey definitely started. And then through the different roles that I have done in my career, I've led meetings. I've delivered training. I'm a facilitator. I have been a host at learning events for the corporate role that I used to do. I've done the show calling role, which although it's not standing up in front and speaking in front of people, it is directing with confidence. So I think all of those as a combination has led to me being able to help people look at reframing and identifying their inner confidence so they can stand up and speak in front of a team, a meeting, a room full of people, whatever that may be. My biggest challenge I think has been finding my own voice. So really having the confidence in me rather than trying to be somebody else, use the language that is most comfortable to me, not use language that I trip over because it's not my everyday. And also being concise, you'll probably gather from this particular session that I have this challenge with being concise. And that's something that I cover in some of the content that I have been shared, is thinking about what your key messaging is and how you want to get that across. And depending on the time that you have available, obviously it depends on how much detail you can go into, how much content you can cover, et cetera, et cetera. But yes, conciseness is still a challenge of mine. I like to talk, as you can probably gather. What do I still find challenging? I think when I find myself in situations where it's really structured content. So back in my corporate role, I was a host at learning and development events whereby we were initially given a script. But again, the confidence and the challenge that I had about finding my own voice was the first time I did it, I felt as though I needed to learn what was put in front of me. But then I very quickly realized that as long as I was able to give the right cues to my co-host, because there was always two of us, then actually the bit in the middle, I could put my own sort of flavor and style to. So it very much became, what's the key message? And therefore, make sure I hit those, make sure I give the right cue and consistently the right cue to my co-host so they know when they're picking up. And from there, I found that actually it became a lot easier than trying to learn a script. I've always really struggled with that. How do I prepare? So I do a lot of facilitation. I don't do as much hosting anymore, but I do do a lot of program facilitation. And my key things around preparation is reviewing the content. So making sure I understand it. I know what we're trying to achieve. So again, that whole point of what's the purpose of what I'm doing and then how can I make it my own, but still hit the key points. So in facilitation, you're given what they call a macro and instruction guide and an overview of what the objectives are for what we have been asked to deliver. So my preparation is always about how can I take the key messages and the structure of what they do and make sure that I can deliver it in an authentic way to me. So again, that whole thing of not tripping up, not struggling to remember something because actually its style doesn't resonate with my style. So we all have a personal style of how we deliver things. And that's one of the key things for me. So knowing the content, but being able to adapt my style. I've gained a lot of experience in that and a lot of confidence through trying different things and realizing what works and what doesn't. Taking forward what works and obviously putting to one side what doesn't. I normally take whatever I'm given and I then create my own notes or my flow of information. So I regularly deliver an online workshop where it's a discussion-based workshop. So effectively it's a series of questions that I am asking a group of people and getting their engagement. Now that's really difficult if you're not getting engagement. So one of the key things I've done over the period of delivering a few of them is make notes of things other people have said. So I can use them as examples. A little sort of kind of anecdotes or experiences that I can put in there. So my notes don't follow exactly what it is that I've been given, but I do make sure if you've read through it, you can see everything that I've been given is included in the notes that I have. But it allows me to take something that has been written by somebody else and actually turn it into something that makes sense to me. So I always create my own notes on any content that I'm given. And what are the three things that I would give as my advice to anyone? I think the first one is keep doing it. Once you get over that initial fear and you get up on that physical or metaphorical stage and you find that it's not as bad as what you originally thought, I think it's then finding the next opportunity and making sure that you can consistently practice and have those chances. Now, it doesn't always have to be standing on the front of the stage and talking in front of people. This could just be talking to team or possibly even things that you want to do on video. So videoing yourself, delivering something, doing voice notes. This is something I used to do quite a lot of with a team that I led rather than speaking in team meetings, because again, I used to go off on tangents. I used to do voice notes just giving the updates because it allowed me the freedom to give them the information that I wanted to, but meant that they had a choice as to whether or not they listened. The key things we always covered in the team meetings to make sure that they're the most important, but there were other things that I wanted to share that I thought they would want to know. Some did, some didn't, and it gave them that choice of whether or not to listen. I think the second one is around finding your style. So in Becky's interview, she talked about the fact of watching previous people or people she looked up to and thinking about, oh, you're looking at them going, oh, they're so comfortable, how do they do it? And when she spoke to them, they realized that they were nervous. I think it was James who also said about trying not to imitate, because if you try and imitate, you soon realize that it's not comfortable and it's not authentic. And believe me, it will show. If you are trying to be somebody different to who you are naturally, that's when it comes across as stilted, rehearsed, scripted, because people do want to connect with the human element, the human element, the human being that's in front of them. And the only way that they can actually do that is by you finding your own voice, delivering in your own style, and making sure that you can be completely true to yourself. Now, this does take time. It's not going to be something that comes overnight. You're not going to literally step up on stage and suddenly be amazing at presenting or delivering. You may be natural in the sense of you feel comfortable and you come across as natural, but then it's thinking about, right, where do I need to improve and how can I improve? So as I said before, one of my biggest challenges was around, and I still find challenging, is sticking to structured content. So whenever I'm asked to host on behalf of content that I'm being given, it's then making sure that I'm completely true to the essence of what they're trying to achieve, but at the same time, I find a way to make sure that I'm comfortable with that content. And then finally, the third one, I would say, seek that feedback. Where is it that you can improve? What is it that has resonated? Is there something about your pace or your tone or your body language? If you're physically, the way you move, is it from a perspective of on a video that you've put out there, maybe on social media, that has resonated with somebody? What's the natural element of what people see? So obviously, from a feedback perspective, you're looking for the positives as well as the things that you can improve. Don't always focus on, tell me where I can improve, but also be able to understand what works, because what works is what you need to then build from. And the improvement areas are the things to understand, so you can then start to work on it. The other way of feedback is obviously videoing yourself. So it is uncomfortable. It can make you very self-conscious, but the idea behind it is it allows you to become self-aware. Do you have vocal tics? I'm pretty sure my current vocal tic is so, and if you listen to this back, I'm convinced that there will be many times that I have said the word so, and using it to move on to the next point. I will listen back to this, and I will critique myself, and maybe I will have re-recorded this 10 times over. You will never know because you only get one version of it. But the whole point behind it is that every time I do something like this, and I listen back to it, sometimes I never change. I don't change what it is that I've recorded for the absolute purpose of it's real, it's authentic, it was me in the moment. But what I then do is I'll take that into the next thing I do, and I'll make a note, and I'll change up what I'm going to do in the future. Because if you're in a live environment, you can't say, oh, can we stop and redo that, please? Can I go back over that? I've realised I've been saying um and ah too much, so I'd just like to do over. It doesn't work like that, but being aware of it, and being able to watch yourself back, means next time you can be conscious of what it is that you're saying. You might want to do some practice, you might want to video yourself more so you can figure out why it is. It could be that you're talking about content that you don't know, so you need to learn that content. It could be that you're trying to use language that doesn't come naturally to you, so you're tripping over words and you're trying to think of the word, therefore you're going to use fillers. It could be the nerves, or it could quite simply be you don't like silences. And as I said, there is a power in silence. Hopefully you haven't switched it off because you thought there was a glitch in the video, or audio, should I say. But those are the three things, so make sure you keep doing it, find ways to do more of it, find your own style, and make sure you're continuing to gather feedback at whatever point that you do. Hopefully you found that useful, and I'm going to try and do a few more of these, so we'll be seeing you again in the future. Thanks!