Mic'd Up with Rob Archer

Rob, the director of Cognacity, talks about his career in mental health and coaching. He shares his journey of overcoming shyness and becoming a confident public speaker. He emphasizes the importance of finding your own voice and style through practice. Rob discusses the significance of tailoring your content to different audiences and the use of visuals in his presentations. As an introvert, he manages his energy and incorporates recovery time after events. He advises speakers to focus on being helpful to the audience and preparing thoroughly. Rob, if you can tell me a little bit about who you are, what you do and your journey to where you've got to today. So I'm director of a company called Cognacity and we're a team of doctors and psychologists who work across the mental health spectrum. So we do clinical work at one end of the spectrum and at the other end of coaching with people to try and help them deal with pressure and stress and perform under pressure and to sustain high performance as well. I've known you now for over seven years. Is that right? Yeah. Were you there at the beginning of Altitude? I was there one year in. It's been an amazing journey, isn't it, that we've both been on, primarily through Altitude, but also a little bit outside. I've enjoyed that very much and I'm excited to see your new career direction as well. So I know you as a very confident, performative keynote speaker, engaging, getting the audience engaged, doing that change up of energy between having sat there listening to somebody plus also then doing something. If you can cast your mind back as far as you can possibly go, what do you remember as your biggest challenge with first starting off is standing up and getting that confidence to actually stand on a stage and talk in front of people or even at the start of a room in front of people? When I really think back to when I was a boy, I was very shy. I always had this kind of acting gene. So even though I'm a massive introvert, I was really passionate about acting. Part of the reason for that was that it gave me an excuse to be a different type of me that wasn't so overwhelmed by anxiety and shyness. Although I still remain an introvert today, I do think that public speaking does give me a little bit of that. I'm able to be a slightly different version of me when I'm presenting. So that's the sort of wider perspective of my life when it comes to sort of professional speaking and really being paid to do it for a living. The biggest challenges early on were trying to be somebody else. There's a phase you go through where you see somebody else who you think is really good and you immediately try to mimic them. A couple of people who've really inspired me in my life are absolutely brilliant speakers. When I tried to mimic them, it was a total disaster. It was just so wrong on every level. Those days, that was my biggest challenge when I was trying to be somebody else. Over time, you do learn what works and what doesn't, often through difficult times, difficult presentations or people who challenge you. Over time, I think you sort of hone and craft a version of yourself that is more authentic. Don't become a confident public speaker overnight. You can't click your fingers when people sort of say, tell me what I need to do to be able to stand up and speak like, and then name somebody. I think that element of confidence building and figuring out what your own voice and your own style, but the only way you're going to do that is through practice. Oh, 100%. I've actually reached the stage now where I've really honed down my content. What do I talk about is now very honed down to the things that I know work. That allows me to be on autopilot maybe 80% of the time, but that then saves my kind of mental space to allow me to be a lot more spontaneous in the moment and react to people in the moment. Separation practice is absolutely essential, not just to find your own voice, but also in the session itself, that you're not so overwhelmed. Your brain isn't trying to process so many things that you can't react to what's going on in the room. So I entirely agree with you. And of course, this is where coaching can come in. I was having the same conversation with somebody about practice and scripting versus rehearsing and the fact that they aren't the same thing. A lot of people feel that if they prepare, they will come across scripted because they will be learning what it is they're going to say. But as somebody who has seen the same content that you present being presented by somebody else and you've both got your own individual styles, I think that for me has always been the consistency. So the content is always the same, but the way in which you deliver it is in response to the audience and the interaction or the reaction that you get. So sometimes you spend more time on something that is getting a really good reaction. And other times you might skip over something that actually you can see people aren't that engaged with. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we need to remember that only half the battle is your side. You know, you remembering what to say is literally just half the battle. The other half is how is it landing? You know, is this relevant to somebody and their context? You do need to know your stuff, but then you need to be acutely aware of the dynamics in the room. That's what my preparation allows me to do. You know, I'm very focused on what people say and do in the room because I'm not having to think too hard about what it is that I want to say. Yeah, no, definitely. It's bizarre, I've just had deja vu because that's what we were saying earlier that actually your preparation is pre. When you arrive in that room, it's what's the environment, what's the situation, what's gone beforehand, what's the vibe and the energy, where they come from, have they come from lunch, have they come from a different session? That's been a bit intense. Absolutely. That's so true. And this is the point about the context. This can help in some way with nerves because you need to remind yourself that your job is to try and be helpful to people in that room. Your job isn't to get through your script. Your job isn't even to do a good presentation. Your job is to take what you know and try and make it relevant and bring it to life and make it practical for people so that it actually helps them. Remembering that you're there in service rather than, you know, this is something about you. Take the pressure off. That has often helped me with nerves. It's not about you. It's less about you than you think. You spoke about preparation there and I'd be interested to know two things. The first one is how do you prepare? And then the second question is how do you prepare for different audiences? Because you said you've honed your content to deliver the same content, but you will have different audiences. So how do you make that differentiation in preparation? I've developed a style which is slide heavy. I tend to use images that help me structure what it is that I want to say. They tend to be very heavily animated or, you know, there's things going on visually, which give me kind of reminders of the structure of the script. So I stack things in my favor through that technique. In terms of the tailoring, you take the core things that you want to get across and then you are back into that, you know, how can I be of service to these people? So, for example, if I'm talking to a group of graduates, trying to remember what that's like and maybe doing some research on what it is that grads are struggling with in today's world and using that to just tweak and maybe have stories ready or, you know, anecdotes from my own experiences ready to go. Those are the things that you're sort of tweaking around the core concepts that you're trying to explain. A little bit of preparation, but then the tailoring is a is the thing that you do immediately before the event. You mentioned that you are naturally an introvert. So how do you switch from arriving at your venue to then being energetic when you are on stage? So how do you make that? I just don't think I could do it. I've got so much energy from the adrenaline. I have to move around and that helps me in terms of the sort of preparation routine because I'm introverted and, you know, what I do is so active and I'm so present. I find presenting completely exhausting. I usually arrive an hour beforehand. I'm really in an energy conservation mode. I'm really trying to consciously save energy. I will try and keep conversations just one to one and make sure that I've kind of got enough energy to go when I need to. So a lot of it is about energy management for me. And then just rounding that off, we talk about the athlete in terms of preparation, performance and recovery. What's your recovery routine? Again, it's driven by introversion. So introverts tend to regain energy by themselves. And so I have to plan around big events like altitudes. You know, that's how many people would that be? 300 people at a time, maybe some of them bigger. But, you know, that will take a huge amount out of me. So I'll be traveling to the event by myself beforehand, conserving energy in the hour beforehand. And then afterwards, I will allow some time in my diary where I can just be alone. Events are quite good for that. You know, there's a natural sort of ebb and flow to events. So that's in my favor. It's actually been really helpful to me. If I had something where I was continuously on show, I'd be absolutely exhausted. That side of things has worked out well for me. I often joke that, you know, I need a week in the darkened room. And as with all sort of jokes, there is a grain of truth in that. And I had to negotiate with my wife, you know, when we first got together. You know, I had to explain, you know, it's nothing about you. I just have nothing left to give. Many are true words. I do make that joke. And people are often shocked. Like, I can't believe that you're an introvert, but I really am. I have to really abide by those principles. For anyone who does listen to this, what would you say are the top three things you would share with somebody? You need to have something to say. But beyond that, you need to think about how what you have to say can help somebody. You're in that room to be of service, not to give a speech. How does what you know help somebody else? Start there, I would say. Preparation is absolutely essential. It's not going to make you sound more wooden. It's going to make you sound more natural if you know what it is that you want to say. And you structure your speech or presentation or talk in a way that allows you to speak more naturally. I sound very natural, but it's all scripted. You know, a lot of it is a script. And then I will veer off script occasionally. Then I think the third one I would choose, no matter what you do, when you first start talking, it's going to be really hard. The brain will give you stress signals. It will be saying, should we really be doing this? Do we know what we're talking about? That kind of thing. I think it's impossible. If you care about what you're doing, it's impossible to do it without nerves. And the nerves, of course, are a good thing. But they can be crippling to some people. Practice, but in a safe environment. This is where coaching is so good. If you can find a coach who's really good at giving you honest but encouraging feedback so that you can develop some of those skills in a safe space, I would definitely recommend that. And then secondly, years ago, somebody once told me the root of the word confidence. We tend to think of confidence as this feeling that you have that then allows you to perform at your best. And so we all go off searching for this confidence. But of course, because confidence is a feeling, it's quite elusive. We're not really in control of our feelings. But apparently, the root sort of word of confidence is con, which means with, and then fidere, which means fidelity. And the original meaning of confidence was not a feeling, but it was acting with fidelity to yourself. And to me, that's a really helpful reminder. You're not chasing a feeling of confidence. What you're actually trying to do to build confidence is to act with fidelity to yourself. And certainly, whenever I've been authentic, that has immediately helped me land presentations and talks. I think that's a really good place to finish on from that perspective. It's that root of confidence. I definitely will be taking that one forward. So thank you very much, Rob. Really appreciate your time.