164: MMM - You are Not a Writer (You're a Speaker)

Hey everybody, and welcome to This Moved Me, a podcast about creating talks that move the world. With me, your host, Sally Koering Zimney. Together with some fabulous guests, we will have a casual conversation about the art of public speaking, because a good talk can move the world, and it'll be fun. Yeah, I would think making alien cows meaningful. That's not a small task. I love your giggle. Wow. Oh my gosh, so waiting for everybody to figure out the alphabet. Hey movers, it's Sally, and it's time for a mini Moved Me. It's just me. I've been bringing you, I think, some really great interviews with people whom I have met over the last year who wowed me in some way, and I wanted to share them with you. So if you haven't yet gotten a chance to catch up with Jillian Farabee, she's amazing and she's inspired this week's mini Moved Me. So with Jillian last week, we talked about really speaking with our bodies. And one of the things that I think is really connected with that is how, as a coach, I think about bodies. That sounds bad. It sounds a little weird, but one of the biggest shifts that I need to make with many, many people is getting out of seeing themselves as writers who then just get up and speak what they've written. Now, there are a few moments where that's all you're doing. They're kind of podium-centered speaking, right? You've got the script in front of you. It's like, you know, the lectern at church. On the whole, when most people think about speaking, they think— they focus all of their energy on what is written on the page and not so much on, uh, how to deliver it. They know that's important, but they kind of figure, if I get all the words right and I make some eye contact, I'm golden. And whoo, we've got to shift out of that thinking. And so as a coach, I focus a lot on the body. Is your content in your body? Are you speaking from more than just your brain out your mouth? Because we've all seen those speakers and they're wholly uninspiring and frustrating to watch because honestly, you could just be recording it like I am right now and listen to it. But no, we are speakers. We speak with our bodies live in the room. We are responding to what people are saying, and of course we all know the information about how so much of how we communicate with people has nothing to do with our words, right? It is in the body, and so we have to really focus on that piece. So that is the first thing that we need to do is own and accept that we are speakers and not writers. And I don't know about you, but I think there are people out there, and more and more of them as I do this work where writing actually gets in the way of speaking. So I have started to, for some people, to bypass completely the process of writing. Now it took me a while to adapt to this for my, for my speakers and recognize this as a need because for myself I write how I speak and so writing has always been an important part of the process. That's how I start, is I write, write, write, write, write, write, write. It helps me edit, 'cause I have kind of an editing brain, and so as I'm writing, I'm making choices about what I do and do not wanna say, and there's word choice that goes into it, and you start to get a sense of flow and length, and there's all this stuff that I learn in the process of writing, and I get clearer on what I wanna say when I write. For some people, it does the exact opposite, where they start writing and they lose their words. You lose the personality and you start writing like you're gonna turn in a paper rather than it being something that will live in you. And so it can take some people backwards. So that is my question for you today: is writing a helpful part of the process? To help you live in your body as a speaker. Because if writing is getting in the way, you've got to find another way. So I want to offer you a few ideas on how you can get to and in your body faster as a speaker. Okay, so I've got 5 ways actually that I want to share with you that I've used with with my speakers to help shift them from thinking themselves as just a writer to really living in their bodies as they're speaking more. So the first thing I want to share with you is what I just alluded to, that instead of writing, having that be step 1, I want you to try bypassing that completely and just turn on your voice memo app or record yourself in some way as you are just initially throwing some things on the wall. Okay? If you've seen any of my stuff about the 5-point outline, there's an episode about that a few weeks back. Go listen to that, check that out, get yourself going with a 5-point outline and then press record and talk your way through it. Don't think about it too hard, don't edit yourself, don't even, don't get critical of yourself at all. You're literally just throwing it all out there. It's like, bleh! All right? There's no, that was a fun noise. There's no wrong way at this point. You You just want to see what is in your mind and get it out there and don't let the paper or the computer get in the way because that can happen. Okay, the second thing that I want you to do is to do what I call a walk and talk. Very simply, you're syncing up your words with your body. So the next time you say it out loud, and hopefully you've gone through some iterations after you just recorded, right? You have some semblance of a flow. You're— anytime that you're practicing, you've got to be moving. All right, no more sitting at your computer and doing it. You've got to move while you practice. All right, don't worry about performing it, but you move while you practice. And then one of the most important things is that when you are rehearsing, you get on your feet. All right, so it's really easy. This is moving beyond the walk and talk. This is don't practice it sitting down ever, right? So you're gonna keep going back and finessing with your content, and you're gonna focus on your slides, and there's all kinds of safety in the world of content, but there's so much learning that can only happen on your feet. So go, when it's 80% done and you're still not happy with it, you've got to start delivering it. More than just the walk and talk, I want you to actually start delivering it because it will change as you do that. And it's super informative and full of ahas and scary and exciting, but that's what you've got to do. All right. Now the, the, yeah, that was the third one, right? Yeah. The fourth one I call, uh, warm up and loosen up. All right. This is all about getting comfortable in your skin. So on the day of your talk, you need to warm up physically. And not just like walk around nervously running it through your head, but warm up physically, okay? What you wear impacts that. The shoes that you wear. Are you comfortable physically? You've got to get yourself into a place where you are physically ready to rock it and you feel grounded in your own skin, in your own body. So the rules on what we wear and don't wear I think have changed a great deal in the last 5 years especially, who you are and what you wear are kind of connected. So, you know, you want to keep in mind the expectations of your audience, but there's more wiggle room on that stuff than there has been in the past. So wear what is comfortable and what makes you feel good and what allows you to move. Which brings me to my last point, number 5, which is for you to break down that fourth wall. So when you are doing your talk, please don't think of yourself as a just a mouth and a head, right? I want you to literally change up the space, get closer to your audience, break down that wall, go ask them questions. And all of that movement, when you move, that brings energy and light into your presentation and it engages people and it helps them see you as a full three-dimensional human being and not just a smarty pants. 'Cause who cares about being a smarty pants, honestly? Who cares if you've got beautiful content but it doesn't get through that wall? We've got to get through the wall. All right. I hope that there is something in here that will help you move from a writer to a speaker because that is what we do as speakers. We are live human beings. Go be that as you are interacting with your audience. Alright, that's it for me. Thanks, guys! Hey Movers! It's Sally. I'm super excited to be back with you. It's maybe been a few weeks since I'm— yeah.