I had a good experience last Thu. I spoke in the ASTD Global Network China International Conference in Shanghai. It was a 2-day conference with around 150 participants from mainly Greater China. In my session, I shared about thoughts on how to leverage Subject Matter Experts or Line Manager as part of your training strategy. Whilst I will write in another post about the speech content, let me share in this post first about my learning from this speaking experience – “You got to do what you train”.
Speaking in this public environment enriched my capability to train up others’ presentation skills. It makes me (or my teaching content) real!! Take presentation anxiety as an example. Though I talk about how to become less nervous in class often, I have not had serious anxiety for a long time. Yes, I do feel a bit anxious every time after class, but it is alright. In this public experience, I had ‘considerable amount of anxiety’ which I had to deal with.
All those weird thoughts came to my mind – ‘What if no one care to participate in my opening activity?’, ‘What if I forgot the content?’, ‘Will the attendee think that my content is too simple?’, ‘What if I look stupid in front of all those training professional?’. (However, once I walked up the stage, I was fine. See the photo on the right. I even did not bother to take out the note from my pocket. The delivery came all very natural and smooth…. [but that I did walk too much on the stage and should pause longer – thanks to Christine for her feedback!!]. Anyway, it all turned out alright, and I did receive some encouraging feedback from the others in the conference.)
In short, the experience of having these thoughts, and dealing with it makes my presentation class better. Hopefully this applies to this blog as well…. but you the reader will be the better person to judge!!
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