Stand Out With Unshakable Confidence

Our guest speaker Karen Laos mesmerised the Clubhouse room with her strategies on speaking with confidence, which she said starts with building trust and establishing credibility. Including being aware of our behaviours in underrepresenting through upspeak and lack of confidence. We should use projects using depth and vocal variety. 

Some quick tips and tricks are.

• Execute PPU. Say something personal, professional & unique (and fun) about you. 

• Start With Volume. On an average our volumes are 20% lower than we think they are. Be brief. People will tune out with monologues or longer than necessary introductions.

• Record and listen. Yes, most people hate doing it, but it’s the best feedback to act on!

• Use your diaphragm. Unless you’re a trained singer, you don’t know how to most effectively use your diaphragm. 

• Use body language appropriately. Even in virtual meeting settings, we should be using eye contact and gestures to convey the appropriate energy levels. 

• Avoid jargon. Build credibility by using relevant language that is free of jargon and acronyms. 

Dealing with nerves? Here are additional tips on how to replace anxiety with energy, yet keeping the voice and tone consistent.

• Anxiousness Reappraisal. Replace anxiety with excitement. Think that our aloud in your head!

• Stand Like Wonder Woman! To feel bigger and confident. 

• Avoid LBOW. Don’t waste precious time on a lovely bunch of words. But after a brief introduction, go immediately into a story.

• Ask yourself. What is needed here. What’s required of me.

Pivoting In Pandemic

We’ve all heard or read about great pandemic pivot theories. Keep your customers front and center; show exemplary leadership behavior in making the right, albeit hard decisions; don’t let a crisis go to waste. And there have been success stories; Salesforce, and Airbnb, to name a few. But we know how much harder it is for small businesses to apply the same theories in pivoting their business in the face of a global pandemic.

And so we talked to Allison Shapira, the CEO and founder of Global Public Speaking, LLC, given how successfully she had pivoted her small business through the dark days of the pandemic to emerge stronger and better, both for her clients and her staff. 

Some of Allison’s key initiatives were:

• Initiating wellness checks with the clients, and with staff. 

While the business was grappling with existential crises, Allison and her team lost no time in initiating wellness checks with the clients, providing them with free resources. She also initiated the same checks with staff, meeting with them frequently to make sure she had a good sense for their emotional well-being.

• Listening to the client with empathy. 

As Allison listened to her clients make their own pivots, she took stock of changes in the communication and public speaking space. She learnt that the versatile communicator was not a good-to-have, but a must-have. And that she had a brand new market of online communication needs that she needed to service.

• Become even more agile in ideating and executing.

As Allison listened to the emerging needs of her client, she needed to very quickly productise those service offerings. 

• Have clear vision and singular focus.

Allison knew no matter how tough the going was, especially in the short term, she had to have a clear vision for the long term and to execute it with singular focus. Especially so her team could play the long game with her. 

In closing remarks, Allison described the new normal to include.

• Increased demand for flexibility from the service provider. And so she expects to see consistent demand in her virtual offerings.

• Increased expectation to pivot in real time. 

Scaling Up Through Transitions

Transitions are hard, whether they are personal, or at a business level. Both leave you feeling lonely, with an acute sense of discomfort, and struggling to figure out how to get to that next stage of evolution. But we know that for life-long learners who demand more from life than what they get, these transitions are the norm, and not an exception

How do I know this? Because I have battle scars of the many transitions I have experienced over the past two decades; both personal and in business. Given our exponentially non-linear lives, we will have even more transitions than before. And I would like to make them make them predictable, and easier to navigate.

And so begins my podcast “My 2.0”, that brings together inspirational stories of career transitions in women. Through this podcast, I hope to provide a framework for our individual career transitions, and build a community of peers and mentors lifelong learners.

And so forms Cospan, to make sure that CEOs and Founders do what only they can do; focus on market-facing activities that result in growth of their business. Leaving Cospan to execute their vision, and to scale their operations. I have been in your shoes, through my years of experience of scaling up  businesses, through intense periods of hyper-growth. I know the challenges and how to solve them. And it’s now time for me to solve them for you, and with you.