Ep. 46- Leaders Are Speakers and How to Connect & Relate To Who You're Speaking To with Expert Colin Boyd

So welcome to the lead from the inside out podcast. I'm Daryl black, and today it's all about leaders, our speakers, and I'm literally thrilled to be joined by a friend of mine and a true mentor, Colin Boyd. And I won't get into the long history of, of what his background is. I'll be turning it over to him shortly, but today it's going to be a really,

really exciting episode because we'll be talking about overcoming the fear of public speaking, which I think is like, it's more fearful than death. I think I don't know the true stats, but we'll explore that talk about, as we've made a shift as we record this it's COVID, so we've made a shift a little bit to, you know, remote workforce.

So as leaders, we don't have the ability to project our leadership in person and, you know, in a boardroom or during the meeting or something like that. So call unwell, walk us through that. And also kind of related to that is how do we convey emotion over the internet? Things like compassion and empathy and all of those other things. So I'm really,

really excited for, uh, for this episode. So Colin, I'll turn it over to you, my friend. And if you can give us a bit of a background and for everyone's edification, he does have an accent. He is while you were born in Canada. I think we're just, I was born in Canada, in Toronto and then grew up in Australia and then now live in California.

So we've done the journey clearly. So then, okay. So Colin Boyd, you're sitting here right now. How did you get into this seat right here that we're now talking about? So, uh, I have an obsession with communication. Uh, I have an obsession with speaking for me from a young age. I remember being, uh, in my first let's call it my first real job.

Uh, I was a marketing assistant at a large corporate real estate company in Australia. And I remember watching a few, you know, watching a few leaders and how they ran meetings and how they use the woods and have I communicated. And I just, I really noticed that leaders who people looked up to the most were also really good communicators for the most part.

And what happened. I had this pivotal moment where, uh, we actually had a conference that was over in the Asia Pacific area and they flew me over with the team. I don't know why they brought me over. I was just like this little marketing assistant, right. And I had one particular project that I was working on and they asked me to speak about this project.

And so I got up, I prepared and I spoke about the project and I remember getting off the stage and having, you know, the Asia Pacific marketing directors and MDs come over to me. And for the first time, engage me and start talking to me about this exciting project that I told them about. And then I started having them. They started emailing me,

like after asking me questions about things that I did in the project and they wanting to implement it in their region. And all of a sudden I had access and influence at the highest levels in this global organization. And I was a marketing assistant, and I had this epiphany that when you speak on a stage, you amplify your influence. And that was when I really became obsessed about speaking on stage.

And that led me to eventually become a professional speaker, travel around the world, speaking. And now essentially all I do mainly is help people speak and sell their ideas on a stage. And, and, Oh man, there's so much to unpack there because I actually have a very similar story in that. Um, I remember I was speaking in Phoenix and the crowd was about 2200 people and,

and it's probably somewhat similar. So I'm just going to draw some parallels. I remember being in the green area, green screen or whatever it basically couches backstage at this point. Green room. Yeah. The green room. Right, right. It was not green though. So that Green, it's definitely a thing behind it. But anyway, yeah. So,

um, so I was sitting there with, uh, with the gentlemen to my right and then another gentleman on a couch over here and they were talking and, and I'm like, I was a business analyst with the large telecommunications company and they asked me to go down and speak about something. So that's okay. So I'm just, you know, I'm not even engaging with these individuals.

They were better dressed than me. First of all. So I should've known something was up. So they introduced the first speaker and I was supposed to be the, the third up and the first speakers, the vice president of Hewlett Packard, Europe. And he goes up and he talks. I'm like, that's weird because I'm just like a marketing assistant essentially some way.

Hmm. Okay. So, so then the second individual goes up and he was the something VP of North America, SAP, which is a huge, huge software company. And I literally call an, I, I literally started to sweat because I was like, Oh, no, something got messed up. I'm not who they think I am. And so then,

and I'm curious, and we'll get into this in a second, but, and I literally walked, I literally walked up to somebody behind the state. I'm like, well, Daryl black is up next. Right. Where I get I'm like, okay, that's me literally. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to know. And I was like so Stressed or it was more just like this,

this weird moment that I'm literally not supposed to, like, it's not even imposter syndrome. I'm literally not supposed to be teaching speaking right now. So I go up and, and I, and this is where I want to go with this is I reached a point where it's like, you know what? It is, what it is. Took a couple of deep breaths went out there,

led off with a good, good Canadian joke. Cause those killed no matter what. And absolutely just started to roll with an, an energetically. It just, you know, I just came alive and, and everyone afterwards was like, you know, lots of claps, Hey, best keynote ever. And so on and so forth. So that leads me into the conversation around public speaking,

being a, I've heard, it's the number one fear, like even over death or something like that. So have you heard that in your own experience and have you come across people that have been that fearful of public speaking? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there is a general stat saying that, you know, it's, it's feed more than death because obviously death you're kind of dead,

but public speaking, you, you still alive and you're up there and everyone's just looking at ya and you're dying, but you haven't died very slowly on stage in front of a lot of people. Um, a hundred percent look, I remember I was 13 years old and I was actually in religion class. I was at a Catholic boys' school and I'm sitting there and on my desk,

it's this Brown wooden desk. I've got these high socks on a little Cub hat. And I, we were all reading a passage from the Bible and it was coming down to me. And I remember as it came towards me, starting to feel nervous about reading in front of the class. And then it came to me and I started to read the passage.

And what happened was I like started to stutter around my words and I started to fumble on what I was saying. I started to just really get like overwhelmed and all of a sudden, I remember it. I remember it like it was yesterday. I had this like we'd experience of almost feeling like the whole world was shrinking in on me and my eyes started to go blurry.

My breathing went short. I felt like I couldn't actually even get my breath to speak. And in my mind, I'm thinking everyone is looking at me right now thinking I am an idiot. Like I can't even read. And I remember walking out of that classroom and I guess, I didn't know it at the time, but unconsciously I'd actually created a belief through that experience that I was an idiot.

I created this belief that I couldn't speak in public. This belief that I wasn't a good communicator and it was fascinating. And I know you do a lot of work on like mindset and, and you know, internal growth. Uh, the, it wasn't until I was about 22 years old that I realized that I had that belief. And what was fascinating was that every single time I got up to speak,

I could feel that visceral response in my body, like I was 13 years old again. And I think many of your listeners probably have had a similar experience before. And you may even be over zoom right now. Cause you could call it the fear of virtual speaking right now. Right. You know, you might even be over zoom and you might have like 20 people on the call and you feel that,

that visceral response in your body of like wanting to pull back or freeze up or, or forgetting, you know, like forgetting what you're meant to say, forget if you're getting how to spell the word, the, you know, you like you have all these experiences and honor for me wasn't until I really started to work through my belief system and started to work through what I believed about myself and even the questions I asked myself coming into a speech that I started to really shift that,

that pattern that I'd built from a young age. So it's interesting. I don't want to lose sight of this, essentially what you're saying and correct me if I'm wrong, but you took that experience that you had as a 13 year old, and that was such a visceral specific experience. And now you allow that subconsciously now, for lack of a better phrase,

you were essentially now viewing public speaking or any speaking through the 13 year olds lens, even though you're an adult A hundred percent. And I mean, what we learned from human behavior is, you know, the, the experiences you have when you're younger, usually zero to seven. But you know, I would say even into your early teenage years and so forth,

like they frame how you see the world on an unconscious level. And it usually isn't until you've done the work to actually understand what your belief systems are, that you really start to work through them and break free from them, from them. And then go to the next level. If they're, if there are limiting beliefs Now, and I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole here,

but is it true? At least for me, I can speak for myself that it's often a fear of judgment, right? Not being enough making mistake. And I often find that it's more difficult to speak in front of peers than it is people that I actually don't know. Is that an experience that you've felt as well, whether it be corporate training or anything like that?

Yeah. Like, I mean, when you think about it, I guess, you know, you, you feel more emotionally attached to your peers, so you might be, I mean, it all comes down to what you're telling yourself. You could tell yourself all this more at risk. Because if I look like an idiot in front of my peers,

then I'm going to wreck my relationships with people who really matter. Or you could tell yourself, I'm so glad my peers are in the audience. They know my jokes, they know how I am and I can have some fun with them and enjoy the experience. Right. So whatever you tell yourself. Sure. Right, right. Whatever you tell yourself is what you'll experience.

Well, and I can tell you from personal experience, nobody laughs at my jokes, no matter if they're peers or I don't know them. So, so that's kind of off the table anyways. It doesn't matter. So then, so, you know, apart from going into, you know, your limiting beliefs and, and, and all of those other things,

tactically calling what let's say, I'm not somebody that's comfortable speaking in front of other people and, and you know, maybe I'm okay talking to a small group and I'm okay. Talking about things I know really well. And I've seen that a lot too, where people at first are really nervous until they get into the flow. But what about those people that it's just not in their wheelhouse to be a good speaker.

And you talked about it earlier, leaders are communicators. And in fact, one of the most, um, important traits of a leader is how they communicate the words they use, how they use those words, how they, you know, um, emote in terms of those words, how they project their presence during meetings, all those other things. And if you can nail a presentation that can be a career changer.

So what It really can, and, and a lot of clients that I've had in the past when I coached them on their presentation, it literally became career changes. I remember I was coaching one client many years ago and I told her, I said, you know, you're really good at what you do. Uh, I would encourage you to pitch yourself to different conferences and organizations and see if you can share some of your research that you're doing in your company.

And she did it. And I remember she came back to me and she spoke at this conference, came back and she said, I had four job offers as soon as I got off the stage. And she ended up taking one of them. And I got in contact with her several years ago. And she was like, yeah, I'm still at that job.

I'm loving it. Like you see like double the salary or something and better working conditions. It was, it was just huge because literally one speech, you know, in this space can, can change your whole career. And, and you can, you can build on that and, and do that. And I think if you're in an organization and you're working with other departments,

other teams, knowing how to communicate in a way that influences people to take an action or get on with your project or get on with the decision you're asking them to make can be the difference between your career, completely accelerating, all caps Opinion out, you know, and ultimately we're talking about the definition of leadership is exerting social influence, uh, to achieve a common goal or,

or a goal. And so knowing that how important that, that influence is, how can I prepare or what can we tell the folks listening? How could they prepare for that big presentation? For example, knowing that, you know, it could be important and we've got some VPs in there. I've got my peers in there it's to pitch a project or,

or something like that, knowing that at least psychologically there's a lot at stake. How, what kind of tactics or tools or techniques could you tell those people as they go into the boardroom for that presentation, or they're going into a team meeting, and maybe they're not super confident in what they're about to tell. So what kind of guidance could you give there?

I mean, generally we have a formula that I teach all my clients and essentially it's four big steps, right? The first step is you get clear on, on what is, why is this important? You know, we come back to, it's actually built around the B'nai SMA coffees format model. And it's really essentially at the start, you have to touch people's hearts and touching people's hearts is answering that question of why is this important?

And it's not, why is this important to you? The speaker it's why is it important to the audience? And that's the biggest distinction. And so most people miss this part, or they spend too little time on this. Cause, cause this is the thing is as the communicator, as the leader, you come into the situation and you know why it's important.

And so we, we assume that the audience knows also why it's important, but they don't most of the time they don't. And if you've wondered why someone hasn't taken action or done what you've asked them to do, I bet it's usually because they don't understand why it's so important. You've told them what to do. You tell them maybe even how to do it.

Uh, but you haven't told them why it's the cause it's the fuel, right? So that's the first piece is, is touching their hearts. Why is this important? The second piece is like, what are we talking about? And so it's the, what, it's the, uh, what I call it, shifting their minds and shifting their minds is sharing ideas that are going to help them to think in a way that will be resourceful or helpful to achieve the outcome that you're looking for.

And so that could be sharing principles or ideas that are gonna help your project team to think about the project in a way that helps them to stay motivated, to stay focused, to work as a team, to work collaboratively, whatever you, whatever you want as an outcome from the presentation. That's the, what section, it's the conceptual ideas you're wanting to pitch.

The third, the third thing is the how so the, how is like the timeline, maybe you've got a formula or structure or a timeline or a process. And so that is getting into working out the steps and the mechanics of what you're actually doing so that I call that equipping their hands. And then finally it's moving their feet and moving their feet is the,

is the now, so what do we do now? And most people don't do a final five minutes in a meeting. They don't summarize and go, okay, so what are we, what are we doing now? What, what does everyone have to do? And I think that final five check in is a really good process. So it's touch their hearts,

shift their minds, equip their hands and move their feet. It's the why? What, how now, man, if we had another four hours a week deep dive in all, dude, I could talk about that model for four hours without a doubt that you must be fine on a Friday night at a party. Hey, He wants to hang out with me.

Hey, Can I tell you though, there's a bunch of steps to nailing a speech. Okay. Call on the, here we go again. We're just talking about margarita is right, right. Yeah, exactly. Universal language, you know, and it's really interesting actually, as you were going through those steps, um, one of the tendencies and correct me if I'm wrong,

but is to make a presentation to mechanical, to scientific, to data driven and maybe not emotional enough in terms of, you know, my experience is it's all about data, right? You show your graphs, you show your charts, you show your risks, benefits, assumptions. So what I'm hearing you say is you need to really, if you want to get,

get stakeholder engagement or buy in, you're really talking about the emotional connection to, uh, to, uh, to a speech or a presentation. Is that really what you're what you're saying? Yeah. So the concept I call qualities is balancing the brain. So the brain is, you know, emotions driven and mentally driven. And most I've noticed over the years of doing this.

Most people, especially in a corporate environment lend too heavily on the left brain. So the left brain is all the things like the data, it's the processes, it's the, um, requirements. It's the, it's the steps, it's the policies, it's all that sort of stuff. And I'll tell you what, even as I say, that, that you probably in your mind went off and started wandering wondering about something else,

right? Because you start getting distracted. As soon as I talk about left brain stuff, now left brain creates structure, creates credibility. It creates, um, you know, uh, like clarity, but it's the right brain stuff that creates all the motivation and the engagement and the sophistication in your communication. So the right brain is like the metaphors. It's the,

it's the, um, the, the stories, it's the, how you use your tone, how you move your body. I remember I was doing some coaching with a corporate client and she used to do a presentation, um, about her kind of area. So she was part of like, you know, when they do inductions and she was like,

Oh, you know, I've got this induction, but I just, you know, people are getting really bored and all that sort of stuff. And I said, well, tell me about one of your clients that you worked with. I think, I think she was in like, uh, it was like, it was like operations or something like that.

Right. So she had to talk about operations and normally you're going to create an operations talk, but I said, tell me about one of your clients. And she was like, Oh, well, there's this guy that his name's George and George lives in the local community down the road. And, uh, so there are a government client, right.

And, and, and like, they live in a local community down the road. And George calls me up every other week to tell me about what's happening in his community. And some of the issues that he's saying that we need to address. I remember coming over to George's house and we see that down. And he's this, he's these little short,

chubby Italian guy. And he sits me down. He puts a coffee in front of me and puts full sugars in it doesn't even ask, just puts full sugars, let just starts talking. Right. And so, so I'm like, yeah, tell me about George. And she goes on, she tells us just funny story about George and how George has really become the kind of the eyes and ears of the community community for them.

And, um, I don't think this is just such a great story. And then so all of a sudden I said, I think we should start our, our entire speech on operations about George, because when it comes down to it, Georgia is the reason why operations existed in the, in the government community and the government process that will they'll talking about because it was about serving the community and getting their operations right in their community and came back and it tied back to who's,

who's yours, who's the George that you serve. And so, yes, we covered some of the data and the processes, but weaving that one story about George, it just brought the whole presentation to life. And if you look at human history, they didn't have PowerPoint back in the cave person days, you know, and, and how did they convey,

meaning how did they pass lessons on and so on and so forth? It's not the data that they had. It was the Georges and all of those other things. So the, the emotional impact, and, and it's really interesting because how quickly we go away from that emotional impact when we're doing a presentation, you know, it does become all about the data and the charts and all of those other things.

But ultimately if I look back through my own experiences, the presentations that I laughed at, I remember, you know, and it's okay to laugh during a serious presentation for sure. And so that's really, really important for people to recognize is, and then in terms of personality calling, um, you know, how much of your personality should you be conveying during these,

these conversations? So what I'm probably hearing you say is, is show some of it, show some of your personality show some of your shine and your energy. Would you, uh, would you agree with that? That it's okay to be yourself? Yeah, I think, um, one problem that happens is when people get up, get up on stage,

they actually become a reduced version of themselves. But when you get on stage, I usually encourage people to become the 2.0 version of themselves. They have to actually expand and amplify who they are. Now, if you watch some of the greatest speakers in the world, like they are complete characters, right. You know, they're doing like these funny jokes,

they're doing voices. They're doing, you know, all these amazing acrobatics with, with their stories. Now, I'm not saying you have to do that because that is a category in itself. But I really think that you can bring more of your personality to a presentation and people will find it endearing. They'll find it more engaging. And I call it practiced or refined authenticity and refined authenticity is this idea of be yourself,

but be practiced. So, in other words, you, you should practice your presentation three to five times before you actually get up there and speak so that you'll practice your refined, but then you beat yourself up there and you share your stories. You have a laugh, you engage as a human being. And that balance of practiced or refined authenticity, it brings credibility,

but it also brings relate-ability to your Well, and the other side of that too, is if you're practicing it a little bit more, perhaps you'll be less stressed out about it because a hundred percent, you know, the presentation. So you don't have to worry about, do I read this properly and get kind of absorbed into that, but just psychologically,

you're, you're a little bit more comfortable As well. Yeah. And if you go into learning theory, they talk about, um, chunks of information. They basically say your brain can handle and process seven plus or minus two chunks. In fact, they say that women are a little bit higher than men, which, you know, we can, men are basically zero plus or minus two chunks and women are seven plus or minus two chunks,

to be honest. Yeah. To be honest. Yeah, totally. Um, and, but, but what happens is if you aren't prepared properly, you come into your presentation and all of your seven chunks of information are taken up by trying to get through the speech. As opposed to looking at the audience, reading the audience, seeing how engaged they are asking questions,

being present, when you're communicating, adjusting your speeches, you going, like all of those things are actually the thing that makes the difference when you're speaking, No, as a facilitator as well, and a leader that's one of your primary jobs is to, is your message resonating and making sure that you're, you're, you're adjusting the ebb and the flow,

but you're paying attention to body language and are people looking at you? Are they on their phones and all this other things? And I think that that often gets overlooked as well, because I've had the experience where, you know, if I'm facilitating or I'm speaking, but I'm in the back of the class while maybe my partner is up, I'm looking around the room.

I can see crystal clear whether the message is getting through or not. But if the leader or the speakers kind of oblivious, it's just going on and on and on, and you can just see the head start to drop. Totally. And it's amazing if someone's actually asleep, you know, that there's something that we need to have a state shift. Okay.

I'll remember that. That's a good tip because if someone stops snoring, that's a red flag. This is a funny one Daryl, because from my experience like that is useful to a point in this, in, in terms of, um, reading the body language of the audience. But I've gotta be honest. Most people don't remind their face that they're having a good time.

And so what I mean by that, you would have, you would have seen this so many times at the trainings that you do is, you know, you're looking at someone and you're thinking this person is not enjoying this at all. Right. They're just not getting it, not getting up, not picking up what I'm putting down. Yeah. But then you go and talk to them at lunchtime and you're like,

Hey, how's the training going? And they go, Oh, it's amazing. This is one of the best trainings we've ever been on. And you're like, well, can you tell you face that? Because that's not, that's not what I'm getting from you. Can you remind your face? So most people don't have good face right. When you're speaking.

And so that's why, you know, like I always like to look for people who've got good faces to look at. Right. And you, you go just from one smiling face to the other, if there's only two in the room, but I like the actually. Okay. So that, that is a takeaway. First read the outset folks just to remind your face too Bet.

It's having a good time that it's happening. That it's having a good time. Right. It's a bit of a with your face There. Okay, cool. I like that. That would be a good opener and just see how many unhappy faces you'd be faced with. There'd be like, seriously, I was doing a podcast the other day. So it was like,

I'm just joking about, they have a resting arresting bitch face. Right. It's like, whatever they were that face is just sitting there, it just looks angry, frustrated over it. Right. And that's what most people's faces look like when you were speaking from the stage, Especially if you're like the last speaker of the conference. Right. Which is so great.

That's exciting right now with that in mind, then that's probably a good segue into now, as we've transitioned off into the remote workforce, you know, all of the things that we've just talked about are, are great when you're able to convey your physical presence and, and, and all of those things that go into that, the body language, nonverbal,

all those other things that, uh, the good leaders, the good communicators do, what would you tell the, the manager that's now sitting in their home office and they're on zoom or whatever it is. And they've got their six teammates. And when we talk about conveying the emotional side, the balanced brain approach, what could you tell them that would maybe help them,

um, you know, navigate this remote workforce that we're, we're finding ourselves in? Well, I mean, first thing from a practical perspective, make sure your camera is at least somewhere around the screen because I've, I've literally seen people where they're like, they're talking, I know we're on video right now. You met, have you ever seen the podcast?

But like, you're looking at different direction and, and you can see them because you're looking at the screen, but this they're looking at your E and there is nothing worse than that. It is the most odd experience. So first of all, just make sure you, at least your videos close to close to the screen, Because they're talking to you as far as they're concerned.

Cause they're looking at you. Yeah. That's very, very practical, Very practical. Right. Uh, another one is to know that video reduces your energy. And, uh, when I teach people to speak on, on video, when they're recording video programs and stuff, um, I usually say for them to amplify their, their energy, but usually reduce your movement because you think about it,

like you've got, you literally have a box in front of you and that's where your movement sits, right? Because when I'm teaching people to speak on bigger stages, they're like moving more there. They've got like wide arms, you know, they're, they're PE they're not pacing, but they're moving up and down the stage and using the stage where, when you're on video,

you've only got a very small box. And so I just know that your movement may not be as intense, but your energy needs to lift because your video reduces the energy that you're speaking with. Another one is be really conscious of your tone because, uh, when I say your tone or your voice, like how you're using your voice, because if you just speaking like this on one level all the time,

and you're talking to your team and you're not taking a breath and you probably even notice in the podcast, you're listening, you're starting to zone off as soon as I go into that monitor. And so taking your time, having breaths, you know, lifting your voice slightly and then, and then bringing it down a bit. And as you do that,

you're going to keep people engaged. It's like, it's moving from playing chopsticks to Mozart and using a voice is huge. So suffice to say, I think like with all of the techniques and tactics we've talked about, it's really about being a lot more deliberate and conscious in how you communicate because you, you can't really short circuit like you can in, uh,

you know, in the corporate environment. Cause I know for me, if even as a facilitator or something, I want to always make sure that I'm walking to the back of the room as well, and really creating that physical presence throughout the room. But it's really important that we're just deliberate in terms of now we don't have that. So what I heard you say is,

is, you know, monitor your tone, not a lot of movement, but don't be totally stoic as well either, but be very mindful of what is in frame because I could be talking out of frame and people are like, I don't know what he's doing. That sort of thing that gets awkward. You're pointing to something it's like, no one can say it.

Right, right, right. I've seen that before. Right. And, and you know, and, and you, you talked about a two eye contact, you know, like man, Oh man, it's still very much a primal thing with human beings. Isn't it? Where just good eye contact, especially over video. So what are your comments on that Eye contact is just huge because I mean,

when, whenever, normally when I'm teaching people to speak on a stage, uh, you know, there, there used to be this old adage of scan across the top of people's heads and just kind of move your eyes across the top of people's heads. And, and you know, that's a great level of eye contact and it's just ridiculous. Like,

it's do not do that. Ever. What you do is you literally, you talk to one person in the audience, so you might be in front of literally a thousand people, but you're talking to one person, you talk to them for about 15 seconds, 20 seconds. Then you move to another person in the audience and you talk to that person for about 20 seconds.

And then you move to another person, you talk to them for about 20 seconds. But when you, when you talk to a person as opposed to an, a crowd, everyone in the audience Genetically feels the intimacy. Yeah. And that's again, going back to being delivered and these are things. And that's why we have you on today is to talk about those nuances and being a lot more deliberate.

So I guess then when we talk about conveying empathy and compassion and any other kinds of emotions, those rules really apply to any kind of communication. Whether it be, you know, maybe you're laying the smack down on an employee, unfortunately for performance issues or something, or maybe you're praising them or, or being empathetic. Cause it's been tough for everybody.

So essentially what you're talking about is being, being very present, being aware and being very aware of what emotions you're trying to convey as well. Would that be accurate too? Yeah. Well, I mean the things that are going to convey emotions, our story story is like one of the number one things to convey emotions, but in a corporate setting,

a lot of the times the stories are not these long, long winded stories, but they can be shorter, you know, shorter stories that you could tell like under a minute, um, metaphors is a big thing that I usually get corporate people to work on. And a metaphor is just simply finding something that it's like. So with this operations person,

um, a way that I explained it was, we said, what's what's operations like in the organization, they said, well, it's kind of like the brain. And you could say that, that the, you know, the arm is this area and the other arm is this area. And they, and they kind of like decided that the brain was a good operations idea because everything came out of operations in terms of projects.

And so that was just a metaphor. It's like a brain. And like people say, well, I understand a brain and a body. And that makes sense to me now. And so that makes your corporate speech more human. When you add metaphors in. And I think one of, one of the resistance points I was going to say that people have about adding metaphor,

metaphor, and story is they think that a story will waste the audience's time. So they think, Oh, I don't want to tell a story because it's going to waste their time. Or if they share a metaphor, they think it's too simple. It's too like childish. Right. And one mistake that I feel like a lot of corporate leaders make is they try to almost impress the audience too much.

And when you impress the audience, you're actually most of the time just confusing them and repelling them. And so rather than trying to impress the audience with your speaking, relate to the audience and then inspire them to the next action and how you do that is you understand where they're at. You follow that format that we talked about the why, what, how now?

And you tell some great stories, you share a metaphor and yes, you have some data and you have some actions to take, but you actually blend it out. And when you do that, you will literally, your speaking will transform and your leadership will transform your influence transform, and then your pay packet will transform Well. And, and really what you're talking about is having a conversation,

even though you're the one speaking, but you're really engaging in a conversation and maybe that's not a verbal conversation, but it's an interaction of sorts energetically and, and all of those other things. And so before we wrap this up again, we could speak for hours on this. But one of the challenges I think that, um, that I faced and,

and people that I've talked to have faced when it comes time to prepare for that presentation or walk into it. And it is if you're feeling anxiety, the kind of the red flag for me is I'm making it about myself more than I'm making it about the audience or the project or things like that. Is that something that you could speak about? Well,

Oh, it's the biggest, it's the biggest reason anyone would feel fear. So we come back all the way back to that story. I shared my experience of being a young boy, 13 years old, I was focused completely on what others thought of me, what they, you know, what you know? And now when I say that I was making that up.

So no one, no one even told me that, right? No one said, Colin, you can't even read. You're an idiot. Like literally no one said a word to me about it. So all these things that I thought other people thought about me was actually me thinking about myself only, which is the irony of it. Right? Yeah.

And that's a whole nother bag of what, That's another podcast episode. Nobody, nobody cares about us as much as we think they care about us. We're not that special. We're not memorable. That's absolutely heartbreaking, but it's true. So one of the biggest things, and we've got this, we use this six step model, but the big distinction you literally just hit it,

hit on it. It's the biggest distinction in the whole model, which is at the bottom level, you're focused on yourself. You're asking questions like, will I be good enough? Will, will I be credible? Will they believe me? Will they like me? Will my, will. I forget what I have to say. All those sort of questions is going to make you in fear and focused on yourself.

And at the top level, it is focused on the audience and the purpose of why you're there. And as soon as you tap into what is going on for the audience, what are their fears? What are their frustrations? What are the challenges that they're facing in the topic that you're talking about and bringing that empathy to them, to the speech, then they're going to feel connected to you.

And then you tap into why you even there ultimately, what type of impact are you trying to make? And then all of a sudden you move into like a conviction and then it's from that space that you can really feel confidence and conviction and certainty. And one final point, I guess, that I've heard over the years is that people rarely remember what a leader did,

but they always remember how a leader made them feel. And the way we make them feel is through communication and things like that. So call I, and we'll put in the show notes and whatnot, where to connect with you. And again, I highly recommend, you know, following Collin on instant, all of those other things. So we'll have links in the show notes,

but calling any closing comments to that corporate manager, that person that's really, you know, kind of a Coles notes if they use Cole's notes, but like a quick and dirty, you know, that, that, that manager with all the years of experience that you have, and they're, they're struggling with this, what kind of gem could you leave them with?

I think it's that, first of all, it's that biggest, that mindset shift of going that if, if this presentation literally had nothing to do with me and it had everything to do with the audience and what they were going through and their concerns and the purpose of wallet, why I'm there, how would I design my presentation then? And you come with that mindset and everything changes.

Uh, so that's probably the, you know, the biggest encouragement I'll, I'll get you to make as perfect. Well, Colin, I can't, I literally can't. Thank you enough. And, uh, I will do a Friday night party over margaritas, and you can talk about your crazy model all night long. I will, I will sit and I will listen.

So thank you very, very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule, to talk about leaders as speakers and offering up some of your expertise. And, um, everyone remember check Colin Boyd out on all social, and you'll be very, very glad you did. So call him, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love it,

Daryl. Hi, it's been a pleasure. I hope it's been helpful. I'm sure it has a little bit for your audience. All right. Uh, and I'm as I leave, I just want to acknowledge you, mate. You just continue to show up for your audience. I mean, that's why you're running this podcast and I know that they're in good hands because they're under your wing.

So, uh, it's great stuff, man. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right, Colin until next time. And there will be a next time. They will please say funny. Thank you very much.