A Broadway Actor’s Advice on Preparing Your Way Out of the Butterflies

One of the first things Robert Creighton told me during our conversation on Off the Rak was that part of his preparation for the interview included watching two recent episodes, one with our mutual friend Tommy Spaulding and the other with Garry Gilliam.

The good news: Robert was inspired by Tommy’s passion for making a difference in people’s lives and Garry’s persistence and community-driven focus. The bad news: Those episodes, he said, left him asking, “What the heck am I doing here?”

But I have good news for Robert: The butterflies he felt about being a guest on the show didn’t weigh him down. They lifted him up. And that’s because he followed his own advice about preparation.

Robert has built a successful career as a singer, actor, dancer, writer, and, most recently, as a coach of aspiring actors. He’s had roles on television and in multiple Broadway productions, including The Lion King, Frozen, Anything Goes, The Little Mermaid, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Chicago. And Cagney, a musical he produced and helped write, will be on Broadway soon.

Plenty of principles are transferable to leadership from a career in show business. I covered Robert’s insights on building resilience through optimism in an earlier blog, but he teaches other concepts during his acting workshops that also apply to business leaders. Most notably: the importance of preparation, which complements this philosophy of optimism.

For instance, Robert advises participants in his workshops to, “Build your foundation of training as wide and as strong as you can, and then you can build your career as high as you want on that foundation.”

That’s long-term preparation through skills training.

But my favorite subject he covered involved how he teaches preparation as a tool for building confidence and conquering nerves. This is an issue business leaders face in high-stakes meetings, in social situations, and when doing things like giving presentations, whether it’s in front of a small team or a huge audience of employees and stakeholders.

I would boil down his advice into three parts:

• Embrace the nerves
• Prepare at the proper level
• Be yourself.

“You have to train yourself to realize (nerves) are a good thing,” he said. “That means this is important.”

If it’s important, it’s easier to embrace the nerves that come with the experience.

How well you handle the nerves, however, is determined by your preparation.

“If you’ve prepared to the proper level, if you’ve done the work that you can do, then that’s the thing you control,” he told me. “Those butterflies are going to come. And if you’re prepared and you have already said, ‘Good, here they come, cause it’s important to me,’ then the butterflies are gonna lift you in that moment.”

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If you haven’t done the work to prepare, however, the butterflies can weigh you down and then you have to count on luck to squeak through.

Robert didn’t squeak through our conversation because he was one of the most prepared guests who’s ever been on the show. He had watched previous episodes and thought through the answers he would give to the types of questions I might ask, so then all he had to do was be his authentic self and let the butterflies lift him up. And just as he does when he steps on stage, he delivered an award-worthy performance.

“Don’t overthink it,” he said. “Just be yourself. That’s what I would offer to your business leaders. Do the work to prepare. Be your authentic self. And when the butterflies come, you’ll fly.”