The magic of showing up authentically

In December, I did an experiment: I hosted a speaking retreat at my house in Houston.?

I didn’t talk much about it publicly beforehand. It was something I created after being asked again and again if I had any coaching or resources available to guide those building speaking businesses. I didn’t, and each time someone asked me, I felt like it was the universe nudging me to figure out a solution. It also sounded like something that would be really fun to dedicate my time to . . . and so, I did!

Four speakers—all newly embarking on their speaking journeys—flew to Houston and joined me for a week. They knew they would be there with other speakers, but they didn’t know who exactly would be part of the group. (Can we talk about the amount of courage it took for them to sign up to spend a week with people they didn’t know?!)

Our goals for the week centered on a few things: 1) getting clear on their messaging, 2) elevating their stage presence, and 3) understanding how to build a thought-leadership business.

I designed the retreat based on what the speakers wanted to get out of it and also what I wish I had learned at the beginning of my own speaking journey.

One of my favorite days of the retreat was the day we rented a theater so that each speaker could practice delivering their content on a real stage. The theater was absolutely breathtaking, and we had the whole place to ourselves, which was key to creating a low-stakes, supportive environment.

We began the day by having each speaker deliver the opening of their keynote from the stage. Every time, I noticed the same thing: The moment the speakers stepped onstage, they became someone else. They weren’t the same people they’d been in my living room while we were workshopping content. In my living room, they were working from their hearts. The stories they shared were magnetic, and telling them felt natural. Onstage, I could tell that the speakers were working from their heads. Some seemed robotic. Some of the messaging seemed forced. Some seemed disconnected.

I immediately knew what was happening because the same thing happened to me when I started speaking professionally.?

Let’s go back to that time . . .?

Early in my career, I gave a talk to a group of leaders. Going into it, I felt so insecure because I knew I was the youngest and most inexperienced person in the room. I felt the need to prove that I was credible, so I opened my keynote by citing all of this research that was meant to back up the stories I would share later. I thought I did a great job—until someone in the audience came up to me afterwards and gave me some feedback.

This person happened to also be a speaker, and he started our conversation by saying, “I have some thoughts for you about your speech, if you’d like to hear them.” I was all ears.?

He then went on to tell me to ditch the entire first half of my talk—the research-heavy part—and open with a story that I had shared somewhere in the middle: the one about 45 people quitting on me after I’d secured my first big cleaning contract. “That’s the story you open with,” he said. He helped me see that when I was sharing all the research, not only was it boring, but it didn’t come across as authentic. When I shared the story that was personal to me and showed that vulnerability, it felt like I was speaking from my heart.?

To this day, I often open my speeches with that story. And if it’s not that story, it’s another vulnerable one. And actually, my whole keynote—no matter what I’m talking about—is made up of stories like that. Because that’s me. I’ve learned that telling personal stories and being vulnerable is how I show up as my authentic self, and when I do that, I do a better job of connecting with and relating to my audiences.?

So when I saw these four speakers become different people as they practiced their talks, I knew what was happening. My challenge was to do for them what that speaker had done for me: I needed to help each of them find the thing that would allow them to connect with their authentic selves.

Over the course of that day together, we went person by person and worked to pinpoint the one major shift they could each make to unlock their authenticity on stage. And one by one, the magic happened.

Read the rest on my blog ??