287-SYB-Dianna-Deeney.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Carol Cox:
What’s the ROI, the tangible results that you can expect when you invest in a speaking coach? I invited on one of our thought leader, Academy grads, Diana Dini, to have a conversation about this on this episode of the Speaking Your Brand podcast. More and more women are making an impact by starting businesses running for office and speaking up for what matters. With my background as a TV political analyst, entrepreneur and speaker, I interview and coach purpose driven women to shape their brands, grow their companies, and become recognized as influencers in their field. This is Speaking Your Brand, your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience. Hi there. Welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast. I’m your host, Carol Cox. What can you expect when you work with a speaking coach? What are the outcomes and the tangible results you get? And last week’s episode. Diane Diaz, our lead speaking coach, and I talked about what we do as public speaking coaches and when you need one. In today’s episode, I brought on one of our thought leader, Academy grads, Diana Deeney, to talk about why she decided to invest in a speaking coach, so why it felt right to her based on what she was doing in her business and what her goals were. We talked about what attracted her to the idea of thought leadership for her business, why public speaking wasn’t actually on her radar until after she joined our program, The Thought Leader Academy, and the tangible result she’s seen so far after working with us both personally and professionally. I know you’re going to enjoy this conversation and getting to know Diana. If you would like to find out more information about our Thought Leader Academy, you can do so by going to Speaking Your Brand academy again. That’s Speaking Your Brand IMG Academy. All the details are there, including how to apply. Now let’s get on with the show. Welcome to the Speaking Your Brand podcast, Diana.
Diana Deeney:
Thank you. How are you doing, Carol?
Carol Cox:
Well, I am doing well. I’m excited to have you on, Diana. You graduated from our Thought Leader Academy. You started in January of this year, 2022. So you went through the four months of the Thought Leader Academy, and then you also had the opportunity to attend our in-person client retreat speaking intensive that we held in April in Orlando. And that was so much fun to actually get to meet you and the other women in person to do some fun, improv and dancing and of course speaking practice as well. And we’ll get into that. But first, before we get into kind of some of the details, Diana, of what you do regarding speaking and thought leadership, I want to have the listeners understand a little bit more about what you do in your profession. So you’re an engineer who focuses on product design and quality. And we’ll talk a little bit more about what exactly that means. And you now coach other product development engineers as well. And then you have a podcast called Quality during Design that you do that with as well as with your business. So can you tell us a little bit more about as an engineer, why quality matters and how did you get interested in this aspect of engineering?
Diana Deeney:
Oh, gosh, I, I started as an engineer in the manufacturing production floor and then I worked up through design and found my way into quality and reliability engineering. And that’s when I really discovered different methods and mathematical applications and just group techniques that can really help new product development and design to make them safer and more dependable and easier for the users. That’s something that I am passionate about coaching with other new product development engineers and and what to do at what step of the product development process and to really encourage them to do that outreach with their cross-functional team using some quality tools so they can get that input to make fabulous designs.
Carol Cox:
One of the things that I learned, Diana, from from working with you, from having these calls together, is that oftentimes in the product development process too well, too many times, is that the quality aspect comes too late in the process. It comes towards the end. And when when that happens, from what I learned from you, then it’s harder to kind of backtrack or it’s more expensive to backtrack or a lot of things have to get redone because it didn’t come early enough in the process. So is that one of the things that you’re helping the engineers that you work with to not only get to understand the importance of having it come early, but to be able to advocate for that in their companies?
Diana Deeney:
Yes, that’s right. You know, when like minded people get together, they sometimes commiserate and complain about the same stuff and a lot of quality, reliability engineers that get together and say, I wish they had involved me earlier. And I think there’s just a communication gap there between what’s possible and what can be done early in the design phase of a process and what people are doing now. So I’m hoping to bridge that gap and share that knowledge with the people that are the doers and the makers.
Carol Cox:
And I know this this visual has cemented in my mind because when you were at our speaking intensive in person and we were doing the practice sessions on the stage to get ready for filming, you had this bit where you kind of acted out and. Assembly line, like standing with a clipboard and kind of checking things off as they went along and then kind of like moving back and forth along the stage to indicate where this where the quality should fit in into the process. Can you tell us a little bit more about that part of your presentation?
Diana Deeney:
Yeah. A lot of the Hollywood, I guess when you think of quality, it’s somebody in a coat wearing glasses and a check board and just kind of checking. Yes, this is good. This isn’t good. I did I use the stage as a conveyor belt. The parts are coming down and we’re at the end of it just saying if it’s good or not, we’re in actuality, the better power out of quality is if you move up toward the other side before the assembly line even starts. And actually applying those quality, quality thinking and quality principles to the design process itself can really make a big difference. So yes, with your coaching, actually, I use the stage to represent how we could move quality from the back end to the front end to make a big difference.
Carol Cox:
And as a speaker, did you ever expect that you would be miming an assembly line or conveyor belt as you stood on a stage giving a presentation?
Diana Deeney:
No, but, you know, I really liked it because, you know, you get that energy and you’re not sure what to do with it, but just taking up space and being able to do something with that energy. And then, like you said, it helps solidify in your mind what it was I was really talking about. And those are all really valuable takeaways I had from from the retreat.
Carol Cox:
And Diana, I know you had also mentioned to me before that you really wanted to work on your thought leadership, your thought leadership idea, your thought leadership message and kind of like the public speaking aspect was kind of like on the side. And of course, we were still kind of coming out of the pandemic, not quite out of it. So public speaking didn’t seem as front and center because we were still so much virtual on Zoom with everything that we’re doing. Yet, I have a feeling you kind of got a speaking bug as you went through the academy.
Diana Deeney:
I did. And you’re right, I, I join I’ll be honest, I joined because the thought leadership solidifying that, understanding that better and how I fit into it with me and what I was doing that really appealed to me with the thought leader or academy. It wasn’t until probably the last couple of weeks after the retreat, definitely that I understood the power of speaking, to be able to share my message and how it’s such an important and powerful conduit to be able to connect with other people, to get that message out there, to get people talking about it and to consider it. So I have really adopted the speaking mentality. I’m more comfortable with my podcast now, but I’ve started to do some other things too, and it has been a valuable experience so far, and I hope to continue it.
Carol Cox:
And tell us a little bit about what you’ve done so far, speaking wise. I know you have a few things under your belt.
Diana Deeney:
Yes. I’ve been co-hosting another podcast with somebody, which has been a great experience. And then I also did a webinar, an hour long webinar for a professional society, and I worked through the whole process as far as topics and working with them on time frames and logistics. But I also use the Speaking Your Brand outline, the different acts, and I told stories and I engaged the audience and I was able to get feedback from the audience afterwards, which was really valuable, not just say, Hey, you were great or not, but what was the most important thing you learned? What is one thing that I could do to improve? And that really allows me to iterate on not just my presentation but also on my message. So I enjoyed interacting with the people during the webinar and I really appreciated their feedback afterwards and they felt like they got a lot of value out of it too. So that was a really good experience.
Carol Cox:
And then you also have some conferences coming up.
Diana Deeney:
I do. Before I graduated from the Thought Leader Academy, I applied at a conference in Connecticut in the beginning of August, and I got it. I got the speaking engagement and I’m really looking forward to that too. It’s a slightly different topic. I’ll be talking more to peers, other reliability engineers about how they can get their foot in that front door and early product development ways that we can do that. So I’m really looking forward to that too. Just the the two way communication and just a different format, doing a live conference on a stage that will be a lot of fun in Diana.
Carol Cox:
So the premise of this episode is the ROI of investing in a speaking coach, because there’s a lot of people out there, listeners who maybe have never worked with the speaking coach before. They maybe they’re familiar with this idea of coaching, maybe life coaches, career coaches, business coaches, but not specifically, say, a speaking coach. And what exactly? It is that we do together. And what is the outcome? What is it? You’re obviously investing not only money but also time, effort, energy, focus to be working on this during the time that we’re together. So what would you say has been the ROI of having worked with us over the first four months of this year?
Diana Deeney:
And it was a wild ride. Everything that you advertise as far as getting someone from A to B, but when you’re in the depth of it, it is a lot of work and it ended up being a lot of self work. Just having the group and some of the one on one coaching sessions was really valuable to get me to see myself from a different angle, to realize that I wasn’t feeling good about stuff, but that that’s okay. It’s because I’m learning and growing into being better for my audience, which is really the whole reason why I wanted to do this in the first place. It’s I wanted to better serve the community of people that I want to serve. And part of that is being able to do outreach, be visible at conferences, be able to talk and be interviewed. And these were just important skills that I knew I needed to improve and try and improve them on my own in a little bubble, just wasn’t cutting it. So having a system with another group of women that are doing the same things was very helpful. But then as a coach, you, you and Diane Diaz, you invited me to take some risks and to take some steps. And you were so confident in it and me that I just went for it. So I don’t know that I would have gone as far if I hadn’t had you and Diane as coaches.
Carol Cox:
Oh, well, I love to hear that, Diana. And you know that we we believe in you so much. And this is for all the women that we work with and come across as that. I’d like to say that we see everyone’s potential. And I think most people, most good coaches do this with whoever they work with. Like we can see the potential and what’s possible for you. And we feel like part of our job is to help you to see it for yourself, or at least to start taking the steps where eventually you’ll start seeing it for yourself.
Diana Deeney:
Yes. And that’s something that you and Diane did really well for me, because you are experts in those fields for you to say to somebody, you know, you you can do this, you have the potential for this or to give some actionable next steps and know what those are to give somebody so they can grow. That was really helpful.
Carol Cox:
And Diana, let’s talk a little bit about kind of some of the visibility work that you’re doing for yourself and for your business. So you mentioned that you have a podcast quality during design. What prompted you? Tell us a little bit about when you started the podcast and why did you decide to launch a podcast?
Diana Deeney:
Taking a podcast and starting with the podcast, that was a leap of faith in itself. And I had started that a little bit less than a year from when I signed up with a Thought Leader Academy. So I had had episodes under my belt. I took the leap because it was something that I felt needed to be talked about. There were topics that I wanted to explore and I thought, Well, why don’t I share it with other people? And you can hear like for the first episode is, is pretty rough with the editing and the sounds and everything, but audiences are pretty forgiving as long as you’re trying and you’re making improvements, you know, I’ve learned it doesn’t have to be perfect going out the door. The purpose is to make a connection and to share ideas. So the the podcast was about engineering and quality and I would pick a topic and we would review it in about 10 minutes about how that could be applied to new product development and how they could use it to better their designs.
Carol Cox:
And the podcasts that you do. Are they solo episodes? Do you interview other people on them as well?
Diana Deeney:
They are monologues. I have stretched into a couple of interviews and I’m getting some practice at being interviewed, being an interviewer, which is totally different. But so I do try to touch on a little bit of both. Since I started my podcast, I’ve interviewed someone from marketing and I’ve interviewed someone from data, a data scientist, and we talk about their viewpoints of new product design and working with engineers in that space. And then I also during Thought Leader Academy, I created that video series, which was an introduction to quality engineering for product development people, and that was also a lot of work, but is something that I hope to do some more of.
Carol Cox:
Do you feel like having a continuous podcast? The consistency of doing podcast episodes is making you a better speaker?
Diana Deeney:
I do. Before I was script everything out and I got. Pretty good at acting out the script, you know. And now I’m getting to the point where I can bullet point things and then just talk to them and more comfortable doing that. So it does get better. And the other thing is, you know, with that webinar, I was contacted for that webinar because someone heard my podcast and they liked my message, they liked what they heard and how they were hearing it and wanted to know if I would do a webinar for them. So the podcast has really opened up a lot of doors for me.
Carol Cox:
I find that a lot with podcasts because it is a platform, it’s a form of media that is evergreen in a sense, because people may search for keywords on Apple podcasts or Spotify. They come across a podcast episode, they start listening, and then they get to know you as the host and start listening to more versus social media content. It feels very ephemeral. It’s kind of there and after that first day or two, it goes away and then maybe someone will find it later, or maybe the algorithm will resurface it a few days later. And so in the Academy, we encourage our clients to select what their thought leadership container is going to be. So you already had a podcast coming in, so that was your your primary container to kind of put your leadership out in your visibility out there. And so other containers could be things like a LinkedIn live show, the YouTube video series like you did as a companion to your podcast, you can do an event and initiative and so on. But I really do like podcasting for a number of reasons because it it does I feel like help improve speaking skills because literally you’re talking every week on your podcast, it helps to iterate through ideas, but then it also it is as evergreen content where people can find you.
Diana Deeney:
And that’s true too, because there are episodes that I’m doing later now that I refer, Hey, I covered this in more detail in this episode number that I did last year. So yeah, there’s a lot of cross-referencing that can happen too with the podcast.
Carol Cox:
And Diana, let us chat a little bit about the speaking aspects and the storytelling aspects. As someone who like me is very logical, analytical, you’re probably more left brain right having this engineering background as well. But again, I know you also have kind of this music and performance aspects to you and we saw those performance aspects come out at our at our in-person retreat. It was so much fun. And so I’m just curious, I always love to ask women who work with us who are kind of like that logical, analytical side is how does it feel like to think about the way that we approach your the content, like your signature talk with a lot of storytelling, with a lot of flow of ideas versus kind of like, here are the three things that we’re going to teach you in this presentation, which is the training aspect of speaking, which is most of us have down pat because we’ve been doing that for years and years in our careers versus kind of a little bit more of the creative flow that we try to incorporate into the signature talks.
Diana Deeney:
It is it’s actually refreshing to not be stifled, I guess, because you’re kind of kind of rigid and thinking me have to go through these three things, kind of opens it up to be a little more fun, be more engaging, and the outreach is more genuine. So instead of focusing on just the facts, then we start focusing in our heads on the facts. On what if I get this wrong? What if I present this in the wrong way? So forcing ourselves to incorporate those personal stories and you encourage me to use the stage at our retreat, getting physical with our speeches, it feels more natural.
Carol Cox:
Oh, that’s. Yeah, that is fascinating because because we are so used against, like, kind of standing in one place, whether like, especially for those of you of us who, like, I had, I taught university classes, we would have like the podium, like the lectern. You kind of stand behind the lectern and you you teach or you present to your audience and you’re kind of stay still. And I love that you said it feels more natural to actually kind of use your body and use the stage and go with the flow and kind of walk around with walk with purpose. Now, we don’t want to wander aimlessly, as I always say, but so tell me a little bit more about how that feels natural.
Diana Deeney:
Well, it’s not like you just waste it. I don’t think I would be able to go up and win a story and just wave my arms around and do whatever it is that, you know, I would want to do. There is some forethought and planning that has to go into it, but it’s a it’s a different aspect of planning than the steps one, two, three. And they’re over layered on top of each other. But being physical also helps you remember the content too, because you’re not just standing there reciting something, you’re also acting it as. Out as you’re describing it or as you’re trying to communicate it to somebody. So it also makes the speeches more engaging to the audience, but then also more engaging for yourself as you’re giving the speech.
Carol Cox:
I agree. I just find it so much more fun for me as the speaker when I can get more into it. Like, you know, I, I will I’ll play Hamilton videos and Hamilton clips and part of my speech because I think it’s fun or I’ll play some fun music and kind of dance along. So I do not have the dance moves that you do. Diana I’m very jealous of that.
Diana Deeney:
And I don’t think I’m going to be dancing.
Carol Cox:
Never say never.
Diana Deeney:
I don’t want to get people to run it either. You know, it’s not like a WW f match, you know, with the rock star stuff going and you’re running up the stage, that could be fun. But yeah, just being mindful of that. There is a physical space there that you can use and you have a body that you can use and you could choose props and big props if you want to help tell the story so that your message gets more clear for your audience and you’re more engaging. So those were all really important things that I learned at that retreat that I feel like they stuck and practicing it through doing it as is how it’s only going to get better.
Carol Cox:
Absolutely. Well, Diana, where can listeners best connect with you?
Diana Deeney:
Probably quality during design. And that’s all one word quality during design. I’ve had to spell that out. Sometimes I’m also on LinkedIn, but my website hosts all my podcasts and the videos and things that are coming out and my availability. There’s a comment form there. You can send it in and I’ll email you back.
Carol Cox:
Fantastic. I’ll make sure to include links to those in the show notes. So before we wrap up, Diana, I have a couple a few questions that I want to ask you so that we can share this with the listeners. And we’ll also include this in the show notes. Do you have a favorite woman author?
Diana Deeney:
I do. You know, right now I am reading something by Liz Wiseman, and it’s the multipliers, how the best leaders make everyone smarter. And she talks about managers as intelligence diminishes or as intelligence multipliers. And it’s really about how leaders and managers can affect the people and the throughput that the people can produce just by how they approach their management of those people. So I’m really interested in that for a couple of reasons, because as a coach, I want to bring out the most intelligence and the best thing that I can about the people that I’m coaching. And then the other thing is sometimes I do consulting and it helps me to better understand who it is I’m working with and what their point of views might be and help me evaluate the bigger picture. So I’ve been really enjoying that book. It’s a very approachable book that I think could have a big impact on what I’m doing now.
Carol Cox:
Oh great, I have heard of it, but I have not read it yet, so I’m going to add that to my list. Multipliers. Great. And do you have a favorite talk?
Diana Deeney:
It is three words that will change your life by Emily Baker. She talks about a little bit about imposter syndrome. But we have these questions that we ask each other like was for kids, who do you want to be when you grow up or what do you do? And it’s all focused on work where in actuality we shouldn’t really just be thinking about what job do we want to do? We want to think about who do we want to be. And I thought she gave a very excellent speech about that. I really liked it. I might watch it a few more times. I thought it was very inspiring and I think aligns with your messages, too.
Carol Cox:
Oh, fantastic. Another new one. I will check that one out, too. And Diana, do you have a favorite quote?
Diana Deeney:
I follow someone on Instagram that quotes all the time. And she is Victoria Erickson on Instagram. She’s Victoria Erickson, writer. And she just has a way of summarizing, a feeling or a thought very beautifully. The one I picked for today was consistency is an underappreciated form of intentional magic disguised as a mundane.
Carol Cox:
Doing so perfect for what we talked about.
Diana Deeney:
Yeah. So just baby steps and doing what you can at the moment. And it seems mundane, but when you look back, that’s how all the magic happens. So she just has a way with words and I enjoy seeing her posts on Instagram.
Carol Cox:
Diane, I thank you for coming on the podcast and thank you for being such an incredible contributor to our Speaking for your brand community. I have so enjoyed getting to know you.
Diana Deeney:
Thank you, Carol. It’s always a pleasure talking with you.
Carol Cox:
Thanks again to Diana for coming on the podcast. You heard us talk about different speaking styles and adding performance elements to your speaking. If you want to find out what your speaker archetype is, there are four different archetypes I’ve identified. You can find out which one yours is by taking. Our Free quiz as Speaking Your Brand slash quiz it’s a lot of fun to take is just ten multiple choice questions that you go through. Then after you go through, you’ll get to get your results. So which archetype you are? That will show you what your strengths are as a speaker. And then also ideas for what to add to your speeches and presentations to make them even better. Again, you can get that at slash quiz if you would like to work with us in our Thought Leader Academy like Diana Dib. You can get the details and you can apply go into Speaking Your Brand academy again that’s Speaking Your Brand IMG Academy. In next week’s episode, I’m going to be sharing the framework that we use with our clients in the Thought Leader Academy for creating a signature talk for income and impact. And then the episode after that is going to be all about how to increase your speaker fees. You won’t want to miss those episodes, so be sure to stay tuned. Until next time. Thanks for listening.
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