Using ‘Stages’ and ‘Lessons’: Live Signature Talks from Our Thought Leader Academy Grads: Podcast Ep. 414

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Carol Cox:
From stages to lessons here. How our recent volunteer academy grads are focusing on transformation, not just information in their signature talks. 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 and welcome to backstage with Speaking Your Brand. I’m your host, Carol Cox. Today you’re going to hear from three of our recent Thought Leader Academy graduates as they share a ten minute version of their signature talk for the very first time they’ve been working very hard for the past eight weeks with us to develop their thought leadership message and to create their brand new talk. And here’s the thing. As I often say, the women that we work with are incredibly smart. They’re incredibly capable. They already create great presentations. The reason they come to work with us is because they know they’re ready to step out of the expert trap.

Carol Cox:
They want to go beyond teaching and training and doing something more than that to empower their audiences in a different way. One of the best ways to do this is to think about the stages that your audience’s audience goes through as they develop and transform, or to think about key lessons that you want to share with your audience. And that’s exactly what you’re going to hear today from our recent grads. We have Wendy McManus, Nelly Somi, and Heather Barrett. So we’re going to go the three of them in order again, about ten minutes each. And then we’re going to have a round table discussion with them afterwards about what it was like to create and deliver this talk here for the very first time, what their experience was like in the Thought Leader Academy, and what is next for them as speakers and as thought leaders. For the very first one, we have Wendy McManus, who is a leadership coach based in the Orlando, Florida area. Wendy, I’m going to load up your slides here and take it away.

Wendy McManus:
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Carol. I’m really excited to be here. So I have a question for you. If part of your job is to manage people, here’s the question. Do you remember what it felt like when you first got promoted from an individual contributor to a people manager? Do you recall those early days? Were you excited? Were you scared? Were you thinking, Holy crap, I’m not sure what I’m doing. How am I going to figure this out. I remember that day when I had my first director report, my first role as a people manager. And to tell you the truth, I was excited because I had been told for most of my life that I was a born leader. So even though I didn’t really know what I was doing as a people manager, I just reasoned that I would figure it out as I went along and I really needed help. I mean, I was drowning in work, so with my first hire, it felt like I’d found the release valve for the pressure that had been building up. Now I knew what needed to be done, but I was pretty much clueless about how to guide this other person to be successful in her role. And for example, my approach to one big challenge of leadership, which is delegation. My approach to delegation was what I would now call dump and run. I was perpetually in a hurry to get the work off my desk by dumping it on my team member and then running as fast as I could back to my stacked up workload.

Wendy McManus:
I was constantly overwhelmed. I was perpetually operating in crisis mode, and as a result, I wasn’t very thoughtful about how I was leading my young team. As a people manager, I was a naive newbie, and looking back, I can see that my leadership style was based on, honestly, gut instinct and charisma. I felt like everyone else had figured out the secret to managing people, and I was the only one who was floundering. I wondered, like, do I need to go back and get my MBA, go back to school? Is there some book that everyone has read? Could I find the answer at a conference? Does any of this sound familiar or was it was it just me? Now I actually got positive feedback for my leadership style. I’m pretty sure that was because my first direct report, my teammate Megan, she was so good that she made up for my shortcomings. She barely needed a manager, which was a really good thing because I was barely a manager. Now I knew that something needed to change or I was headed for a very bad outcome. It felt like I was going to drag my team down with me. I’m going to tell you all how all this worked out later. Don’t worry, the story does have a happy ending. So among our viewers today who loves the feeling of being confident and solid, feeling like I’ve got this right.

Wendy McManus:
Me too. I mean, who doesn’t? It’s no different when you are a newer manager. You want that feeling of confidence that comes from being competent, from being good at the job of leading and managing people. You want to feel like you know what you’re doing, like you’re not faking it. And if your goal is to advance in your career as a leader, you want to feel like you’re solidly on that path. And if you are a senior leader, you want to fill your leadership pipeline with confident, capable people managers. You want and need those managers to be able to get great results from their teams. And you want to have happy employees. They enjoy reporting to those managers because, you know, as the saying goes, people don’t leave jobs. They leave managers. So as a senior leader, you don’t want to lose good people because their managers make it so hard for them to flourish. But it’s tough, right? Because even though it’s incredibly important, we generally do a poor job of preparing new managers for the role. What happens far too often is that we have a rock star, individual contributor that produces stellar results. So then we tap them on the shoulder, and we reward that performance by promoting them into management, which is an entirely different job than the one they recently excelled in, and most of the time we just expect them to figure it out.

Wendy McManus:
Is it any wonder that newer managers are struggling? And if you’re that person who just got that promotion, you just got that tap on the shoulder, you probably think that you just need to learn more skills or get more frameworks or tools in your toolbox so you can be effective. I wondered what book I needed to read, the one everybody else had apparently read that I hadn’t. The one that would give me all the answers. If you’re a senior leader, you might think you just need to offer more training to these new people managers. You might be caught in that same trap of wanting to arm them with more skills and more tools. Or maybe you think they just need more encouragement to bolster their confidence. But somehow all those skills and processes and frameworks, they don’t seem to solve the Problem and all the pats on the back and those. Affirmative. You’ve got this comments. They don’t seem to make a difference. It feels like something is missing and indeed something is missing. If you think about it, there are two journeys towards mastery as a people manager. There’s the outer journey, and that’s all the stuff that people can see you doing, stuff like delegating and giving feedback and navigating conflict. And then there’s the inner journey. And that’s all the mindset stuff that happens inside, like knowing your values and being intentional about your impact, recognizing the thoughts and the fears that might hold you back.

Wendy McManus:
Most of us tend to focus on the outer journey and our quest to become effective people managers. We focus on acquiring more skills and frameworks for our toolbox, but there’s still something missing. And that’s the inner journey of mindset and intentionality. And as a leader for nearly two decades and a leadership coach for the last six years, I’ve seen this story play out countless times. I’ve coached everyone from CEOs to first time managers, and on the outside, their challenges appear to be very different. But peel back a few layers and the issue of mindset turns out to be the real issue. Most of the time. And that’s why I no longer teach the outer journey stuff without the solid foundation of the inner journey. I no longer teach the skills without addressing the mindset, because working on the outer journey of leadership, without addressing the inner journey, is like building your dream home on a foundation of sand. It might look good at first, but before long the sand will shift and your house will crumble. Don’t get me wrong, the outer journey is important. You know, we were talking earlier about delegation, so you’re going to need to know how to delegate in a way that someone is engaged and excited and prepared to handle the project. But you’ll also need to take that inner journey. You’ll need to take a look at how you resist delegating in the first place, or why you do that and what you can do about it.

Wendy McManus:
You’ll need to address the fears that are holding you back before you can become an effective people manager. And that’s what I cover when I give the full version of this signature talk, we explore how your mindset, including your thoughts, your fears, your assumptions, and all that stuff that people can’t see is the bedrock and the foundation for successfully doing all those people manager things that people can see in that signature talk. We walk the path that most new managers take from the naive newbie that is just winging it, to the tool collector who’s always on the hunt for the next magical framework, and finally to the intentional leader who has both the skills and the mindset that’s needed to unlock their team’s potential. Now, remember in the beginning when I said that my early leadership style was based on gut instinct and charisma? I promised you that that story had a happy ending. I don’t want to leave you hanging, even in this truncated version of my talk. What I learned along the way is that gut instinct is a wonderful tool, and charisma is a superpower. But what I was really missing was intentionality. When I became more intentional and more self-aware, everything started to change. My team showed up differently because I showed up That differently. I asked more questions and let my team take the lead more often. I let go of my controlling ways and loosened my death grip on how everything was done.

Wendy McManus:
And once I did that, I noticed my team beginning to shift. They became more motivated and more engaged, and they showed more initiative and more creativity. And because I had more trust in them, I was a lot less stressed. So what would it look like for you to be a more intentional leader? And I encourage you to start with small steps. Just identify one change that you could make, and then pay attention to the thoughts and the feelings that pop up when you begin to put your plans into action. The mindset is the real key to making the change stick. Maybe you need to ask more powerful questions to bring out the best in your team. Or perhaps you want to resist jumping in with all the answers so your team has a chance to think for themselves. Or maybe if your path resembles mine, you’re realizing that you need to release some control and show more trust. You might need to let go of your death grip on the details, so give it a try. Find the courage to extend trust and see how it goes. And if it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to the death grip. But I have a feeling you won’t. I want to thank you so much for your time and attention. I’m grateful for each of you, and many thanks to Carole Cox and Diane Diaz for this opportunity to speak today. It’s been a lot of fun.

Carol Cox:
That was fantastic, Wendy. Congratulations on the first time out with your signature talk. So well done. And really the ten minute version you. I’ve learned so much even just from this ten minute version. You did a great job. Still wrapping the end back to the beginning, not leaving us hanging. With how your leadership journey turned out. You got the three stages in there. Obviously, in the longer version of the signature talk, you go into much more detail of what those three stages look like, along with audience activities and questions that they can reflect on as well. So, Wendy, let me ask you this before we go to our next participant. How did that feel to deliver that for the first time? And tell us a little bit about how the development of these three stages happened in our VIP day together.

Wendy McManus:
That felt amazing. I needed the deadline, so thank you for that. It was really, really good for me to have a little bit of time pressure, um, and developing the three stages. Right. So I had this very big idea, um, based on what what I teach and how I coach, it’s a very lofty idea about this inner journey of leadership. And I really wasn’t convinced that it could be the basis for a signature talk. And when you and I got together in our VIP day and you started asking me questions and saying, like, what are the three stages or what are the three steps? It’s like, Carol, I don’t know. But the more we talked about it, it just like it all clicked into place and I understood and could see my own journey more even than my own journey. I could picture clients when they first come to me, the stories that they tell me, and then that phase that they get in where they’re just like, oh, another book, another podcast, another conference. I can figure it all out. But they’re still not addressing their mindset. And then where they end up, where they really start making a big impact. So you just asking me questions helped me see what was right in front of me, and it all just clicked right into place.

Carol Cox:
Fantastic. Well, again, well done. And for those of you watching or listening to the replay on the podcast, think about for your own talks. Are there stages that your audience or the clients that you work with go through? What’s that first stage when you first, when they first come to you, or the first stage that your audience is at. And then once that second stage where they maybe they think that they’re there, but they’re not quite there because something is still holding them back. Like in Wendy’s case, it’s the toll collector where they’re they think the tolls are going to solve their problem, but not quite. But it’s really then getting over the hump because it’s hard like stage two to stage three and whatever it is that you’re doing is the hardest. That is the hardest challenge to get through. But that’s where you see that transformative impact, like in Wendy’s example with that intentional leader stage. Great. All right. Well done Wendy, thank you so much for letting your slides were beautiful. Very well done. All right Nelly, you are next. So Nelly Somi is the author of Making a Difference. She is a serial entrepreneur. If she sees an opportunity, she is going to make it happen for real. And so in this ten minute version of her keynote talk, you’re going to hear a little bit of her story of how she became this incredible entrepreneur and how she finds opportunities wherever she looks. Nellie, welcome to the stage.

Nelly Some:
Welcome, everybody, and thank you so much for having me. You know, today I will talk to you about my two stories that have stuck in my mind for a long time. The first story is about me being raised up in Kenya when I was two weeks old, since I was two weeks old. The second story is about me coming here to Seattle, here in America. You see, I was raised up in the countryside, so being in the city is a big deal for me. Leave alone being in America. So you can imagine when I landed in the America in the SeaTac airport in America, first of all, when I arrived, I had my backpack. I had two shirts, two skirts. So with my lovely backpack, I was ready to visit America. Yes, I landed. Everything was different. You have to remember coming. Being raised up in the countryside, in Kenya, being around the city and all that was very hard to me. Leave alone being here in America. So you can imagine when I landed in this airport, there were lights all over. The place was so clean, squeaky clean, and there were so many machines running around all over. I mean, it was this wonderland that I remember when I was raised up. I was raised up, um, you know, as a Christian, I always read about the Bible stories about how heaven looks like it’s so beautiful and all that.

Nelly Some:
To me, this sounded like heaven to me. As I said, as I stood there waiting for other passengers to go through the exit door, I realized that there was this machine that everybody was following and going through it. This machine looks scary to me, but everybody was smiling and enjoying it. So I stood behind the line to wait for everybody to go through. And I think that machine. Now I know the name. Of course it’s the excavator. No, no, no not excavator. Escalator. Escalator. Yeah, that’s the one. So everybody went through this escalator as I just looked at it and wondered how I’m going to do that. At the end of the day, I decided to be the last one so that I can have the courage to go through it. But even with that, I couldn’t. It was going so fast. Then all of a sudden there were two parents that came in grown ups with three kids with ages around five and seven. They just slide in that machine. They were smiling, chatting with their parents, and that’s when I got the courage to try myself. I was like, if they can do it, that’s easy. So I went there, put my one step on the escalator, not excavate the escalator. And I was holding this. Oh boy, did I know. I didn’t know what I had signed up for. So one leg went to an escalator, one leg was stuck behind, I was holding for my dear life and I was being ripped literally apart.

Nelly Some:
This is a true story, by the way, and while I was struggling there, there was some good Samaritans that were trying to help me like, hey man, let’s help you. And I’m like, no, I’m okay. Smile. Smiling in my face but so scared in my heart. You know what you don’t realize when you’re an immigrant coming to America. There are so many myths you’re told and you’re, you know, everybody wants you. And I had been told, be very careful when you go to America. You have to know what you’re doing or else they’ll take you back in Africa. So at that moment, I was thinking about that and I thought, if these people help me, they will realize I don’t know anything about this machine and they might take me back to Africa. That’s what I was scared. The pain I was going through didn’t matter. I was thinking about, I’m not going to go back to Africa. So after a few minutes, literally, I think I started bleeding. One of the excavators cut my leg and there was this guy that had they had that power and I think he just felt sorry. He just decided to act and help me. He held my hand. She was like, ma’am, you’re bleeding. I’m not going to let you be bleeding like that. Let me help you out.

Nelly Some:
She pulled my one hand backwards very nicely, by the way, a very wonderful guy. I took the scarf I had in my head, you know, covered my bleeding, and he showed me the stairs going down where I could use until now. Let me tell you guys, I do not use an escalator. My husband, the kids use it. I always either go through the stairs or use the elevator. But when I went down. Speaking of faith, sometimes when I went downstairs, I had to look for a restroom where I will clean my bleeding. My my leg was bleeding bad, so I went to the restroom to try to go clean it up. When I arrived there, there was this wonderful lady that talked to me, helped me out and we started chatting and I realized he she came from Africa, a different, a different country from mine. But she had a very heavy accent and her English wasn’t better than mine. Mine was way better. But as she continued talking, she told me how she made it in America. She had kids. She was living good while working as a janitor. At that point in my life, I realized if she can do it, I can do it. She talked. She talked to me so many times about how opportunities are there. I ask her so many questions. Remember back in Kenya, which I’ll talk to you about is I started becoming very independent as early as four years old, and I took as I took care of my grandmom when she was sickly most of the time.

Nelly Some:
I learned very early to be a caregiver at a very early age. So caregiving was just part of me. So when this lady went on and on, she told me, you know what? The best job you can get that African can easily get it is caregiving. It just blew my mind. And I continued asking so many times about the caregiving. She told me so many things about caregiving, how I can go. She gave me a few contacts, some friends she knew, and you know, me being very outgoing as I’ve always been and that little survivor I used to, this was a moment for me to suck all the information. Fast forward three weeks after that, 2 to 3 weeks after that, not only did I get a job, but I worked four jobs. I worked in a nursing home, two nursing homes. I worked in a in a post office. Priority mails to to be, you know, sorting priority mails. And I also worked to King County Library arranging the books. You know, when I had those few hours with the nursing home, I decided, you know what? This was not enough. I had all the time in my life to make it work, to make a living and survive. So I took every job I could get.

Nelly Some:
That’s, I think, how my American dream and my serial entrepreneur started. But going back to my first story, um, you know, I was raised up since I was two weeks old. I was a product of an early teenage pregnancy. You can call it. I guess they were doing some trial. My father and mother were trying some trial and error while they were kids. Well, here I am looking back. I’m like, hey, but now I’m so grateful that I’m here. But since my mom had to go back to school, I was left with my grandmother since I was two weeks old. So literally, I haven’t really been raised up with my mom, my grandma, but her being older, she became sickly. A lot of time. God bless her heart. She loved me, protected me, and provided me everything I needed despite the fact that I was very poor and she was very poor. In fact, I, I started becoming an entrepreneur at a very early stage. I sold pineapple in the village, eggs in the village, and moonshine, they call it chang’aa. But here I realized the name is moonshine. No no no no, don’t look at me like that. Yes. Moonshine made my life. I’m proud to say that. And that’s how I really survived. Over and over. But you know what? That survival skills. When I came here in America, those survival skills really paid off.

Nelly Some:
It’s funny how your childhood really can shape you to become who you are. Remember, I came here in America. I didn’t know anybody. I had my step aunt who was picking me up in the airport, and he was very late and I was a little frustrated. But guess what? Her being late made me meet with this lady in the bathroom and all of a sudden meeting that lady. Speaking of having people in your life help us in our life to help you through, to become who you are. And speaking of having scenarios and situations happening in your life that sometimes you don’t know why they are happening, but they turn out to be meant to be there. Okay, so my first lesson, um, you know, after coming, I’ll just make a summary. I have the first dream coming in America with all the hardship, but I realized that I wasn’t really good at getting help. I’m talking about the elevator. I’m talking about realizing that I can really use some help in the bathroom with this nice lady, then going back to Kenya with all my life, having very hardship life and, you know, struggling to survive and depending on selling food, um, you know, vegetables, pineapple, moonshine in the street back in the day, since I was young, you know, I thought that was very tough. Little did I know that my childhood really prepared me to be wherever I am now, a serial entrepreneur.

Nelly Some:
I mean, I do own a few businesses from construction, health care. You know, I am an author to motivational speaker and the and the list goes on. My point is for everybody out there, please do not do not give up on your dreams. No matter what your life has been, no matter how tough has been in the past. Just think about it. It might really be a way of that hard life. It’s a way of it preparing you to be a successful person and to be whoever you are to to be wherever you want to be. To me, in my case, all that entrepreneur and struggling when I was kid really prepared me to be an entrepreneur. When it comes to health, trust me all the time during everything I’ve done from Kenya and from here, it’s taken a lot, a lot of time for me to do that, but with help of so many people along the way. So please, please, please do accept help. There are so much help out there if we can just accept the help with me in the elevator. You know I refuse the help because I just didn’t want to look, that I was weak. But guess what? That guy who decided to help me really helped me a lot. Maybe I would have broken my leg struggling there and then. They helped that. I met again, this lady in the bathroom, and she was able to navigate and show me how to navigate around.

Nelly Some:
To be a caregiver is what really helped me to get a job. In the next three weeks. After 2 to 3 weeks, I was working and that’s where my dream came in. So my my advice or my my inspiration to you is keep on looking for that help. Keep on pushing for that dream because you never know when you knock, whenever the door will be open. Keep on knocking all those doors with me. I’ll tell you that is a story for another day. I have knocked so, so many doors that have been closed. But finally, you know there are few that open. And guess what? It’s really helped me to be wherever I am now. If you want to know more about me, uh, please do uh, to visit, um, do visit the website, visit uh w ww making a difference with Nellie Dotcom. You will know so much. You will learn so much about what I do. And of course we can always have one on one virtual tours, virtual discussion. So and also check out the book. It’s in Barnes and Noble and it’s also in Amazon. Uh, making a difference with Nellie. And my name is Nellie Somi. N e l l y s o m e. People call me Sam, but Somi is okay. Thank you so much.

Carol Cox:
All right. Thank you so much, Nellie. Fantastic. Let’s go to Heather and then we will do a roundtable discussion. Heather. Heather Bright is the founder of Skill Masters Market, and she works in the learning and development field with nonprofits. And she’s going to share with us her the ten minute version of her signature talk. Heather, take it away.

Heather Burright:
Have you ever tried to change a behavior or create a new habit? All right. Is it coming to mind? What happened? Think about that experience. Was it easy? Were you successful? Where did you stumble? So I want to tell you a little story about a habit that I had to create. So last year, I went to my primary care physician, and they did some blood work. And the doctor called me after the appointment to say everything looks good. So I didn’t take any action. I didn’t do anything different because I wasn’t aware there was any kind of problem. Later in the year, I saw a specialist about something else, and they pulled up my recent bloodwork. Bloodwork as they do, And she pointed out that my iron levels were actually a little low. And so this doctor suggested I take iron at least every other day. So I left the doctor’s appointment. I bought some iron. I took it when I remembered, but I wasn’t super regular about it. I didn’t have a sense of urgency motivating me to do it. Then later in the year, I saw a different specialist about something else, and this doctor too, pulled up my bloodwork from earlier in that year. But this doctor paused. You know that pause. You don’t like to have that pause at the doctor’s office? She paused, and she told me that my iron levels were actually really low, and that if I didn’t get them up, she would want to start me on an IV to give me iron.

Heather Burright:
Well, that’s a completely different picture. And do you know what I did? I started taking my iron, but it wasn’t until someone made me aware of the problem. They gave me instructions on how to fix it and made me uncomfortable thinking about the alternative, that I decided to change my behavior. And even then, I had to set an alarm on my phone to remind me to take it. Behavior change is a funny thing. Taking iron is a simple task. Yet I needed awareness, a sense of urgency, and a prompt to do it. So why are we surprised when we want our learners to change something and they don’t? Even a simple change can feel really complex. And we have to be intentional as we design for behaviour change at every step in the learning and development process. And that’s what we’re going to explore today. Here’s the challenge. Knowledge doesn’t equal behaviour change. Yet most of our training focuses on what people need to know and maybe do. If we’re lucky, they don’t actually account for the behaviour change. So I’m Heather, I’m an LD pro, I have about 20 years in the field, and I’ve worked internally at a national nonprofit for about eight years, and now I consult with some of the US’s largest nonprofits on their training and leadership development needs. I know what it’s like to be asked to create a training because someone thinks the learner needs to know something, and I’m on a mission to change that.

Heather Burright:
I’m the host of learning for good, a top 2.5% globally ranked podcast where I explore trends, lessons learned, and real world experiences related to L, D, and I formed a private community for nonprofit and association L and D pros to learn and grow together. And I’m also a contributor to many industry organizations organizations such as Chief Learning Officer and Training Industry, Inc.. I’ve been at this for a while, and I’m on a quest to always do it better because the people we serve deserve it. So as we head into this talk and we lean into the conversation, I want you to have a specific change in mind. What is one change you need a key audience to make? And then how will you help them make that change? Historically, our answer has been training. In fact. My slides are going a little too fast. In fact, the Harvard Business Review found that companies spend $350 billion globally on training every single year. And here’s what typically happens. Someone in your organization thinks we have a problem, but they say we need a training and they schedule a meeting with a learning leader who schedules a meeting with the lab manager, who schedules a meeting with the instructional designer, who then reaches out to the subject matter expert.

Heather Burright:
It’s like playing a game of telephone when the gossip wasn’t even accurate in the first place. And the training doesn’t always work. Traditional training focuses on knowledge, not behavior, and it crams too much information into one solution. It isn’t based on behavior change principles, and it doesn’t account for external factors like supervisor buy in or existing systems and processes that the person is going to have to deal with. It isn’t personalized for the learner and it often just doesn’t work. So why do we always go with training? As American rapper Cheryl James said, change is not an event, it’s a process and training is an event. So I want us to shift from training an event to a human centered process. And today we’re going to cover the first of three keys to help you get there. The three keys are context change and community. So we want to avoid the telephone game. Instead, we want to go get first hand information and experiences from the intended audience. This is the context these conversations provide us with the context we need to inform how we design for behaviour change. And there’s two components to context. The first what is happening inside the organisation or even potentially outside the organisation that’s driving this need for behaviour change. So here’s an example. I was working with a client who had tons of staff changes happening, and one team in particular had experienced a lot of leadership turnover in a span of 6 to 12 months.

Heather Burright:
The new leader’s goal was to create a team that would really work together in a more collective impact approach. They had traditionally worked with external partners on a very transactional level, and to achieve the organisation’s strategic goals, they needed much deeper partnerships in the communities they were working in. So the organization’s strategies in this case were driving that change. The other component of this is what is the day to day experience of the learner. What might motivate them or discourage them from making this change? For this client in particular, the amount of leadership turnover had impacted morale. Staff didn’t feel seen, heard or valued. Why should they put a ton of effort into one executive’s vision? When history told them they were going to get a new one in just a few short months? On top of that, the team had other work. They had enrollment quotas they had to meet because on top of creating these partnerships, they were responsible for enrolling students into their programs, and so they were both real and perceived barriers to this change. And if you had asked them why they weren’t creating deeper partnerships, they would have told you, I’m busy working. So at the beginning, you identified a change that you need your audience to make. Now I want you to empathize with them. Put yourself in their shoes. Think about their daily experiences at work.

Heather Burright:
What might motivate them to make that change? What might prevent them from making that change? Wendy, I think about your talk and the leaders that you’re coaching and what might motivate them to make that change. Maybe they’re just tired of it feeling hard. They’re tired of feeling overwhelmed. And they want some solution, right? If they’re in that, they’re collecting all their tools. They want a solution. There is a motivation and a desire to change. But what might prevent them from making that change? I would say you’re probably going to face a couple of things. One, they’re busy, which is why they’re having a hard time doing it to begin with. And so that will also be something that could be a barrier for them. Or it might be that they haven’t bought in to mindset because they’re so focused on the tools and the skills. And so at this point, really this is all just a guess. But these are things you can discover when you spend time with your audience. And this will give you the context. You need. Context is just one of the three CS, and it’s the only one we’re going to explore today. But when you use the three CS, you can create the play by play for your learners, and then they can get out on the field with their team and win. And really when you do this, when you focus on these three CS, there is no limit to the impact you can have.

Heather Burright:
You’re doing important work. You’re a strategic partner to others in your organization. You’re helping people navigate change and show up as their best selves every day. You’re building the future leaders of your organization. You’re amplifying the work of your nonprofit, accelerating its impact and making a difference in communities around the world. A couple of years ago, I created a learning experience for a client. We knew that postpartum death rates were too high, and this organization was committed to bringing those numbers down. They saw doulas and midwives as the conduit for this. So we set out to create a behavior change. We needed them to build a great relationship with their clients, and we needed them to recognize urgent warning signs in postpartum women. We needed them to leverage the relationship they were building to encourage their clients to seek medical care. And so we designed an experience to help create this change. A few months after we launched, we heard from one of the learners. She had done it. She had recognized something that was going on with her client, and she got her to seek care. She was right. She probably saved a life. All because we were intentional about how we designed that experience. Do you want to have that kind of impact? And that is what we have today. I invite you to create that kind of impact. Thank you, Carol, for this opportunity.

Carol Cox:
All right. Congratulations, Heather. Well done. Well done. Really. You did a great job with that. And you know, here I’m going to ask you a question. Then we’ll open this up to the roundtable. So first, Heather, how did that feel delivering this ten minute version of your talk for the first time?

Heather Burright:
Um, it felt fine. I feel like I have I have shared pieces of that, but never everything together. So it felt good to do it. Um, it feels really bad that the internet isn’t working great. It’s been a two week battle at my house, but, um. That’s all right. Yeah, well.

Carol Cox:
We manage, we manage. We can still see you. It’s okay. All right, so then let me ask you this, Heather. So I know that when we work together on your VIP day, clearly, because you create trainings for a living, right? That is that is your business. That’s the work that you do with the nonprofits that you work with is you create these training experiences for them. So that I knew when we were working together on your signature talk, that it would be very easy for you to do a training for your audience, conference, presentation, whatever it happened to be. And so I knew we needed to pull back and think about the bigger thought leadership and what makes your approach different. And that’s where in all my questions during our time together was was deciding on the three C’s, the context, the change, the community because and for the audience who are watching and listening. So this is what I want you to think about is like, Heather’s not there at the conference to teach the audience how to create a training. Like that’s not her role. Her role at that conference is to help the audience see maybe where they’re getting stuck, maybe why things aren’t working as well as they could be, and what can make the difference. And then obviously, why Heather is the go to expert because she’s still the expert. Why? Heather is the go to expert in her company is to help them navigate that journey that they want to for their learner population. So then, Heather, so let me come back to you. How did you feel when I suggested that you open with that story about needing to take iron and that habit not taking, you know, not taking hold until that third doctor that you saw?

Heather Burright:
Um, I mean, it felt it felt natural, I think, in that, um, we use stories and training to as, as a learning tool, but I hadn’t really figured out how to pull all the pieces together. And so I knew that the story was relevant. I wasn’t sure how to, um, create all those connections because I hadn’t really labeled my three CS. I hadn’t really thought through how all of those pieces were connected. So I knew it was a good example of behavior change. I just didn’t know exactly how to to tie it together yet. And that’s really what you were so good at, is helping us kind of frame, um, you know, what are those stages or what are those, you know, things that people are going to go through the the steps and the process. Um, and then connecting those dots so that that story has a through line throughout the, the talk.

Carol Cox:
Yeah. And, and this is why, when you think about opening your talk for the three of you here and for the rest of you listening is you could start with audience questions. You could start with a story I always like to think about. Where is the audience at? How can you get them not only interested in your topic, but validate probably what they’re already experiencing? And I know all of us have tried to form new habits, and we probably have been successful at some have failed at others. And so right away I’m like, oh yes, like I, I’m there, I’m there with you, Heather, because I have probably been in a similar situation. And so now I even though I don’t do anything with L and D in that industry like you do. I’m still interested enough in your topic to to want to listen to the rest of it. All right. So let’s open it up to the rest of you, Nelly. Let me bring you in. You can unmute yourself. Tell us a little bit about what the experience was like for you going through the Thought Leader Academy.

Nelly Some:
You know, when I came to the Thought Leader Academy, as much as I’m so successful on other businesses, I wasn’t really I didn’t know that I had, um, the courage or the, you know, or the material rather, or the confidence to become a motivational speaker. I used to talk to people a lot, to my to my staff and all business acquaintances. But in, in terms of just inspiring people, I used to do that on one on one, but really on this level of motivational, motivational speaker with your training. Carol, thank you so much. Because now not only do I have confidence on doing it, um, um, you know, in front of bigger crowd. But I also have the I’m confident about my material, but I can now even stick to my script because I’m coming from Africa. Trust me. I remember when we started Carol, I was giving you a story like almost two hours now. I know you always told me, Nelly, you know, try to, you know, and you taught me how to navigate, to really stick on my script and really realize what kind of audience to to really talk to, to identify their audience. So thank you so much. I couldn’t have done better than that. So thank you for you. And of course, thank you for all the supportive women on this, on the on this program that have really supported me along the way. Wendy, thank you so much. And Heather.

Carol Cox:
Fantastic. Nelly and Wendy, let me ask you what is next for you as a speaker and as a thought leader?

Wendy McManus:
What’s next? I can frame up by kind of looking back. As I’ve been on stages in the past, I’ve always been in that teacher expert space. And so that’s really what why I joined Thought Leader Academy. And the big shift that I made was figuring out how to take my big idea and craft it into a talk. So what’s next for me is refining that talk and getting out there and starting to pitch it. I live in Orlando. There are loads of opportunities here. I just have to go out and make it happen and and find them.

Carol Cox:
Yes, I know you are ready for keynote opportunities. You are excellent at workshops and all the conference sessions that you have done, and I know you provide so much value to your audience and I, I’m excited to see you as a keynote speaker, gracing bigger and bigger stages as time goes on. Me too, me too. All right. And, Heather, what about you? What’s next for you as a speaker and thought leader?

Heather Burright:
I have a couple of things I want to continue refining in my talk. Um, there’s a couple of things I want to build out a little bit more in the community section, because I think the relationship piece, the social influence piece is a huge part of someone’s success with behavior change. So I want to do that and then I will be pitching it to conferences as well.

Carol Cox:
All right. Fantastic. And Nellie, I know that you are on track to be an incredible motivational speaker. Audiences are going to love to hear your stories and your lessons, so I’m excited for them to do that. And Nellie and Wendy are actually going to be at our in-person speaking workshop that we’re holding as of the date of this recording in mid-October in Orlando, Florida. So it’ll be great to meet them in person. For the rest of you who are watching and listening, if you would like to join us in the Thought Leader Academy so you can develop your thought leadership message, create your signature talk, and learn the business of speaking, you can get all of the details and join us at Speaking Your brand.com/academy. Again, that’s speaking your brand.com/academy. And be sure to connect with Wendy, Heather and Nellie on LinkedIn. All their links to LinkedIn and to their websites are in the show notes for the podcast episode. If you’re listening to this later on the podcast. Of course, if you’re listening to this on LinkedIn live, you can connect with them right there on LinkedIn. Wendy. Heather, Nelly, thank you so much for joining us today on our backstage with Speaking Your Brand. Congratulations again on the debut of your signature talks, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for you. If you two would like to develop your thought leadership message and framework, create your signature talk. Learn the business of speaking, practice your delivery and join us on a LinkedIn live. We do all those things with you in small group calls, as well as a one on one VIP day and our Thought Leader Academy. Get all of the details, including pricing and how you can join us at speaking your brand.com/academy. Again, that’s speaking your brand.com/academy. Until next time. Thanks for listening.

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