Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I'm your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I've interviewed a number of
Joanne Lockwood: amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place
Joanne Lockwood: for everyone to thrive. To join me in the future, then please do drop me
Joanne Lockwood: a line to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk
Joanne Lockwood: That's S-E-E Change Happenn dot Co dot UK. Of course,
Joanne Lockwood: you catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual
Joanne Lockwood: places. So plug in your headphones, grab a
Joanne Lockwood: decaf and let's get going. Today is episode
Joanne Lockwood: 105 with the title Voice for Change and I
Joanne Lockwood: have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Fiona Brennan
Joanne Lockwood: Scott. Fiona is a trainer, coach,
Joanne Lockwood: speaker and author of Breathtaking
Joanne Lockwood: Communication. When I asked Fiona to describe her superpower, she said
Joanne Lockwood: she can identify the strengths people have with their engagement
Joanne Lockwood: skills and key changes that will be
Joanne Lockwood: transformative. Hello, Fiona, welcome to the show. Hello,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Joanne, and thank you for having me here. Absolute pleasure. So,
Joanne Lockwood: Fiona, voice for change, how does that
Joanne Lockwood: resonate with you? I love the description. Thank you very much.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I say in my book that our voice
Fiona Brennan-Scott: has got a voice with a small v and a capital v, because
Fiona Brennan-Scott: the small voice is the physical thing,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: what's made in our voice box. But voice with a capital v
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is our identity. It's who we are. It's what
Fiona Brennan-Scott: differentiates us from all other living creatures,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because we get to use words and language to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: express ourselves and put ourselves out there in the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: room. Oh, that's beautiful. I think that's really
Joanne Lockwood: beautiful. I can relate. So much voice is
Joanne Lockwood: so much more than just the noise and the sound
Joanne Lockwood: and the waves that resonates in our ear. As you say,
Joanne Lockwood: the identity expresses our happiness, our sadness, our
Joanne Lockwood: passion, whatever it may be. I think that's truly beautiful. It also helps
Fiona Brennan-Scott: explain why there is so much fear around public speaking,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because to put our identity out into a space is an
Fiona Brennan-Scott: extremely vulnerable act and we take speaking for
Fiona Brennan-Scott: granted because we've been talking all our lives and we think
Fiona Brennan-Scott: everyone should be able to do it. But actually, to stand up and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: speak is sharing our story, our thoughts, our
Fiona Brennan-Scott: feelings with the world, and to be rejected, to be
Fiona Brennan-Scott: dismissed is an extremely painful act.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: So when I work with the client, I hold
Fiona Brennan-Scott: the preciousness of that identity
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and seek to honour it in my work with them. So I
Fiona Brennan-Scott: consider it a very. It's almost emotionally
Fiona Brennan-Scott: surgical to do that work and to help them have the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: courage to grow and change and dare to achieve
Fiona Brennan-Scott: their. To accomplish their full. Because when you are public speaking
Joanne Lockwood: or standing up in front of a group, whether you're a leader,
Joanne Lockwood: briefing the team, state of the nation talk, or leading
Joanne Lockwood: a project, whatever it may be, or professionally speaking, you are
Joanne Lockwood: effectively putting yourself out there. Your ideas and people
Joanne Lockwood: are going to judge you. We're very judgmental species, aren't
Joanne Lockwood: we? How you look, how you sound, let alone
Joanne Lockwood: way we think and what we're telling people. There's a whole judgement there. And
Joanne Lockwood: if you're not used to that, that fear, and it's a real fear,
Joanne Lockwood: isn't it? That of being judged or rejected, that
Joanne Lockwood: all comes into this public speaking error, doesn't it? Yes. And my
Fiona Brennan-Scott: mission is to level the playing field, because there's only
Fiona Brennan-Scott: a small, select group of people, particularly in the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: UK, that are stepping up and speaking out,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: especially in government. And what if we could level the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: playing field and give everyone the courage, whether it's gender, race,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: whatever identity group they belong to, to be
Fiona Brennan-Scott: heard and not fear the rejection? I think
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we would have a true democracy where
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we would have people representing us who are good
Fiona Brennan-Scott: people. That's an interesting saying. Talk
Joanne Lockwood: about good people. Are people fundamentally good or bad?
Joanne Lockwood: I think there's a perception that people are fundamentally bad
Joanne Lockwood: or out for themselves. But studies I've seen show that people
Joanne Lockwood: inherently believe they are good people. Everyone believes they're a good
Joanne Lockwood: person from their own perspective. No one wake up and say, I'm an evil
Joanne Lockwood: person, would they? They all believe they have a perspective, that they're doing
Joanne Lockwood: good for some reason. I think it's about capacity.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I think we have the capacity for both. And we're shaped by
Fiona Brennan-Scott: our environment, by who loved us and how we were
Fiona Brennan-Scott: loved or didn't love us. And so there's so many
Fiona Brennan-Scott: internal. There are so many external
Fiona Brennan-Scott: factors that influence who we become. And
Fiona Brennan-Scott: good or bad can be very moral judgments, so they're not
Fiona Brennan-Scott: necessarily helpful. Yeah. So when you're working with your
Joanne Lockwood: clients and your coaching, what are the key challenges? I mean, we talked about this,
Joanne Lockwood: overcoming the fear, but what are the key things that hold people
Joanne Lockwood: back fundamentally in their communications and their engagement styles?
Fiona Brennan-Scott: It's such a wide variety. Joe. I'm very
Fiona Brennan-Scott: fortunate to work with a very diverse group of people.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And if I think about the last couple of years,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: often it can be accents where people feel that
Fiona Brennan-Scott: they're not heard because of their accent. And
Fiona Brennan-Scott: interestingly enough, the people that really need the help aren't in the room
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because that's about audience perception and often about
Fiona Brennan-Scott: audience education. So it can be about giving the person
Fiona Brennan-Scott: the confidence to challenge people who aren't listening and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: to set people up for good listening and to challenge
Fiona Brennan-Scott: where people are discriminating. And you can't do that without confidence and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: without the affirmation that I often give people to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: celebrate their accent and understand that it's very much
Fiona Brennan-Scott: a part of their identity to get back to what we opened
Fiona Brennan-Scott: with. It's also across the board. I would say one of the main
Fiona Brennan-Scott: challenges, about 80% of my client base are in
Fiona Brennan-Scott: STEM science, technology, engineering, medical,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: manufacturing, accountancy. And they
Fiona Brennan-Scott: have gravitated towards what they love, whether it's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: figures, engineering, scientific stuff, and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: they've become really good at that. They've studied it, they are subject matter
Fiona Brennan-Scott: experts. But actually, as they are promoted and I work
Fiona Brennan-Scott: with either current or aspiring leaders, they find that
Fiona Brennan-Scott: their main job is now not about the thing that they studied, but
Fiona Brennan-Scott: about leading people who are doing that and they
Fiona Brennan-Scott: realise they don't have those communication skills to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: effectively engage their audience, their stakeholders,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: whoever that is, whether it's a conference, whether it's a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: meeting room and putting a presentation together and delivering
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that is something that terrifies them. And I
Fiona Brennan-Scott: think it's almost worse for someone who's a subject matter expert
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because they've become really comfortable and really confident in
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that expertise and now they're feeling
Fiona Brennan-Scott: incompetent because they're not getting their message across.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: So most of my audience, most of my
Fiona Brennan-Scott: clients need the tools and techniques to close the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: gap between being competent, being
Fiona Brennan-Scott: very competent in their field and being confident at
Fiona Brennan-Scott: communicating that. Yeah, because there's a huge gap between
Joanne Lockwood: knowing your stuff and being able to communicate that in a way where
Joanne Lockwood: people can understand it, resonate with it, take something away from it,
Joanne Lockwood: take action themselves. Yes. And interestingly
Fiona Brennan-Scott: enough, the people I don't draw as clients is the people who lack self
Fiona Brennan-Scott: awareness, because there are an awful lot of people out there
Fiona Brennan-Scott: who aren't aware that they're not good at that. And
Fiona Brennan-Scott: sadly, they're in front of meeting rooms and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: audiences because of their expertise, but they're not
Fiona Brennan-Scott: effectively communicating and it becomes the job of
Fiona Brennan-Scott: the audience to decipher and interpret the key message.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And that can be quite exhausting if the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: person speaking isn't making it easy for them. Yeah, you got
Joanne Lockwood: to be able to turn complex information
Joanne Lockwood: into bite sized chunks that I always say
Joanne Lockwood: that a Daily Mail reader could understand. The average age, or I believe a Daily
Joanne Lockwood: Mail reader's reading age is about eleven or twelve years old. So you got to
Joanne Lockwood: try and remove the buzzwords remove the acronyms. And again, you talk about the self
Joanne Lockwood: awareness. If you're not aware that you are falling into lingo and
Joanne Lockwood: jargon and assuming a level of knowledge,
Joanne Lockwood: then that's where you leave people behind. You're not always speaking
Joanne Lockwood: to your peers, you're speaking to educate, or speaking to get a thought
Joanne Lockwood: across. Yeah, I find that hugely
Joanne Lockwood: challenging. It's about so much more than the words, though, Joe,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because a lot of how we communicate is about our
Fiona Brennan-Scott: body language, about making eye contact.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: It's a dance between the audience and us,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: where only one party is speaking, but we can listen and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: watch and have that conversation with our audience
Fiona Brennan-Scott: through our engagement and picking up on their body
Fiona Brennan-Scott: language and their facial expression, but also
Fiona Brennan-Scott: having body language and facial expression of our own that we
Fiona Brennan-Scott: are perfectly capable of doing in a one to one. But when
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we get to stand in front of an audience, something happens
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and we do unnatural things with our body and voice.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: So I would say that those words are important. They
Fiona Brennan-Scott: are essential. The arc of our talk, the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: use of stories and data effectively is very important.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: But our body language and our tone of voice, how we
Fiona Brennan-Scott: modulate our voice is key in terms of that engagement
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and that dance. It's the rhythm, it's the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: texture, it's everything else above and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: beyond the words themselves. Yeah, it's how you make people feel, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? We always say this adage, people remember the facts and figures,
Joanne Lockwood: but they always remember how you made them feel. And it is. It's about
Joanne Lockwood: generating that connection, that engagement, that
Joanne Lockwood: emotion, all those kind of things is a well known
Joanne Lockwood: phrase. Facts don't change people. I can tell you all
Joanne Lockwood: this data, I can tell you not to smoke, I can tell you not to
Joanne Lockwood: drink, I can tell you not to drive too fast, and you'll just dismiss that
Joanne Lockwood: and go, yeah, but I can rationalise that I'm safe,
Joanne Lockwood: it'll be okay for me. But until you get the feeling of those figures and
Joanne Lockwood: the impact it can have on you, you'll never take action. And that's, I
Joanne Lockwood: think, what academics and people are trying to communicate, big
Joanne Lockwood: ticket things like the government and all this, they've got to find
Joanne Lockwood: that a feeling, haven't they? Yes. To quote Simon Sinek,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: emotion trumps reason, and that happens every
Fiona Brennan-Scott: time. And in terms of the work that I
Fiona Brennan-Scott: do, a lot of my clients will be very cerebral.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And when we're very cerebral, our voice is in the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: upper resonators. And if we're not vocally
Fiona Brennan-Scott: connected with our gut and our breath isn't connected with
Fiona Brennan-Scott: our gut. We're not going to connect with the gut of our
Fiona Brennan-Scott: audience, which sounds a bit hideous, but basically
Fiona Brennan-Scott: the gut is the emotional centre of the body. So we
Fiona Brennan-Scott: have millions of neurons in our brain, but we have hundreds of thousands of
Fiona Brennan-Scott: neurons in our gut. And getting the breath
Fiona Brennan-Scott: so that we're emotionally connected and our words are
Fiona Brennan-Scott: emotionally connected means that we can really engage our
Fiona Brennan-Scott: audience. And that below the waterline work
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is very much foundational in terms of what I do
Fiona Brennan-Scott: with every client. So we can all do the. Well,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we can read about and do work on presentation and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: hair and makeup and all the outward.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Not trivia, but it's external, it's above the waterline.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: But the real work happens below the waterline. The foundation
Fiona Brennan-Scott: work, the posture, the breathing, the vocal
Fiona Brennan-Scott: control, breath control and being truly engaged
Fiona Brennan-Scott: with yourself. I like to use an analogy of a cello or
Fiona Brennan-Scott: a double bass. If we were to say that playing a cello
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is about the strings and the bow, that's only half the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: story. The real story is the craftsman who
Fiona Brennan-Scott: hollowed out that wood, who created an
Fiona Brennan-Scott: instrument that resonates. And when the bow
Fiona Brennan-Scott: strikes the strings, that whole instrument resonates
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and beautiful sound fills the space and our body has
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that capacity. I just related to the story. You're saying
Joanne Lockwood: there. I went to see the film the colour purple yesterday,
Joanne Lockwood: the modern one, again, Steven Spielberg was involved with
Joanne Lockwood: it. And I could spend all day talking to you
Joanne Lockwood: about racism. I could spend all day talking to you about patriarchy and
Joanne Lockwood: misogynistic behaviour and how black women are doubly
Joanne Lockwood: oppressed through racism and through oppression, through misogyny.
Joanne Lockwood: I could tell you that all day and it would not resonate. You go, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: whatever this film, it took me on this journey.
Joanne Lockwood: I went through anger, I went through pains,
Joanne Lockwood: compassion, happiness, joy, hope,
Joanne Lockwood: disillusionment. Hopes and dreams were dashed and
Joanne Lockwood: then rebuilt. I was taken through all these emotions, through story, through
Joanne Lockwood: music, through engagement. And at the end of it, I came out and go, I
Joanne Lockwood: now understand racism. I now understand into the intersection
Joanne Lockwood: of misogyny against black women in a way
Joanne Lockwood: that I had never been able to describe it before. And I will now hold
Joanne Lockwood: that with me for the rest of my life, because I've really engaged with it.
Joanne Lockwood: So the power of that story and that journey it took me
Joanne Lockwood: on transcended two basic facts. That's
Joanne Lockwood: all it was. And it explained that to me in a nutshell,
Joanne Lockwood: in a way, that I was crying at the end. I was absolutely crying my
Joanne Lockwood: eyes out. It was so engaging. So you're right, it is around how do we
Joanne Lockwood: communicate a simple or one thing or two things that you
Joanne Lockwood: need to get across in a way that people can resonate with that and take
Joanne Lockwood: it away and take action. Yes. And I had a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: very interesting conversation around story with
Fiona Brennan-Scott: someone in the last year who looked at me and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: said, you like to tell a story, don't you? And
Fiona Brennan-Scott: sadly it was a criticism, not a compliment.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And I thought about it and a month later we
Fiona Brennan-Scott: had another conversation in which I'd been at
Fiona Brennan-Scott: this meeting and I decided to just
Fiona Brennan-Scott: say very, very little and to see what
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that played out like and just observe. And afterwards
Fiona Brennan-Scott: the person said, oh, quite a patronising person said,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: you did so well. And I said, well, I
Fiona Brennan-Scott: actually had a think about what you said and the challenge for me
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and in terms of inclusion, Joe, I'm the only non
Fiona Brennan-Scott: english, non privileged christian person in the group,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: so I'm different on three levels. And
Fiona Brennan-Scott: although I am relatively privileged and I said, you know, I had to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: think about what you said about stories and the problem is
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I'm irish and irish people love a good
Fiona Brennan-Scott: story. And she
Fiona Brennan-Scott: oh, ok. And I said, and the other problem is I'm
Fiona Brennan-Scott: a. You know, Jesus was the best
Fiona Brennan-Scott: storyteller. He just told the best stories ever.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: So I guess culturally and in terms
Fiona Brennan-Scott: of my faith, I'm just addicted to stories and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I really like them. But it was just so
Fiona Brennan-Scott: interesting to think how
Fiona Brennan-Scott: othering people can be done in such a subtle
Fiona Brennan-Scott: way. But actually we need to embrace our
Fiona Brennan-Scott: story. We need to embrace who we are and realise
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that it's okay to be who we are and to live that.
Joanne Lockwood: I used to run an it company and I was always using
Joanne Lockwood: analogies, metaphors, stories, whatever it is, to illustrate points. And
Joanne Lockwood: my ops director came up to me, said, I love when you say that.
Joanne Lockwood: It's so colourful. I can picture that in my mind,
Joanne Lockwood: the way you explain that with this metaphor, this story, I never
Joanne Lockwood: realised I did it. But the more I think about it is because I think
Joanne Lockwood: very visually, I think in pictures, I think in not just pictures,
Joanne Lockwood: full action movie in my head, I can play
Joanne Lockwood: out an entire day ahead of me, imagining the entire
Joanne Lockwood: day and putting everything in boxes and from the right from packing my handbag to
Joanne Lockwood: putting my coat on so I can go through this checklist and I can do
Joanne Lockwood: all this through a story in my head. People talk about
Joanne Lockwood: memory, these people who have huge memories, they invent a story
Joanne Lockwood: around to remember things. I create a story in advance of what I'm
Joanne Lockwood: going to be doing and I act out that story for the day and
Joanne Lockwood: amend it as I go. So when I'm thinking about
Joanne Lockwood: recalling information, I've always associated
Joanne Lockwood: with a story. A feeling, a metaphor. Something's in
Joanne Lockwood: there. So when that feeling pops into my head, I've got
Joanne Lockwood: access to that story. And it comes straight out as my way of
Joanne Lockwood: translating my brain storage out to the
Joanne Lockwood: world through this story that I've told. I may not remember the
Joanne Lockwood: exact words, but I remember the story around it. And then the
Joanne Lockwood: words pop out. So I think, for me,
Joanne Lockwood: it's something I never realised I did until now. As a professional
Joanne Lockwood: speaker, I'm on stage and someone asks me a question or something
Joanne Lockwood: have happened, or I'll suddenly say something and then ping. A story
Joanne Lockwood: pops into my head. And suddenly the story gets woven into what I'm saying out
Joanne Lockwood: of nowhere. And people always
Joanne Lockwood: say, wow, I loved how you wove stories into that all the way through,
Joanne Lockwood: because it makes it so much more interesting, doesn't it? A story is a very
Fiona Brennan-Scott: economical way of communicating. I mean,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: poetry is the ultimate economy, but it can be
Fiona Brennan-Scott: obscure and it can take time to unpack. So a story is a beautiful
Fiona Brennan-Scott: in between way of economising. If you think about
Fiona Brennan-Scott: you going to see the colour purple in 2 hours, you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: understood a lifetime and generations of
Fiona Brennan-Scott: problem in one evening. So it
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is incredibly powerful. And don't get me wrong, I do get people who love
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that storytelling side of me. But it was interesting to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: watch it in the exception rather than the rule, where somebody
Fiona Brennan-Scott: didn't really appreciate that.
Joanne Lockwood: I get it completely. I used to run it companies.
Joanne Lockwood: I've been in it, well, probably five, six of
Joanne Lockwood: my life, if you like. My adult life, that's my career. So
Joanne Lockwood: I've got very used to being very black and white, very on
Joanne Lockwood: off, very binary about things. Work doesn't work. I was an
Joanne Lockwood: electronics engineer. It either worked or it didn't work. So
Joanne Lockwood: you get used to speaking to people in that sort of language.
Joanne Lockwood: And then when someone can't see the fault in a
Joanne Lockwood: circuit, because they haven't be able to divide the circuit in two
Joanne Lockwood: and work out whether the fault is left or right, of where you've divided
Joanne Lockwood: it, and then you do left and right again, left and right again, till you
Joanne Lockwood: get down to a few millimetres wide. And it has to be in that line.
Joanne Lockwood: So I think very clearly about half splitting and narrowing things
Joanne Lockwood: down. But that doesn't work for people who don't have that logic. So you have
Joanne Lockwood: to be able to step back and tell the story around it. Okay, we haven't
Joanne Lockwood: got a picture, but we got sound. I can hear you, but I
Joanne Lockwood: can't see you. That must mean there's something wrong with the vision. Okay, so what's
Joanne Lockwood: wrong with the vision? So we can ignore everything to do with sound. We just
Joanne Lockwood: look at the vision. So you have to just describe it differently and
Joanne Lockwood: tell that story. It's a real challenge to say you work
Joanne Lockwood: with people who are leaders and experts in
Joanne Lockwood: their field, but not necessarily develop their
Joanne Lockwood: communication style and skills and voice, if you like. Yes,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and they are. I'm so fortunate that I've worked with fabulous
Fiona Brennan-Scott: people over 23, going on 24 years and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: such a wide variety of disciplines, and even
Fiona Brennan-Scott: getting to help people with wedding speeches. Joe, which is a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: lot of. Did. My
Joanne Lockwood: daughter got married two years ago and I had to write her speech and I
Joanne Lockwood: wasn't too daunted as a professional speaker, but I was kind of more
Joanne Lockwood: daunted the fact that everyone knew I was a professional speaker. So I had to
Joanne Lockwood: be doubly good and humorous, entertaining, not too embarrassing,
Joanne Lockwood: taking it to the edge, not over the edge. There's a whole lot of dynamics
Joanne Lockwood: in there, isn't that? You got to play with. There's a double whammy, because one
Fiona Brennan-Scott: of the toughest audiences is the audience that has known
Fiona Brennan-Scott: you all your life or who knows you personally. So you had the double
Fiona Brennan-Scott: whammy because you had that, plus the fact that people
Fiona Brennan-Scott: had very high expectations. And I think that is one of the problems
Fiona Brennan-Scott: with public speaking, which I've touched on already, is
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that people think, if I can talk, or even if you're very
Fiona Brennan-Scott: talkative, you must be able to speak, but
Fiona Brennan-Scott: there's quite a difference. And, in fact, in some
Fiona Brennan-Scott: ways, introverts make better actors because they're
Fiona Brennan-Scott: better at inhabiting a character, because they're
Fiona Brennan-Scott: used to seeming less in public,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because there's a lot that's going on beneath the surface,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: whereas an extrovert has to, and I speak as an
Fiona Brennan-Scott: extreme extrovert, has to shelve a lot of themselves and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: a lot of what people see first before they become
Fiona Brennan-Scott: someone else. Yeah, I've noticed that on chat shows. I'm a big fan of the
Joanne Lockwood: Graham Norton Friday night show on the BBC in the UK, and
Joanne Lockwood: you see famous actors. Tom Cruise, I think, is a
Joanne Lockwood: great example that I always think about where you put him on a
Joanne Lockwood: sofa and you start to have a conversation with him and he doesn't seem to
Joanne Lockwood: have anything about him. You suddenly realise that everything
Joanne Lockwood: you think or you know about Tom Cruise is actually a
Joanne Lockwood: Persona of a character he plays. And when you see these people
Joanne Lockwood: off script just being themselves, many people don't
Joanne Lockwood: necessarily live up to that belief you have of them for the characters
Joanne Lockwood: they play. I always think about some of the actors,
Joanne Lockwood: and I'm the same. I'm a raging introvert, really. Even though
Joanne Lockwood: people would say I disguise it well. I really want to
Joanne Lockwood: hide after events. I want to get out there, do my stuff and run away.
Joanne Lockwood: I don't seek the limelight in that way, but I can put myself
Joanne Lockwood: into that zone and act in an extroverted way
Joanne Lockwood: or an outgoing way or an engaging way.
Joanne Lockwood: I think you say it's a myth that everybody who gets on stage is an
Joanne Lockwood: extrovert. A lot of us, the cohort, professional speakers, I
Joanne Lockwood: know there's many of us who sort of all hide in the corner after us
Joanne Lockwood: going, thank God that's over. Can we go home now?
Joanne Lockwood: It's a real challenge, isn't it, to put yourself out there, give a part of
Joanne Lockwood: you. That's what you do. I will say I'm ripping a part of me out
Joanne Lockwood: of my chest and giving it to the audience. And if I don't come off
Joanne Lockwood: stage absolutely exhausted and given everything,
Joanne Lockwood: I can't hold something back from the audience because that's selfish.
Joanne Lockwood: I got to give everything I've got. It really drains you after a performance.
Joanne Lockwood: So huge respect to actors or people who do
Joanne Lockwood: stage shows day in, day out, doing two performances a day. And that must
Joanne Lockwood: be really exhausting to give that part of you all the time. Yes, it
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is. And I think I also feel more exhausted
Fiona Brennan-Scott: afterwards. I'm always pumped up and excited beforehand,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and afterwards I feel quite drained. One of the biggest challenges I have
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is that my superpower, to use the word
Fiona Brennan-Scott: you used at the start, is enabling and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: empowering other people to shine. So
Fiona Brennan-Scott: my preference is to be a director in a person's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: life rather than to be the actor myself. So
Fiona Brennan-Scott: getting up on a stage and doing a keynote for me
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is a challenge because I'm talking about the thing
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that I want to help other people to do, but being that person
Fiona Brennan-Scott: myself. So it's quite a contradiction,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: really. And because I'm an extrovert, people
Fiona Brennan-Scott: don't find it quite difficult to believe and understand
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that that's a reality. But it is. It's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: so rewarding. For instance, David Duffett, who won last
Fiona Brennan-Scott: year's speaker factor, I had coached him and just the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: joy of watching him up there doing his thing and being brilliant.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And the year before with Hilary Briggs, exactly the same.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Just the joy of seeing them accomplish
Fiona Brennan-Scott: their potential and smash it and go. I was a part of that.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I helped release. Well done. Those
Fiona Brennan-Scott: exquisite abilities. That's my job. Well done.
Joanne Lockwood: They both did a fantastic job. I mean, if anyone listening that's not aware,
Joanne Lockwood: we're both members of the professional speaking association and we have an annual
Joanne Lockwood: competition for emerging speakers called speaker factor. And it's all
Joanne Lockwood: about people who are stepping out their comfort zone to deliver a five minute
Joanne Lockwood: talk on stage in front of their peers and being judged and
Joanne Lockwood: marked on various criteria. Engagement,
Joanne Lockwood: stagecraft, all those things are part of it. So, yeah, it's a daunting
Joanne Lockwood: task. I've taken part in it many years ago. I did really badly at the
Joanne Lockwood: time, but, yeah, it is a trial in front of your
Joanne Lockwood: peers, isn't it? And a real character building exercise. Yes. And the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: economy required to say something
Fiona Brennan-Scott: really impactful in five minutes is a huge challenge.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: 20 minutes is easy, but five minutes,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that's hard, that's tough. I did my initial kind of
Joanne Lockwood: evolution at toastmasters, and Toastmasters was always about the five minute
Joanne Lockwood: talk, how to get in, come up with three points, close
Joanne Lockwood: it, summarise and get out before the red light came
Joanne Lockwood: on. It was always drummed into me. So, as you say, five
Joanne Lockwood: minutes can be easy. 15 minutes is kind of that middle
Joanne Lockwood: ground where you got loads to say, but you haven't got too much. You haven't
Joanne Lockwood: got too much time. I find that if I'm not careful, 45 minutes to
Joanne Lockwood: an hour is like, push the button, I'm in flow and it just
Joanne Lockwood: comes out now. So, yeah, 45 minutes to an hour is easier. But, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: 15 minutes, 1015 minutes is that middle ground where it's kind of.
Joanne Lockwood: I haven't got time to explore all this. I've got to really kind of summarise
Joanne Lockwood: my point down here. So the ted 18 minutes is
Fiona Brennan-Scott: perfect. That's the sweet spot. So one of the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: things I do, which a lot of people probably don't know,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is that I preach. I don't like the word preaching.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: It sounds very preachy, but I
Fiona Brennan-Scott: do that. It's a talk at a church from time to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: time, about every six weeks, and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I aim for 15 minutes so that it's 18 minutes, which is
Fiona Brennan-Scott: probably something I could pass on to your listeners, is that
Fiona Brennan-Scott: you need to allow 20 minutes, 20% of your time,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: to be empty in your practise, because when you get
Fiona Brennan-Scott: in front of a live audience and you're doing that beautiful dance with
Fiona Brennan-Scott: them, your pace, your pause, the dynamic of how you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: speak changes and if you've been given a set amount of time and you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: haven't allowed 20% for that, you're going to run
Fiona Brennan-Scott: over. And it's exquisite to have the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: relaxation of that capacity to just
Fiona Brennan-Scott: go with it and make it this communication in front of your
Fiona Brennan-Scott: audience and with your audience. Because there are few things
Fiona Brennan-Scott: worse in public speaking than someone who rushes to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: say all they have to say in the hope that they get their message
Fiona Brennan-Scott: across and say everything they want to say in the time they've been
Fiona Brennan-Scott: allowed, when in fact, it should never be about that.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Because as an audience, our processing speed
Fiona Brennan-Scott: hasn't changed. With technology, we may be able to do
Fiona Brennan-Scott: everything faster, but we still process and absorb
Fiona Brennan-Scott: information at a certain rate. And if the speaker doesn't
Fiona Brennan-Scott: deliver at that rate, we're going to lose them. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: I sometimes find. But I'm on stage and I'm. I don't know, in the
Joanne Lockwood: middle, at some point in the talk, I could feel myself
Joanne Lockwood: wanting to close at some point. Maybe it's the audience,
Joanne Lockwood: maybe I feel like I've given them enough at this point and I've
Joanne Lockwood: got them engaged and I think, well, hang on a minute, if I go around
Joanne Lockwood: that cycle again and introduce another topic, they're not ready for that. I think you
Joanne Lockwood: just get that feeling sometimes. You think, actually, now is a good time to close
Joanne Lockwood: this and re summarise, go to Q A and
Joanne Lockwood: not overlabel it, isn't it? Label it. And I think I found that over the
Joanne Lockwood: time. I was doing a talk in Newcastle a few years ago
Joanne Lockwood: and I had. I reckon I was probably a third of the way. No, two
Joanne Lockwood: thirds of the way through the slides. And I thought, no, that's enough,
Joanne Lockwood: that's enough. I know what slides come in next and I just treated it as
Joanne Lockwood: a conclusion. And so I re summarised and said, right, let's get
Joanne Lockwood: A-Q-A. You've been a fantastic audience and nobody knows what
Joanne Lockwood: you're going to say next. Nobody knows what you're going to do, what slides
Joanne Lockwood: are missing. So you just go to close and you can do that whenever you
Joanne Lockwood: want and don't be afraid. And as you say, people try to. Cram too much
Joanne Lockwood: in. That's beautiful, Jo, because that sounds to me
Fiona Brennan-Scott: like you were connected with your emotional core, where
Fiona Brennan-Scott: you had this instinct, and you were also tuned into the room and you were
Fiona Brennan-Scott: tuned in to the emotional response and the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: connection with your audience that brought you to that place. And so
Fiona Brennan-Scott: you had the courage to be unselfish and to bring things to a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: close, and no one is going to criticise you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: for being too short. I've never heard it happen. And also
Fiona Brennan-Scott: the Q A is a gift to the audience because you know that everything
Fiona Brennan-Scott: you say at that point is going to be
Fiona Brennan-Scott: specifically addressing an area of interest
Fiona Brennan-Scott: for some of the audience. And I believe in doing the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: same. I think an extended Q A is always a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: delight because it becomes that conversation and it has that
Fiona Brennan-Scott: dynamic and it changes things up. And when you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: know your subject, your topic, when you are an
Fiona Brennan-Scott: expert, you know that nobody can ask you a question that you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: can't answer. And actually, if they do, you're absolutely
Fiona Brennan-Scott: delighted because it's a learning opportunity and you can say, I haven't
Fiona Brennan-Scott: been asked that before and I haven't even thought about it.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I'm going to go and find that out and come back to you. Or you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: just think on the spot and come up with an idea and then say, what
Fiona Brennan-Scott: are your thoughts? Have you ever thought anything about
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that? So that's a delight. I don't know if you're
Fiona Brennan-Scott: familiar with my book, but I'm also a trained time to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: certified coach. So I trained in time to think
Fiona Brennan-Scott: about six years ago. And the strength of
Fiona Brennan-Scott: time to think is very much about presence and listening.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And I've written a chapter in the book called consider
Fiona Brennan-Scott: creating a thinking environment. So what if
Fiona Brennan-Scott: as a speaker, we created a thinking environment
Fiona Brennan-Scott: where the ten components of a thinking environment are present?
Fiona Brennan-Scott: So an environment of encouragement, a place where we acknowledge
Fiona Brennan-Scott: feelings, a place where place matters, and places about how
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we show up in our appearance that says to the other person, you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: matter, but also a place that acknowledges the challenges that the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: environment might present to the people there. A place where there's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: diversity and equality, a place where there's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: ease and attention and appreciation
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and the other components that I won't rattle off.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: But what a dynamic environment if we can create a thinking
Fiona Brennan-Scott: environment where people are learning. I mean, why wouldn't you do that?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, the word that's jumped into my head as you're talking there is
Joanne Lockwood: rumination, the ability for people to
Joanne Lockwood: ruminate on what you just said. You have to build
Joanne Lockwood: in pauses or moments of reflection, rhetorical
Joanne Lockwood: questions, whatever it may be, and allow it to sit with the audience.
Joanne Lockwood: And you as a speaker have to be comfortable with that silence, or have to
Joanne Lockwood: be comfortable with holding that stage, allowing people to
Joanne Lockwood: ruminate on that before moving on to the next point or
Joanne Lockwood: segueing, bringing that with you. I think we want to
Joanne Lockwood: just hit people sometimes like we're banging people
Joanne Lockwood: we're driving content. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide.
Joanne Lockwood: But the ability to pause, reflect, scan
Joanne Lockwood: the room, just watch people's reactions. You can see people nod or making
Joanne Lockwood: notes. So it's allowing people to do that without bombarding them. And I
Joanne Lockwood: think what you said there is the key. There is. It's almost like
Joanne Lockwood: virtual listening. You're not actually listening to what they're saying, but you're
Joanne Lockwood: trying to listen to what they're thinking and where they are with you,
Joanne Lockwood: so that you're judging how you're delivering by
Joanne Lockwood: whether they're ready for more. I think that's part of it as well, isn't it?
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Yes. One of my favourite quotes is during the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: pause, the meaning goes on. And that was shared with
Fiona Brennan-Scott: me by Joan See, my first drama teacher in South Africa.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And last year I heard a quote from Dubusi which
Fiona Brennan-Scott: says, the music is what happens between the notes.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And I think that concept of silence
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and time to think, time to process
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is just exquisite because it shows respect
Fiona Brennan-Scott: for our audience, doesn't it? Gives them time to consider.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: That's powerful. Yeah. I remember seeing a professional
Joanne Lockwood: speaker at one of the speaking events and
Joanne Lockwood: she stood up. She gave us, I think it was 40, 45 minutes talk. At
Joanne Lockwood: the end of it, I thought to myself, she's only actually really told us
Joanne Lockwood: one thing. And see, took a whole 45 minutes to talk about that one
Joanne Lockwood: thing. And it's beautiful because it was presented from
Joanne Lockwood: different angles. There were stories, there was whys in there. It wasn't overly
Joanne Lockwood: complex. It would just take away this one thing about how people interact.
Joanne Lockwood: And it was such a simple thing
Joanne Lockwood: and it wasn't overly complicated, but I had time to explore that from multiple
Joanne Lockwood: different angles. And I thought it was a real good example of not trying to
Joanne Lockwood: do ten things. Just get that one point,
Joanne Lockwood: land it well, weave in all the aspects to
Joanne Lockwood: it. But that's your takeaway, that one thing. Oh, that's brilliant. So you
Joanne Lockwood: can do it. I've also been known, when I've done a talk
Fiona Brennan-Scott: at church, to finish up a few minutes
Fiona Brennan-Scott: early and just say, I'm just going to allow a few
Fiona Brennan-Scott: minutes. I've even asked a musician to just gently play the guitar
Fiona Brennan-Scott: for a few minutes, to allow people sit with their
Fiona Brennan-Scott: thoughts and make a note or draw a picture.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And that feels right. Sometimes it's almost
Fiona Brennan-Scott: like having a bubble bath with a message,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: where you get to sit and soak and enjoy and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: appreciate and make it your own. And I think that's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: where the respect comes in, is because you're delivering a message,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: but your audience needs to make it their own and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: apply it to themselves. And one of the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: things I say to my clients is, start with the end in
Fiona Brennan-Scott: mind. Start with your audience. What do you want them to think,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: feel and do as a result of your message? How do you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: want them to respond? And if you keep that front and centre
Fiona Brennan-Scott: from the very moment you've been asked to deliver that
Fiona Brennan-Scott: talk, you won't lose your audience and you will gain their respect
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and you will impart something of value. And
Fiona Brennan-Scott: time is so precious. It's the only thing that's finite
Fiona Brennan-Scott: in terms of currency. If you're going to take 20 minutes
Fiona Brennan-Scott: or 45 minutes of people's time, make it
Fiona Brennan-Scott: worthwhile, add value to their lives. Yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: do use, think, feel and do. Those are the key
Joanne Lockwood: things for me. And also focusing on the takeaways. Think,
Joanne Lockwood: feel and do. But also, what's the real nub or the essence of why I'm
Joanne Lockwood: here? And write the talk,
Joanne Lockwood: or think about the talk backwards for the moment, people leave. Where
Joanne Lockwood: do you want them to be? Recognise that they're busy people, that if they're not
Joanne Lockwood: careful, they'll move on to the next thing immediately. And then
Joanne Lockwood: whatever you've said will go straight out of their head. So you got to try
Joanne Lockwood: and leave them really clear instructions. I want you to
Joanne Lockwood: write this down, or if you take nothing else away from today's
Joanne Lockwood: talk, take this away. So you got to find that essence
Joanne Lockwood: of the thing you want it to remember. And, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: it's a skill to think that way. And often you start at the
Joanne Lockwood: beginning or the PowerPoint slide or all the information you want to give
Joanne Lockwood: them without distilling it down to those that nub or
Joanne Lockwood: the real crux of it. And also the opposite can happen
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because sometimes we can extrapolate
Fiona Brennan-Scott: where one word or one phrase the speaker says
Fiona Brennan-Scott: sends us off on a tangent
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because of the place we're at in our lives or what we're experiencing,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we can go off on our own tangent, but actually
Fiona Brennan-Scott: the speaker has facilitated that. So
Fiona Brennan-Scott: it's not holding on too tightly to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: the impact that we're going to have, but actually having an idea of the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: impact we're hoping to have with our audience.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And I think some of that you get from
Joanne Lockwood: networking with the audience. After you, you listen to the feedback
Joanne Lockwood: or people always want to say, oh, wow, I loved you. That was brilliant. I
Joanne Lockwood: really love the way you said this, or this bit stands out for me and
Joanne Lockwood: you come away going, wow, I didn't realise that bit
Joanne Lockwood: was the impactful bit, then you realise that when people keep telling you the
Joanne Lockwood: same thing, or that bit, that bit, it's like, right, I have to remember
Joanne Lockwood: that chord and put that in every tune sort of thing. It's
Joanne Lockwood: there, isn't it? Isn't that the power of inclusion, though? When
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we're inclusion, we give people permission to do that
Fiona Brennan-Scott: as a speaker because we've recognised upfront the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: diversity and equality of our audience.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And I love the time to think. Definition of equality.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: It's that even if we have different roles, more
Fiona Brennan-Scott: senior, more junior, even if we're different ages
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and have different life experiences, when it comes to our thinking,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we are equal and equally, and what we have, our thoughts are
Fiona Brennan-Scott: equally valuable. Yeah, I talk a lot about
Joanne Lockwood: that and around perspective and opinions, and we
Joanne Lockwood: all have a perspective, we all have an opinion, we don't have to be right
Joanne Lockwood: or wrong, we just have to have our view of the world. And
Joanne Lockwood: recognising that other people have their own view of the world, their own
Joanne Lockwood: perspectives, their own opinions, is healthy. And I
Joanne Lockwood: think we too often want to clash on arguing
Joanne Lockwood: about outcomes rather than perspectives. If we can understand
Joanne Lockwood: why someone thinks something or how someone came to that conclusion,
Joanne Lockwood: or their lived experience that led them down that path, isn't that
Joanne Lockwood: enriching to learn about people in that way? Yes. And if we
Fiona Brennan-Scott: embrace difference, we will spend as much time as possible
Fiona Brennan-Scott: around people who think differently to us and who are as
Fiona Brennan-Scott: different as us as possible, because that's the only way we're going to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: grow. Yeah. I did a talk the other day in
Joanne Lockwood: London to a group of marketing professionals and I was talking to one of
Joanne Lockwood: the delegates at the end.
Joanne Lockwood: He was a man, he was kind of in his probably late
Joanne Lockwood: 50s, but he said to me, how. How do I have conversations
Joanne Lockwood: with people who are. Who are different? I'd be really
Joanne Lockwood: worried about offending somebody. I'd be really worried about drawing
Joanne Lockwood: attention to an attribute in the example he gave is, what
Joanne Lockwood: if someone in the audience I was having a conversation with only had one
Joanne Lockwood: arm? What do I do? Do I go and say, sorry about your arm
Joanne Lockwood: or happened to your arm? I said, well, actually, why don't you have a
Joanne Lockwood: conversation as if they had two arms or if they had no arms, whatever it
Joanne Lockwood: may be, have a conversation as a human being. And then if
Joanne Lockwood: that person wants to share with you about their arm, they will.
Joanne Lockwood: If they don't, then it's actually about your curiosity, not about them.
Joanne Lockwood: It's all about you. So you got to separate your curiosity
Joanne Lockwood: and what gain do they get out of this by explaining their
Joanne Lockwood: life to someone who is curious? So I said, you just got to have
Joanne Lockwood: conversations, and if you have that emotional intelligence and that cultural
Joanne Lockwood: intelligence and compassion, then you'll be able to have better
Joanne Lockwood: conversations. But to focus on an attribute of somebody and want
Joanne Lockwood: to be curious about it is quite insulting. It's almost like
Joanne Lockwood: it just reduces them to that one thing. Without seeing
Joanne Lockwood: that, you could spend all day talking to Stephen Hawkin
Joanne Lockwood: about his wheelchair and his voice synthesis, or you could talk to him about the
Joanne Lockwood: planets and his theory of the universe. He'd much rather talk about the
Joanne Lockwood: universe than his emotion neurone disease. So, yeah, it's kind
Joanne Lockwood: of working where people are in that conversation, isn't it? That's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: beautiful. Yes, absolutely. You're supposed to say something else there so I could
Joanne Lockwood: keep the podcast going. I've never hit dead
Joanne Lockwood: end of this podcast. Remember my quote during the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: pause, the thinking goes on, because
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I know it doesn't work that well for a podcast. But in terms of a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: conversation, it's always good to be comfortable with
Fiona Brennan-Scott: silence. And I think that's something that people are very uncomfortable
Fiona Brennan-Scott: with generally, because we live in a society of interruption, don't we?
Joanne Lockwood: I'm just practising the silence.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Your sound has gone, jo. Oh, I can hear myself. You can't hear
Joanne Lockwood: me. Oh dear. We're practising silence even more now.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm going to tell you a story, see if you can get back to this.
Joanne Lockwood: And one of the things I find is that when we're
Joanne Lockwood: listening is kind of an underrated skill. And I think what happens
Joanne Lockwood: is when we're communicating, we're often
Joanne Lockwood: communicating to change someone's view or to tell them our view
Joanne Lockwood: or our perspective. How many conversations do you have that don't
Joanne Lockwood: involve telling somebody what you think, oh,
Joanne Lockwood: I love this chicken. Did you see that on telly or that film
Joanne Lockwood: I saw the other day? Or. The conversations we have tend to be about
Joanne Lockwood: telling somebody else our opinion. And what happens then is
Joanne Lockwood: whoever's on the other end of that conversations tend to react with, well, my
Joanne Lockwood: view is, or app didn't like that. Or no, actually, I prefer the salmon.
Joanne Lockwood: I've had the chicken. We get into this debate and it
Joanne Lockwood: becomes a perspective thing, and we often want to fix
Joanne Lockwood: people. If you tell me that you're not feeling great today, you've had a bit
Joanne Lockwood: of a tough day, you were running late. I'll start talking to you about
Joanne Lockwood: time management, or how can I help? Or can we back the pressure off. So
Joanne Lockwood: we always want to fix. So I tell you something, you either want to argue
Joanne Lockwood: back with me or I want to fix you. But we never hold that space
Joanne Lockwood: for just listening and letting it ruminate
Joanne Lockwood: and just hearing people. You don't need fixing. You just
Joanne Lockwood: want someone to listen and maybe smile, maybe turn the
Joanne Lockwood: head, tilt their head slightly, maybe give you a virtual hug, whatever it may
Joanne Lockwood: be. But you don't need me to fix you. When I transitioned from being a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: speech and drama teacher to a voice and speech
Fiona Brennan-Scott: coach, I looked for the least prescriptive coaching
Fiona Brennan-Scott: methodology, and I found it in time to think.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And that what you've just talked about
Fiona Brennan-Scott: describes why I chose it, because it was about
Fiona Brennan-Scott: listening not to understand, listening not to respond, but
Fiona Brennan-Scott: listening to ignite. And so the opening
Fiona Brennan-Scott: question in time to think is, what would you like to think about, and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: what are your thoughts? And the principle of time to think is that you're
Fiona Brennan-Scott: listening generatively to see where the person's thinking
Fiona Brennan-Scott: will go and trust where their thinking will go. But one
Fiona Brennan-Scott: of the aspects of contracting is I will not interrupt
Fiona Brennan-Scott: you, even in silence, because sometimes we do some of our
Fiona Brennan-Scott: best thinking in silence, and I will not give you my perspective
Fiona Brennan-Scott: unless you ask for it. And this acknowledges the fact that
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we are the authors of our own best solutions,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that I can have ideas, I can have suggestions, but
Fiona Brennan-Scott: actually, you have got the best possible
Fiona Brennan-Scott: solutions and perspectives and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: ideas, because yours are going to come out
Fiona Brennan-Scott: of your life, experience, your perspective, your world,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and you have the solution. And all you really
Fiona Brennan-Scott: need is someone to hold the space while you discover
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that. And we spend so little time ruminating,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: to use the beautiful word you use earlier, to think,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: to explore. And there's something generative about doing
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that with another person. When someone listens
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and holds the space for us, it becomes very creative and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: generative in a way that if we're on our own,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: we're not as good, I guess we're not as self
Fiona Brennan-Scott: compassionate as the patience and compassion another
Fiona Brennan-Scott: person can show when they're holding that space for us. And it's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: absolutely exquisite what happens in those space.
Joanne Lockwood: Someone shared a technique with me that they use, or they'd
Joanne Lockwood: heard used in a company, and it's called rubber ducking.
Joanne Lockwood: So the concept is that you can solve most of your problems
Joanne Lockwood: just by saying them out loud and expressing them, so they become
Joanne Lockwood: out of your head. You formulate them into thoughts that come out of your voice,
Joanne Lockwood: out of your mouth. So the concept of rubber ducking is this
Joanne Lockwood: organisation had this rule. You weren't allowed to ask for help on a technical
Joanne Lockwood: challenge or whatever the problem was, unless you talk to the rubber
Joanne Lockwood: duck first. So around the office, they put rubber ducks. Everyone used to
Joanne Lockwood: bring their own little bath time rubber duck in different characters and whatever, they put
Joanne Lockwood: them out in the office and you'd see people going up and standing in front
Joanne Lockwood: of the duck, having a conversation with it. And then most of them go,
Joanne Lockwood: solved it got light bulb moment. They're going to sit down and get on with
Joanne Lockwood: it. And sometimes when you're talking to someone who's just
Joanne Lockwood: listening, it's that active thought and I think
Joanne Lockwood: I do these listening exercises in one of my workshops where you have five
Joanne Lockwood: minutes each and you're not had to say anything apart from
Joanne Lockwood: thank you. Please tell me more. That's your only response if
Joanne Lockwood: they freeze or stop. And what you end up
Joanne Lockwood: doing is you end up going very superficial, and then you start
Joanne Lockwood: going deeper and deeper with each iteration where you got to try and think of
Joanne Lockwood: something else. Then more thoughts pop into your head. So by the end of five
Joanne Lockwood: minutes, you've really gone deep on this. And just allowing someone
Joanne Lockwood: to just do that without feeling, oh, that's the uncomfortable silence,
Joanne Lockwood: or, I need to fix you, or I need to solve that problem. Just. Thank
Joanne Lockwood: you. Tell me more. Thank you. Tell me more. And you just bring it out
Joanne Lockwood: and you bring it out at the end of it. The feedback I get is,
Joanne Lockwood: wow, that was so cathartic. That was wow. I've never gone that deep. Wow.
Joanne Lockwood: Never thought about that terms. And when things will pop into my head that I'd
Joanne Lockwood: never thought about before. So again, not having to respond
Joanne Lockwood: or not needing someone to respond allows you to do that rubber
Joanne Lockwood: ducking, if you like, and just talk to the ether and just keep
Joanne Lockwood: going. It's like that next 5 miles on the
Joanne Lockwood: treadmill. The next 5 miles are the ones you don't want to do, but
Joanne Lockwood: suddenly you get to end if you go, wow, that was so productive. You just
Fiona Brennan-Scott: reminded me of a habit I have. So I've been
Fiona Brennan-Scott: married for going on for 32 years to the same
Fiona Brennan-Scott: husband, and I often solve problems
Fiona Brennan-Scott: just by saying aloud. You can just start saying
Fiona Brennan-Scott: them aloud and I solve them. So he's my rubber
Fiona Brennan-Scott: duck. You've just made me realise I'm married to a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: rubber duck. But it also
Fiona Brennan-Scott: reminds me of, and I don't know who the author of this is, but the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: five levels of why. So if you ask why five
Fiona Brennan-Scott: times, you'll get to the truth. So if someone says, I'm sorry, I was
Fiona Brennan-Scott: late I missed the bus. Why did you miss the bus? Oh,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because my breakfast conversation ran
Fiona Brennan-Scott: over. Why did your breakfast conversation? And then you get to the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: truth. And when I started studying time to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: think, I was reminded of that. But
Fiona Brennan-Scott: it's far gentler, because five levels of why can sound
Fiona Brennan-Scott: a little bit like an interrogation. Yeah, it can.
Joanne Lockwood: Simon Sinek's book start with a why, isn't it? Is it Simon Sinek?
Joanne Lockwood: Yes, that's all about the why. And I challenge people when I talk
Joanne Lockwood: about diversity. Inclusion is you've got to have your own why. Why does it really
Joanne Lockwood: matter to you to think more diversity, more inclusively? Why does it matter? Because if
Joanne Lockwood: you don't understand your why, it will be inauthentic, it will be superficial,
Joanne Lockwood: it won't be sustainable. So you've got to try and get it embedded into your
Joanne Lockwood: core about why you believe something. I think encouraging people to
Joanne Lockwood: think deeply about that is important. And I
Joanne Lockwood: use Chat GPT and one of the prompts I have is use the
Joanne Lockwood: five wise method to take an idea and then drill
Joanne Lockwood: down each one until you get to the essence of it right at the end.
Joanne Lockwood: And it's a very good technique, as you say, to drill down to ideate.
Joanne Lockwood: We can use problem agitate solution as another one, feed that into Chat
Joanne Lockwood: GPT and it comes up with that sort of thought process. But I use
Joanne Lockwood: the five whys to try and drill down to the nub of it. So,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: in terms of why is inclusivity and diversity
Fiona Brennan-Scott: important? When I pivoted from being a speech and drama teacher
Fiona Brennan-Scott: to a voice and speech coach, I expected
Fiona Brennan-Scott: everyone on Harwell campus. I lived down the road in Harwell
Fiona Brennan-Scott: village to be my client because they're all in
Fiona Brennan-Scott: science, technology, engineering, some manufacturing.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: And it took me five years to get my first client on
Fiona Brennan-Scott: there. And I also thought I'd have a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: majority of females, because there is a lack
Fiona Brennan-Scott: of female representation in senior leadership and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: 80% of my clients in the first two years were white
Fiona Brennan-Scott: males. I'd always had people coming to me, even when I was a speech and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: drama teacher, through word of mouth. But when I started
Fiona Brennan-Scott: just doing that, I was delighted that I had
Fiona Brennan-Scott: clients, but disappointed about their profile,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: because I thought, I'm not reaching the people that really
Fiona Brennan-Scott: need the help. And obviously the people coming to me do need the help and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I'm giving it to them. But actually, where is the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: diversity? And I really didn't know what to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: do about it, but I must have started doing something right. And
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I think it's how I showed up on my social media, and in
Fiona Brennan-Scott: networking I mostly use LinkedIn and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I do a lot of networking because within two years
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I started measuring. I looked again. I don't like to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: measure, it's not really my strength. And I relooked
Fiona Brennan-Scott: at my client base and realised I had one
Fiona Brennan-Scott: more female client than I had male clients. And I was getting a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: range of diversity that I hadn't before. And I
Fiona Brennan-Scott: do think it seeps out through your skin
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and how you speak and people start hearing something
Fiona Brennan-Scott: that makes them feel like your door is open to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: them. But I don't know quite what it is now. I think it's all
Joanne Lockwood: part of your personal brand, for want of a better phrase.
Joanne Lockwood: I saw someone the other day talking about their chakra. It's all about that inner
Joanne Lockwood: energy that you have and that alignment, how it resonates,
Joanne Lockwood: how people feel that you're their kind of person, whatever it may be.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: There'S a connection, possibly values. And in
Fiona Brennan-Scott: values of lockdown, Michelle Mills Porter was
Fiona Brennan-Scott: very good at helping me identify my
Fiona Brennan-Scott: core values. And through that I was able to put my
Fiona Brennan-Scott: values on my website. And I imagine that also
Fiona Brennan-Scott: was helpful. But I honestly don't think you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: can fake it, because I don't think you can either. I don't know what I
Fiona Brennan-Scott: did. I think those values are important. The authentic. You can't just
Joanne Lockwood: put something on the website. I want to be this, I want to be that
Joanne Lockwood: people can smell out in authenticity. So it has to
Joanne Lockwood: be a core of you who you are, your core values, your
Joanne Lockwood: drivers, your mantras. And people have to say that about you as well.
Joanne Lockwood: So it's not just what you say about yourself, it's what other people say about
Joanne Lockwood: you. And I talk about this when we're talking about employers and recruitment marketing
Joanne Lockwood: and their branding and stuff. Are you trying to recruit people
Joanne Lockwood: who into an organisation that you want to be, or are you trying to recruit
Joanne Lockwood: people in an organisation that you are? So it's really important to try and have
Joanne Lockwood: that alignment between who you are and what you say you are and
Joanne Lockwood: fix that first and not try and be inauthentic about it, and then
Joanne Lockwood: kid people in and go, actually, this is not the place I thought it was.
Joanne Lockwood: You've lied to me. And then you just walk out the back door. So, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: it's about being very open. So the people you are dealing with, the people you
Joanne Lockwood: are engaging with, are the people who want to engage with you because they align
Joanne Lockwood: with you. And that comes down to that below the waterline stuff. One of
Fiona Brennan-Scott: my favourite quotations is from the little prince by Anton de
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Santo Zupare. And a fox says to the little prince,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: what is essential is invisible to the eye,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and that's about authenticity and about
Fiona Brennan-Scott: caring deeply about what other people may
Fiona Brennan-Scott: never see. Yeah, there's another quote
Joanne Lockwood: which I thought, I didn't know if you were going to go that way, but
Joanne Lockwood: don't get upset with a lion for eating the antelope, it's what lions
Joanne Lockwood: do. You can blame the lion for being a lion,
Joanne Lockwood: but it's what it does. We try and blame people for who they
Joanne Lockwood: are and sometimes it's just their behaviour and you can't
Joanne Lockwood: change their behaviour, so you have to sort of mitigate it or understand
Joanne Lockwood: it. And I think sometimes we get very upset when people
Joanne Lockwood: aren't behaving in the same alignment as I am
Joanne Lockwood: or we are, or the way we think. You just say, well, I can't
Joanne Lockwood: rewrite your rule set for you, I just have
Joanne Lockwood: to hang out with other antelope. It's fine, I'm cool with that.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Yes. It reminds me of. Did you see the crying game when it came
Fiona Brennan-Scott: out in cinemas in the. It's an incredible film.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I don't know how it would be now, more than 20 years, it must
Fiona Brennan-Scott: be 30 years later. But the crying game. Forrest
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Whitaker is the main actor and he tells a story of
Fiona Brennan-Scott: a frog and a scorpion and they need to get
Fiona Brennan-Scott: across a river and the scorpion can't swim,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and he asks the frog to carry him on his back and he
Fiona Brennan-Scott: says, you'll sting me. And he says, no, I won't,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: I promise. And they're going across the river and at
Fiona Brennan-Scott: some stage, or maybe they're just on the other side, or
Fiona Brennan-Scott: they've just landed, the scorpion stings the frog and
Fiona Brennan-Scott: as he's dying, the frog says, why did you do that? And he said, it's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: my nature, it's what I do. I have never
Fiona Brennan-Scott: forgotten. Very profound. Very profound. But you have no,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: it's a very south african expression to go, you have to.
Fiona Brennan-Scott: But I highly recommend the crying game. I actually do want to
Fiona Brennan-Scott: see what it's like today and I can't say why, because
Fiona Brennan-Scott: it'll be a spoiler if I were to,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: but a very remarkable film and everyone
Fiona Brennan-Scott: in the cinema gasped at the exact same moment, which
Fiona Brennan-Scott: is why it was a wonderful. You got me intrigued. Now I'm going to have
Joanne Lockwood: to find it somewhere. I may have seen
Joanne Lockwood: it. That was 45 years ago, wasn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? 80s? It's really scary. No, it
Fiona Brennan-Scott: must have been in the 90s because I saw it with
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Andrew when we were either dating or married. We got married
Joanne Lockwood: in 87, so 37 years this year. Oh,
Fiona Brennan-Scott: wow. No, 1992. Your daughter was born.
Joanne Lockwood: Fantastic. Fiona, it's been amazing. We
Joanne Lockwood: could rabbit on and chat all day. I'm sure we could. It's
Joanne Lockwood: been fascinating. We've had a great chat before we went live and we're having
Joanne Lockwood: a great chat now and I can carry on. But how can people
Joanne Lockwood: get in touch with you? It's LinkedIn website, your book.
Joanne Lockwood: Tell us how we can find you. Sure. So, yes, I am active on
Fiona Brennan-Scott: LinkedIn because I made up my surname. I am the only Fiona
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Brennan Scott on LinkedIn, so very easy to find. My
Fiona Brennan-Scott: website is bespoken.org
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Uk. My number is
Fiona Brennan-Scott: 778-085-6043
Fiona Brennan-Scott: and my book is breathtaking communication. It's
Fiona Brennan-Scott: available, you can get a signed copy from me or you
Fiona Brennan-Scott: can listen on audible, where I read the
Fiona Brennan-Scott: book. It's also available on Kindle and from
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Amazon. Breathtaking communication with
Fiona Brennan-Scott: breathtaking as one word, which isn't a fantastic
Fiona Brennan-Scott: spelling, but it just looked better. And I'm a fan of Gerd Manley
Fiona Brennan-Scott: Hopkins, who was very good at making up words that didn't
Fiona Brennan-Scott: exist because they just sounded right. Yes. And you then
Joanne Lockwood: know that you own that word and if anyone else uses it, they know they
Joanne Lockwood: took it from you. So I'm a great believer in creating your own
Joanne Lockwood: language, as long as you explain it, obviously. So thank you. It's a
Fiona Brennan-Scott: pleasure. And thank you so much for your invitation. It's been a joy speaking
Fiona Brennan-Scott: with you, as always. Thank you. Obviously, a huge thank you to
Joanne Lockwood: you, the listener you've tuned in, you got this far. I'm really proud of you.
Joanne Lockwood: Thank you. If you're not already subscribed, then please
Joanne Lockwood: do subscribe to keep updated on future episodes of the Inclusion Bites podcast.
Joanne Lockwood: That's B-I-T-E-S. If you're loving what you're hearing, and I hope you are, please tell
Joanne Lockwood: your friends and colleagues. Share the love. I've got loads of other guests lined
Joanne Lockwood: up over the next few weeks and months, and I'm sure you'll be equally inspired
Joanne Lockwood: by them. And of course, if you'd like to be a guest yourself, if you're
Joanne Lockwood: listening to this or you have any feedback, then please drop me a line to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: Tell us how we can do better, if we can. Finally, my name is
Joanne Lockwood: Joanne Lockwood. It's been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today.
Joanne Lockwood: Catch you next time. Bye.