Public Speaking – Eat the food of CHAMPIONS

This is an AI generated transcript so please forgive any errors and spelling mistakes. 

Hi. I want to ask you today have you eaten the food of champions before? If you haven’t then you need to stay tuned and watch the entire video. And I’m not talking about Atkins diet, or whether you’re a vegan, or whether you are… I don’t know there’s so many different diets out there… I’m not talking about dieting. I’m talking about the food of champions which is otherwise known as feedback.

We’re going to talk about that in just a moment but first let me introduce myself. I’m Shola Kaye. I’m a communication consultant, a professional speaker and also a speaker coach based in London with clients around the world.

Public Speaking – asking for feedback can take you to the top of your game

In today’s video I want to ask you about feedback. Are you regularly asking for feedback from the people who are seeing you speak? Whether that’s your audience members or whether it’s the person who brought you in to speak to their group. Because if you want you are missing out on some (well, I wouldn’t necessarily delicious) you’re missing up on some nutritious foods but it’s going to help you to grow big and strong as a speaker.

Now, why is feedback called the food of champions? Well, if you look at anybody who’s at the top of their game, pretty much without exception, they have got there with the help of a coach, with the help of somebody who has worked with them to get them better. That is why it’s the food of champions. Whether you’re looking at somebody who’s a successful business owner, or somebody who’s a successful sports person, they will without doubt have had some sort of coaching or assistance or mentoring along the way.

I’m working with the CEO of an international company at the moment. He is eager to gobble up this food of champions and I’m sure that’s partly why he’s been so successful. He’s very keen for me to watch his speeches, to critique them, to give him feedback, that’s going to help him get better.

It’s very easy for us to say “I’m at a decent enough level now, I don’t want to hear any more feedback, I’m okay thank you very much”. But this will stunt your growth. In the same way eating a poor diet will stop you from being healthy, if you don’t have the nutrition of regular feedback then it will stop you from being the best speaker that you can possibly be.

Public Speaking – how to work through resistance and keep on growing

So what are some of the reasons that we would typically stop ourselves from getting or asking for feedback? First of all, it could be that you your ego is feeling a little bit delicate around getting feedback that may not all be glowing. What I suggest is that when you enter the restaurant of champions you check your ego at the door and you say “I’ll pick you up on the way out”. It’s not helpful to be too fragile about the feedback that you receive.

Sometimes you’ve got to have a little bit of a thick skin and be ready to take it on the chin, right? If you can do that and then apply what you’ve learned (obviously being few dishes because sometimes people may not have the best feedback for you) but if you can recognize that something that you’re being told is worth implementing then don’t worry about the ego. Just think about where you’re going to be after you’ve implemented this great piece of advice and go for it.

Another reason that we may not implement feedback is that if we’re so busy getting a second, third, fourth, tenth opinion that we end up spending our time soliciting advice that we don’t implement. That’s similar to the sort of person who might read tons of books on personal development and it’s just addicted to the reading of the books without actually implementing any of the advice.

I sometimes am like that. I love reading I love personal development and you have to stop myself sometimes. I say “hold on a sec before you eat the next book let’s just summarize this one, let’s take say three to five great things that you can apply and let’s do that before we run onto the next book”. In the same way it’s very easy to say “what do you think? what do you think? what do you think?” and then we get so overwhelmed with all these tips and pieces of advice that we implement barely any of them. So that’s another barrier to actually consuming this food of champions and letting it help us to grow and improve.

Public Speaking – maximise the power of feedback through self-assessment and asking others

I hope you are convinced at why it’s important to get feedback. A few weeks ago I created a podcast/vlog here on how you can actually assess your own speeches and some questions you can ask to help yourself get better. In addition to that you don’t want to be limited just by your own assessment of your work. You want to go wider than that and ask audience members, as I said people who book you. Even get recordings and then ask other people.

Have a bit of a watch party at home or something, put yourself on the TV and ask other people to give you some feedback. It’s all incredibly helpful and there might be a little bit of advice or a little tip someone gives you that can make the world of difference in your next presentation.

That’s it for me today. Make sure you keep eating or if you haven’t eaten yet make sure you eat from the plate of champions, which is getting as much feedback as you possibly can.

I will see you for the next video or podcast. Take care, bye.

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P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you improve your speaking or grow your business:

1 – Get my free guide – 5 frameworks to ace a short speech.

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2 – Connect with me on LinkedIn.

3 – Do you need a speaking workshop or communication seminar for your organisation? Get in touch.

4 – Looking for an engaging speaker for your next event? Find out more.