F.O.L Diaries
This is about to become the series that nobody asked for.
I’ve already written a piece about my excitement in the lead up to the Future Of Leadership series of conferences that I’m lucky enough to be speaking at over the next few weeks but I thought it would be interesting, to me at least, to roughly document my experience as I go along.
I think I want this to be a slight recap of my own performance but going forward, I want it to showcase the things that I learned from all of the other amazing speakers who I’m lucky enough to share a stage with.
Week one was at the Sydney Convention Centre which is an incredible venue to have a chance to speak at and to say I was nervous is both predictable and a slight understatement. I know the weight of these presentations and while that brings a certain level of anxiety, there’s also some excitement mixed in as it’s a brand new presentation that I am quite proud of.
I have some massive positives in the aftermath of speaking which included highly respectable feedback and a feeling of joy that I developed in retrospect that’s driven quite directly by the pride I had in completing this first presentation. It’s always nice to walk off stage and be surrounded with an overwhelmingly positive outlook and reception but there is definitely an amazing feeling that comes from someone you respect in the speaking space who is willing to provide some wisdom to your benefit. I’m always weary of who I take advice from because I do want to be myself on stage but there’s a large amount of credence that you must give to someone who’s stood in the same spot as you and can shed light on something that I must admit, I’m still very new to.
Not to say everything was perfect. These are the little things that people often don’t notice but drive me slightly mad. I forgot that the fonts I used in my powerpoint aren’t native to a lot of computers so when my slides displayed my intended ‘big statement’ fonts, it came out slightly narrow and italic which to me takes away from why I used the font in the first place. (shoutout, Integral CF)
And the ending… I was curious to see how this new ending to my presentation would play out and I made 2 mistakes, one far less forgivable than the other. The forgivable one was simply botching my final line “We’re not so different after all” but completely forgetting to say “after”. Maybe it was the adrenalin of being so close to the finish, maybe it was nothing, but for the crescendo of the presentation, it needed to be better. And the less forgivable one was something that completely slipped my mind.
I forgot to tell the audience to sit down… There’s a line towards the end where I ask everyone to stand up if they’ve experienced their own version of the shark attack and although I got an amazing response with the entire audience standing up, I ran towards the finish line and didn’t tell them to sit back down before my final few lines. This may seem like nothing to a regular audience member but there’s a misleading outcome there where some people could assume I was trying to manufacture a standing ovation.
Unforgivable, in my opinion and something that I’m pretty devastated about. There’s a chance that no-one saw it like that but regardless, I want to stand on stage and present with integrity and to me, that move lacked integrity.
Whilst overall I’m delighted with how the whole presentation went, I still feel like there’s room for improvement and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that there’s always something to work on or improve. And when you think you’ve improved all you can, other things will pop up that you must address. Perfection is a limitless pursuit in a lot of cases and although I’m not chasing perfection, I at least have another chance to improve again tomorrow in Brisbane.
That’s enough about me though. My thoughts are that these F.O.L Diaries will take a turn from today. Less on my actual presentation, more on the experience and other speakers that I want to share. Because it cannot be understated how much value there is in these conferences.
It is truly an amazing thing to be a part of something like this. I’m going to recommend that you look into attending one of the final events this year, if not to see me speak, it’s to learn from some very incredible minds that I’m very lucky to stand alongside.
Till next time.