I have invested countless hours becoming an expert in my field. This is essential because nearly all public speaking gigs include time for questions. Many speakers aren’t prepared for the random, wide-ranging questions they get and so Q&A can be awkward. I make sure that I know my subject so well I can answer almost every question. If I don’t know the answer, I say, “I don’t know” instead of guessing or estimating.

Become an expert.

My logistical skills are lacking, so two brilliant women cross every T and dot every I for me, and I’m atrocious at salary negotiation, so I have a savvy manager who handles that part with grace and professionalism. Don’t assume that you can do an hour of reading on the internet and suddenly become as good at social media as someone with years of experience. Find an expert and treat them well. Also, once you hire an expert, let them do their job. If you hire a PR professional and you get an email asking you to do a podcast interview, forward it to your PR rep. Don’t interfere with their work.

Hire experts. 

Your slide presentation should be mostly pictures, no complicated graphs or charts, and easily read from the back of a ballroom.

Keep it simple.

Talk about the mistakes that have led you to insight. Otherwise, your talk can come across as 45 minutes of unsolicited advice and, take it from a conversational expert, no one likes unsolicited advice.

Be humble.

Be on time or early, deliver what you promised, and ask lots of questions to make sure you understand what’s needed. Dress professionally and be kind to everyone you meet. That’s good advice for life, I think, but especially for situations in which you might be at a conference in Tampa and not realize that the person in flip flops getting lemonade is actually the president of the company.

Be reliable.  

No matter what your subject matter, your talk should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Human beings learn best through stories and most of our history was passed on verbally. Reading is a recent innovation. So, write a script that is meant to be heard and not read. No long sentences with subordinate clauses; no excessive adjectives and technical terms. That’s not how people talk and it shouldn’t be how you speak.

Tell a story.

Fly in the night before. I used to try to arrive in the morning if I had an evening engagement, so that I could keep the trip as short as possible. That strategy quickly becomes disastrous though, because of bad weather, late planes, and missed connections. Just fly in the night before and get a full night’s sleep. You want to be rested and relaxed when you’re speaking to large groups of people. On the same note, don’t check bags. No need to take unnecessary chances like that.

Get there early.

If you are being hired as an expert, you’re expected to stay current on the newest research on your subject, as well as cultural trends. Keep notebooks (digital or otherwise) where you collect notes from articles, books, and studies. Update your content constantly. You may give a great speech to an organization, but if you don’t write new material, you can only work for them once.

Keep reading.

There's no simple formula for becoming a paid, successful public speaker. My road involves radio hosting, a TEDx talk & book writing. My other tips inside.

Published Ideas

Becoming A Public Speaker Is Your Journey To Make - Celeste Headlee

There are both practical and psychological reasons why a colleague might try to go above you, says Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School and coauthor of "Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both". Practically speaking, they may want a different answer or outcome than you’ve given. Psychologically, it’s possible that they’re keen to show they have more clout or authority than you do. It could also be that they’re conflict averse and afraid to address the issue with you directly.

What The Experts Say

Webb suggests you start by considering what you actually know. You may think your coworker went over your head to spite you, but perhaps you’re misreading the situation. Look at only the facts and avoid snap judgments. For example, rather than thinking, “He completely disregarded my authority,” tell yourself, “He had a conversation with my boss about the initiative he’s working on.”

Question Your Assumption

If you don’t know all the facts of the situation – perhaps you just heard about the conversation through the office rumor mill – try to find out what really happened, says Webb. You might go to your boss and ask in a neutral way about what transpired: “Hey, I heard you and Carlos were talking about his new idea.” Take care to maintain a casual, non-accusatory tone so that your boss doesn’t think you’re trying to start a feud.

Find Out More

Ask your coworker if the two of you can talk — preferably in a private room. Keep an open mind as you enter the conversation, says Webb. “Don’t go into the conversation with the intention of sticking it to your coworker. Instead think about the importance of your working relationship.” Focus on your ultimate goal, whether it’s to restore trust or to protect your authority. And be ready to hear what he has to say about the situation and why he did what he did.

Approach Your Colleague

Begin by saying what you know in a “straightforward” way, says Galinsky. Explain why you’re disappointed, but stay away from words like “angry” or “betrayed,” Webb adds. That may be how you feel, but it’s going to put your coworker on the defensive. You might say something like: “I heard you talked to Roger about your initiative after we discussed it and that made me feel a bit concerned that we’re not communicating well.” Then ask for — and listen to — his perspective.

State Your Position 

Once you’ve shared your views with one another, decide together how to remedy the situation. “Try asking them for their thoughts first, then build on their suggestions. Research shows that people feel far more attachment to any idea that they’ve had a hand in shaping,” explains Webb.

Problem-Solve Together 

You should also discuss how you’ll handle similar situations in the future. Ideally, you and your colleague will agree that she should come directly to you next time. But if she’s not immediately on board with that plan, try to show her that going over your head is not only hurtful; it’s also ineffective, says Galinsky. Explain that you and your boss are in regular contact, so you’re going to find out if someone goes over your head. You might say, “I meet with Roger regularly to discuss our group’s priorities and he usually lets me know if he gets requests from other teams.”

Clarify The Lines Of Communication 

This breach in the chain of command may have annoyed your boss or caused her to question your ability to do your job. And, if she failed to redirect the colleague to you, you might be ticked off at her. So, once you’ve settled things with your colleague, make sure to also sit down with your manager to talk about what happened, why it happened, and how to avoid similar situations in the future. Again, lay out what you know and how it made you feel, then listen to her perspective: “I heard that Carlos talked to you about his initiative and that made me concerned that I might be out of the loop.

Repair Your Relationship With Your Boss

<ul><li>Keep an open mind and be willing to hear your coworker’s side of the story.</li><li>Avoid words like “angry” or “betrayed.” Even if authentic, they will put your coworker on the defensive.</li><li>Talk to your boss to be sure your reputation isn’t damaged.</li></ul>

Principles To Remember Do's 

<ul><li>Make assumptions about why your colleague went over your head.</li><li>Rely on rumors and hearsay. Instead, find out the true facts of the situation.</li><li>Leave next time up to chance — ask your boss to redirect your coworker to you.</li></ul>

Principles To Remember Don'ts 

What can you say and do when someone tries to sidestep you?

What to Do When a Coworker Goes Over Your Head

The ability to generate new combinations hinges upon your ability to see the <a href="https://jamesclear.com/feynman-mental-models">relationships between concepts</a>. If you can form a new link between two old ideas, you have done something creative.

The 5 Stages of the Creative Process

At first, you learn. During this stage, you focus on 1) Learning specific material directly related to your task and 2) Learning available material by becoming fascinated with a wide range of concepts.

1. Gather New Material

During this stage, you examine what you have learned by looking at the facts from different angles and experimenting with fitting various ideas together.

2. Thoroughly Work Over The Materials In Your Mind

Next, you put the problem completely out of your mind and go do something else that excites you and energizes you.

3. Step Away From The Problem

At some point, but only after you have stopped thinking about it, your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight and renewed energy.

4. Let Your Idea Return To You

For any idea to succeed, you must release it out into the world, submit it to criticism, and adapt it as needed.

5. Shape And Develop Your Idea Based On Feedback

Being creative isn't about being the first (or only) person to think of an idea. More often, creativity is about connecting ideas.

The Creative Process in Short

Nearly all great ideas follow a similar creative process and this article explains how this process works.

This article explains the creative process all brilliant ideas have in common. Anyone can learn to be creative by using these five steps.

For a More Creative Brain, Follow These 5 Steps

You get good at things by doing them. Yet within this simple observation is a maze of complexity. How should you practice to get the most improvement with the least time and effort?Good practice has three components:<ol><li>See . Look for an example of how to solve a problem.</li><li>Do . Solve the problem yourself.</li><li>Feedback . Check whether you got the right answer.</li></ol>

The Foundation For Effective Learning Is Practice 

People don’t solve problems by building general-purpose problem-solving skills. Instead, decades of research shows that experts in domains as diverse as chess, programming, and medical reasoning get good by acquiring tons of specific patterns of knowledge.

1. See: The Power Of Examples

Of course, if watching alone led to skill, we wouldn’t need to practice at all. We could watch cooking shows and instantly become chefs or see a football (soccer) match and pick up dribbling skills. Acquiring patterns isn’t enough—the knowledge needs to become an automatic skill in order to be useful.Therefore, the best approach to learning is to see a few examples of the pattern to be learned. If the pattern is complicated and you can’t remember it all at once, doing it once or twice with examples on hand is helpful.

2. Do: The Need For Retrieval

Finally, you need to get feedback on your practice. If the problem is something with a straightforward, unique answer, seeing the correct solution is enough. For skills with gradations of performance or more subjective measures of success, a teacher, tutor or coach can give you the feedback you need.Feedback is vital for a few reasons. First, it can correct for errors. Making mistakes when learning can actually be beneficial—if there is quick feedback. Second, feedback can train your unconscious learning system. The procedural learning system of the brain operates through rewards.

3. Feedback: Check Your Work

A loop like this can be applied to many different skills and subjects: <ul><li>Programming : See a particular command, data structure or design pattern; implement it yourself; then check to see that it works properly. </li><li>Languages : See vocabulary, phrases and grammar; test it out in a conversation, and check whether you are properly understood. </li><li>History : Read a book, write a passage explaining the main points, and check back to see what you’ve missed. </li><li>Business : Learn a new management technique, implement it within your company, and see how it performs. </li> </ul>

Implementing The Loop

How should you practice to get the most improvement with the least time and effort?

Practice makes perfect. But what's the best way to train? I review research showing the three ingredients to do it right.

See-Do-Feedback: The Right Way To Practice - Scott H Young

Any time you fail at something, whether it’s a long-term goal or a small project, the first thing you should do is take a step back and detach from the situation. Work backward by tracing the thinking and beliefs you had at the time the mistake was made, and look to see where you made a misstep. Ask why you made the decisions you did and what you can do differently next time.Once you have worked out the reasons behind a failure, you can put together a plan of action to move forward positively and get the results you want while avoiding making the same mistakes again

Why can failing be a good thing?

1. Be transparent about your own mistakes.2. Remember that change won’t happen overnight.3. Consider corporate training and learning opportunities.4. Encourage creativity, and support your employees when things go wrong.

There are several ways to do this.

Failure is a part of life, regardless of who you are. In the workplace and in our personal lives, we all suffer momentary setbacks and defeats.

As a leader, it’s up to you to create a culture that accepts failure and encourages employees to embrace and learn from it.

Why Everyone Must Learn To Deal With Failure In The Workplace

It is imperative to narrow the focus to the few most important priorities that will make the biggest difference. Everyone in the organization must understand these priorities and how their daily work connects. With clear goals, strong alignment, and a system for daily focus and accountability, the best organizations make rapid progress even in very uncertain times. Is everyone in your organization clear on the most important priorities? Do you know if their daily actions align with those priorities?

Execute Your Most Important Priorities With Excellence

In low-trust environments, friction grows, the speed slows, and cost increases significantly. The combination of slow speed and high costs is a killer and will greatly diminish the ability of your teams to come up with new innovative ways to work, serve customers, and come together to navigate internal and external uncertainty. Do you have pockets of low trust in your organization that may slow you down when you can least afford it?

Increase Trust to Increase Speed

More than ever, you need your people to be both effective and efficient. There is no time for wasted energy or for people to invest resources in the things that will not have the biggest impact. As most of your people have gone home to work, are you confident they have the tools necessary to focus their time and energy on the tasks and projects that will have the biggest impact?

Achieve More With Less

The combination of fear, anxiety and uncertainty come together to stifle productivity, innovation, and engagement. The best leaders help their people move quickly through the change cycle. As a result, they achieve greater levels of engagement in times of uncertainty. Have you appropriately equipped your leaders and your people to thrive?

Transform Fear Into Engagement

Sales leaders have faced disruptions in the past, but this one is different. While all organizations are facing unique circumstances during this pandemic, one thing is true for every leader: How you fare during this crisis will come down to how well you execute your plan. Great execution isn’t just about knowing what to do, but doing what you know. Your team needs your leadership. Are you ready?

Leading Your Sales Team During Uncertainty 

In times of great uncertainty, leaders are faced with one of two choices. Freeze to the point of inaction, allowing uncertainty to damage culture, performance, results, and significantly slow a return to greatness. Or, transform fear into engagement, execute with excellence, use the uncertainty as a time to actually increase trust, and help everyone in the organization prepare to do more with less. 

In times of great uncertainty, leaders can freeze to the point of inaction or choose to execute with excellence, increase trust, achieve more, and transform fear into engagement.

Achieving Results in Unpredictable Times

There has been a change from traditional TV settings to utilising phones for fun as the western culture transformation takes hold and consumers begin to live in nuclear family settings. At the family unit level, consumers’ entertainment needs are becoming more complex; they are becoming more personal and preferential in character, with a constant need for new and high-quality content.

The Requirement For New Content 

Viewership is transitioning from traditional television to over-the-top (OTT), and as a result, OTT is becoming a valuable asset for all advertisers. OTT allows for dynamic advertising, which implies that different audiences can receive different personalised versions of an ad. In OTT advertising, there is also a data-driven strategy; the right message is given to the right consumer at the right time.

A Data-driven Approach To Dynamic Advertising

OTT advertising has a far greater viewer rate than traditional TV advertising, and it requires more exposure to build brand lift and accomplish desired objectives.Programmatic OTT plays pre-rolls and mid-rolls, whilst TV programming is replayed on a DVR with the skip feature turned on.

Increased Viewership And Precision In Targeted Demographics

OTT has been experimenting with a variety of advertising forms, including content integration with the story. With the web series Kota Factory, Unacademy did a fantastic job. Another way to run advertising is during content streaming (both live and archived material) and advertiser-funded programmes, as well as other brand solutions.

Advertising In A Variety Of Formats With Focus On Interactivity

The pandemic had a significant role in the rise in OTT popularity, and businesses and brands are taking notice. With OTT advertising gaining traction in India, marketing budgets have shifted.

The pandemic had a significant role in the rise in OTT popularity, and businesses and brands are taking notice. With OTT advertising gaining traction in India, marketing budgets have shifted. Since we were hit by COVID-19, every part of our lives has changed and therefore brands have been realigning their operations and strategy, resulting in…

Why are corporations abandoning television and outdoor advertising in favour of OTT platforms?

Casual observation tells us that most people don’t use math beyond simple arithmetic in everyday life. Few people make use of fractions, trigonometry, or multi-digit division algorithms they use in school. More advanced tools like algebra or calculus are even less likely to be brought out to solve everyday problems.

Evidence for the Failure to Use Math

I see three explanations for the failure to use math in everyday life:1. Most people don’t learn math well enough to use it effortlessly.2. We learn school math but fail to translate real problems into a format where we can apply our math knowledge.3. Most higher math isn’t useful for everyday problems.

Why Do People Fail to Use Math

There seem to be a few options:1. More drill and practice with math. More time spent drilling and practicing math makes it more available for effortless calculations.2. More practice with interpreting problem situations. We need to give students more training in noticing and converting everyday situations into the math problems they know how to solve.3. Give real-life challenges that require math. Ultimately, skills and knowledge are sustained by usage. If you don’t have any genuine problems that require a skill, you begin to forget it.

How Can We Make Math More Useful?

How much of the math you’ve learned in school do you use in everyday life?

Why do we fail to use so many of the subjects we learn in school? Are they useless, or do we simply fail to learn them well enough?

Why Don't We Use the Math We Learn in School? - Scott H Young

Obviously, excessive regret is a bad thing. Ruminating over mistakes leads to depression and anxiety. It’s like banging your head against a wall but with absolutely none of the benefits.That said, the attitude of “no regrets” is dumb and wrong. This emotion is useful and necessary. Regret can be a stroke of genius. (Though, admittedly, at first it just feels like a stroke.)

Regret Redeemed

Regrets that result from a failure to act responsibly. When we weren’t conscientious, prudent, or disciplined enough. We shirk in school, eschew exercise, or don’t work hard enough on the job. We opt for short-term pleasure instead of long-term gain. We all want dessert first.When you hear yourself saying the words “too much” followed by “too little”, you’re probably dealing with a foundation regret. “I did too much spending and not enough saving.”

Foundation Regrets  

Boldness regrets sound like this: “If only I’d taken that risk…”Inaction. Foregone opportunities. The chance we did not take. They are also common when it came to career. We play it safe. We didn’t jump on that new job opportunity or start our own business.The old saying is accurate, “We regret most the things we did not do.”

Boldness Regrets

You know the ones. You behave poorly, break the rules, lie, or betray. Moral regrets sound like: “If I’d only done the right thing…”The lesson here? Do the right thing. Make the decision you will be proud of in the future, no matter how tempting the immediate alternative.

Moral Regrets

We let friendships die – or never give them the chance to bloom. This was the most common of the big four regrets. Connection regrets sound like this: “If only I’d reached out…”It’s not hard to rekindle relationships at first. But often we wait too long. Feelings fade. People move on. And, eventually, people die. (Researchers have found this dramatically reduces how often they reply to your text messages.) If you do not reach out, there may never be another chance. The opportunity is lost forever. This is tragic. Terrifying.

Connection Regrets

First, can you undo what caused the regret? Can you reach out, make it right or apologize? If so, stop doom-scrolling through your mental regret list and take action. There’s often a way to press Control+Z on your existential keyboard.But sometimes there isn’t a way to fix the past. (Regret or no regret, I am not retaking the SAT’s.) In that case, there are three steps for coping: disclose, reframe, and extract a lesson.

Whaddya Gonna Do About It?

Here’s how to deal with regret:Regret can be a good thing: A regret is a lesson you need to put into action to make yourself better. Your work is not yet finished, Daredevil.Foundation regrets: Avoid them by doing the work.Boldness regrets: Dodge them by taking that risk.Moral regrets: Do the right thing, Spike Lee.Connection regrets: Text them. Now.How to cope: Can you undo it? If not: disclose, reframe, and extract a lesson.

Sum Up

Don’t see regret as an ever-present threat. See it as a helpful reminder. An opportunity to improve your life. The pandemic has created regrets in all of us. Lost time, lost opportunities, lost connections. Now’s the time to fix them.

"No regrets" is silly. The latest research is showing regret can be a very positive thing that improves our lives. Here's how...

This Is How To Overcome Regret: 5 Secrets From Research - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

The older I get, the easier it is to close my eyes to poverty, pain, injustice, and evil. I can order my life, so that I am never put in a position of seeing anything unpleasant. I can look without seeing. I’m continue to pray daily that “God gives me eyes to see and ears to hear.” You can’t be a change agent if you don’t perceive the needs around you.

Stop ignoring the evil you encounter

Every time I used to encounter a homeless person, I would go through all kinds of mental gyrations. If I give money to this person, will they just use it to buy alcohol or drugs? Why don’t they just get a job? Maybe it would be better if I offered them some work rather than just give them money? Then I read the words of Matthew 5:42, “Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.” I then decided to make a deal with God. Now, whenever I encounter a homeless person or a beggar, I give them all the cash in my pocket. The money I give is my gift to God.

Stop over-thinking your response to it.

Erin couldn’t get the school to give books to her students. So, she got a second job and bought the books herself. The students wanted to bring Miep Gies, the Dutch woman whose family hid Anne Frank and her family, to the school to lecture. The school didn’t have the budget, so the students held a series of fund-raisers to come up with the money.What’s my excuse? No matter what my station in life is, it’s easy to think I don’t have enough resources. Resources are never the problem. The biggest challenge is simply my will to act.

Stop complaining about your lack of resources.

Let’s face it. The world needs heroes. It needs people who will be courageous and act on principle. But where can we find such people? Maybe the answer is closer than we think. The truth is it can start—and must start—with us.God has providentially put each of us exactly where we are. We need to ask, “Why am I here?” “What does God want me to do in this situation?” “What is the right thing to do?”

Start asking, “What is the right thing to do?”

I can’t afford to wait for my circumstances to be perfect. I will never have enough experience. I will never have the resources I need. I need to stop whining and just do it! Someone else is waiting for a hero. I may be the best opportunity they have. I may be their answer to prayer.

Be in the moment and act.

You have more power than you can imagine.

You have have more power than you sometimes give yourself credit for. Here are five ways to express it and become an everyday hero.

Becoming A Public Speaker Is Your Journey To Make - Celeste Headlee

What to Do When a Coworker Goes Over Your Head

For a More Creative Brain, Follow These 5 Steps

See-Do-Feedback: The Right Way To Practice - Scott H Young

Why Everyone Must Learn To Deal With Failure In The Workplace

Hatim Bootwala