by Caroline Leach | Apr 14, 2019 | Social Media
The TEDxYouth@PVPHS Program | March 22, 2019
Is giving a TEDx talk on your bucket list?
It’s definitely on mine. TEDx talks are independently organized under a free license from TED. This global speaking platform gets its name from a 1984 conference where technology, entertainment and design converged.
So many great TED talks have inspired me that I was eager to try to do the same. I spoke often in the corporate world and in the community, always enjoying the opportunity to impact people’s lives in a positive way.
But where to begin on a TEDx talk?
For me, it started with listening to TED talks during drive time. Then I read TED Talks: The Official Guide to Public Speaking by TED curator Chris Anderson. And I went to TEDWomen and got to see speakers up close.
As this blog took shape as an exploration of how people boost their careers through social media, I started sketching out ideas for a talk. Here’s what I learned on the journey.
Landing your talk. Convinced that my talk, Why Everyone Needs a Social Media Strategy for Their Career, would be of interest to just about anyone (oh, the folly of my thoughts), I applied to speak at a local event. I watched previous talks at the event and linked the “idea worth spreading” in my talk to the proposed theme.
But there was no response. Not even a rejection email. Just … nothing.
Of course, I finally realized, it’s like applying for a job. It rarely works to apply online. Your application just goes into a black hole from which it never emerges.
It also reminded me of one of my life mantras: don’t apply for stuff. Instead, let people find you. They tend to be more interested that way, and you don’t have to do as much convincing (aka, selling).
What happened next? An acquaintance was kind enough to introduce me to the curator of another event. We jumped on a call. It did not go well. I hadn’t prepared in the right way. My idea fell flat.
For a while I let this simmer on the back burner.
One day I checked Messenger. There was an intriguing message from Sara Robinson, someone I knew from our local community. Her daughter’s service learning leadership class in high school was putting on a second annual TEDxYouth event. They were looking for inspiring speakers. Sara said she thought of me.
Was I interested?
Um, YES!
The official term for what happened might be called “inbound marketing.” It’s all about sharing content in different ways. Ultimately, that content may interest people in coming to you. Blog posts, YouTube videos, articles, speeches and more would fall into this category.
In addition to this blog, I was the inspiration chair in a group called National Charity League. At the beginning of each monthly meeting, I gave a short inspirational talk. I wanted that role because it was a difficult time in my life, and I thought I could inspire myself by inspiring others.
Of my various community roles, this was an all-time favorite. And I never dreamed it would lead to the chance to give a TEDx talk. Which just goes to show you never know where actions you take today might lead in the future.
You don’t have to know how you’re going to make a dream come true at the outset. You just have to declare to yourself that you will do it. Somehow. The “how” will make itself clear as you begin to take steps toward your goal.
Creating your talk. TED talks are about ideas worth spreading. Each talk is about a single idea. You have 18 minutes or less to tell the story of that idea.
My original talk was about why you need a social media strategy for your career. The feedback I got was that it sounded like a sales pitch. While that was not my intent – what I wanted to do was equip people with the tools to do it themselves – it was helpful to know that’s how it came across to one curator.
When the TEDxYouth opportunity came up, it seemed like the ideal audience to pivot the focus. Teens use social media to stay in touch and share who they are. What they may not consider is that social media can be a powerful – and fun – way to learn throughout their lives.
That became my idea worth spreading: how social media can make you a #lifelonglearner. Access to anything you want to know is no further away than the social media apps on your phone. You can learn about any topic you choose, learn about the social media platforms themselves, and help others learn about you. A transcript of the talk is in a previous blog post.
Getting feedback on your talk. The iterative nature of the TEDx process is something that’s ideal for all speaking engagements. I did an initial read for the students on the TEDx committee almost two months before the event. We were packed into a small office adjacent to the main classroom, with the students sitting on the floor and me presenting from the notes on my iPad.
The next session was an evening presentation over dinner with all the speakers. There were six student speakers and two adults – me and a well-known English teacher and softball coach. We created small groups after the presentations to give each other feedback. I was impressed by the caliber of the speakers and how much heart and soul they were putting into their talks.
After that, we each came to class two more times to deliver our talks. With every visit we got additional ideas and suggestions. It was an incredibly thorough way to do it. We all improved our talks with continuous feedback and iteration of our talks.
And we all benefited from the great leadership of Heather Myrick. She initiated the school’s service learning leadership class that raises awareness, promotes compassion, and takes action in local and global communities. She had incredibly insightful feedback for each speaker, along with much encouragement.
Memorizing your talk. Memorizing a 1,700-word talk is no easy feat. It surely would have been faster in my college days, when I was used to cramming large amounts of material into my brain right before finals week. But with the passage of time and the sheer volume of information we encounter on a typical day that takes up precious brain space, memorization proved difficult.
I tried recording my talk as a video and listening to it before I fell asleep. Research says this is a good way to make information stick. The various sleep cycles are supposed to solidify the learning. I also tried listening to the recording during drive time.
But what ultimately worked for me was repetition, repetition and more repetition. I’d memorize one paragraph by repeating it aloud multiple times as I paced across my office. Once I had one paragraph down, I’d add the next one. Eventually I worked up to a page. Then two pages. And three pages. Ultimately I got to all four pages.
I must have repeated that talk 200 times, and I still didn’t feel like I fully had it. I felt like if I paused during the delivery, I’d forget where I was and be unable to remember the next line.
What was it that made it fairly simple to deliver the talk while I was driving in my car, while taking the stage introduced a whole new level of challenge?
The difference really was the thought of being judged. Yet I had to remind myself of what I often coached others on in the corporate world – people in the audience are rooting for you. They want you to succeed.
Talking yourself off the ledge. Procrastination is a problem for me. My tendencies toward perfection make me put off tasks and the emotional pain of not feeling like I’m measuring up to the standards I set for myself. Of course, this just compounds the problem, because then there isn’t enough time to create something as good as I would like.
When I finally deemed my talk almost good enough to share with my family members, the actual event wasn’t that far off. I felt like they were underwhelmed with my delivery, to say the least. To their credit, they had some great ideas and suggestions.
The problem for me was that it was difficult to memorize my talk in the first place. Now I was going to need to rewrite areas and re-memorize it. But then I remembered a great conversation between two TED speakers on a podcast called The Tim Ferriss Show.
In an episode on overcoming fear and embracing creativity, Susan Cain and Tim Ferriss talked about their experiences preparing for the TED stage. In each case, some late-breaking feedback caused them to make last-minute changes to their talks. The pressure was intense. Yet the end results made their talks all the better.
Having insight into others’ experiences helped me talk myself off the ledge, along with some much-needed encouragement from my husband, Kevin.
Enjoying the experience. The day of the event I must have run through the whole talk about 50 times. Or at least it felt that way. Yet when I would think though specific sections, my mind would often draw a blank. I started to freak out a bit, wondering if I’d be able to remember and deliver the whole talk.
I call these moments the speeding train syndrome. That’s when you’ve done a tremendous amount of preparation and the deadline is looming, but you never feel fully prepared. At that point, there isn’t that much more you can do, because the train will continue speeding along toward its destination.
This was when I decided I had to surrender to the timeline, do my best, and try to enjoy the experience. If not for me, then for the sake of the audience. As a TEDxYouth event, the size of the audience was limited. But I was thrilled that my husband, our two children, our daughter’s friend (both serendipitously home for spring break from college), and one of my friends were able to attend.
We were going to have some fun together. That’s what I told myself as I walked onto the stage and took my place in the middle of the TEDx red circular carpet. And I think we did! The parts where my family members had given feedback and suggestions were the moments that inspired some laughter from the audience.
Amplifying the experience. One moment I was waiting in the wings, ready to go onstage, with butterflies in my stomach. Then I stepped onto the stage, into the light. And I began.
Before I knew it, I was done. I remembered my talk as I’d practiced it time and time again.
What next? The first thing was to offer encouragement to the speakers in the green room who would follow me. It was a sight to see a group of people individually pacing the room, practicing their talks.
The next day I shared my talk transcript in a blog post. I wanted to reach a larger audience after the weeks, days and hours of effort in fine tuning it into an idea worth spreading.
And I wanted to share the experience with you, if this is a dream of yours too. If you have an idea worth sharing, there are TEDx events all over the world. I encourage you to seek one out and share your idea. The world needs you!
by Caroline Leach | Mar 23, 2019 | Learning, Social Media
Giving a TEDx talk has long been on my bucket list. This week, I’m over the moon that I got to give my talk. It was a riveting road, full of twists and turns as well as ups and downs.
The down part was two nights before my talk. I was practicing on my captive family members, not loving how it was coming together, and bargaining with myself about how to get out of doing it.
The up part was being on stage. I delivered the 1,767 words I wrote and painstakingly memorized, and I fully enjoyed the experience of sharing a message that’s near and dear to my heart.
In my next post, I’ll give some insight into the process of being part of a TEDx event. And I’ll thank many of the amazing people who helped make it happen: Sara Robinson, Abby Robinson, Heather Myrick, and my family and friends.
For now, here’s the transcript from my talk at TEDxYouth@PVPHS. With the theme of Impressions and Successions, the event was held at my alma mater, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School.
The school’s Service Learning Leadership class organized and hosted the second annual event. The class raises awareness, promotes compassion and takes action in local and global communities. My daughter loved it so much she took it for two years.
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Social Media Can Make You a #LifelongLearner | March 22, 2019
The last time I was on this stage, there was no Spotify, no Instagram, no Internet.
As a sophomore in high school, I was not an aspiring actor, but a school play needed French can-can dancers doing a kick line. My dance group, Choreo, was invited to join the cast.
At the time, I never dreamed I’d return to this stage, on a completely different mission. Instead, I was consumed by questions you may have about your own lives as teens.
Where will I go to college? Will I enjoy it? What kind of work will I do? How about a family? If the term “bucket list” existed then, I would have wondered about that, too.
Imagine being in high school before smartphones and social media existed. It’s impossible, right?
But because I didn’t grow up with social media, learning to use it was like getting through a locked door without a key.
My job in the corporate world was VP of communications. One of my projects was bringing a form of social media to the workplace. Everyone creates a profile, forms teams, and works together in a social space.
This was my first real introduction to social media. Sure, I joined Facebook … kicking and screaming because a “friend” made me do it.
But the new project scared me. People on the tech team were throwing around words like “hybrid cloud,” and “on prem.” I had no idea what they meant. And I was the project leader.
At the time, Mindy Kaling, the entertainer, was on the cover of Fast Company magazine.
I felt like it was silently mocking me for everything I was not. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wanted to crawl under my desk and hide until the project went away.
But that didn’t happen. As you do when there’s something you don’t want to work on, I had to kick my fear to the ground and move forward through that hybrid cloud.
Launch day was looming. One morning I woke up and decided to start a blog.
If I needed to teach others how to do it, including our CEO, it might be helpful if I knew how to do it for myself.
I wrote about what I knew, the workplace, in posts like “Writing Irresistible Emails,” and “Failure is the Secret to Success.”
And I loved it – conversing in comments and connecting people across time zones.
When I didn’t know how to do something – like hyperlinking to an article – I just asked my readers. And they responded.
By experimenting and being willing to make mistakes in a public way, I learned valuable new skills.
Later, I launched a blog outside the company, writing about how people build their careers by using social media to tell their stories.
In part, I was intrigued by colleagues I’d never met in real life, but I felt like I knew them and their work through our social interactions.
One of the them was Sandra, who worked in another state. During our project, she shared content, posted comments, and encouraged others to use the platform. Although we never met in person, I saw her leadership in social media.
A few months later, Sandra’s name came up in a talent review. This is where team leaders discuss everyone’s performance. It’s similar to a teacher giving a grade in school. When we talked about Sandra, I had good things to say about her, all because of her social presence.
A study by Dell and the Institute for the Future estimates that 85% of the jobs that today’s young people will do in 2030 … have not yet been invented.
If this is even partly correct, in just over a decade, many of today’s jobs will be replaced by new and different ones. That’s a lot of learning!
A favorite of mine, Thomas Friedman, says that today’s American dream is more of a journey than a fixed destination. He describes the feeling as walking UP a DOWN escalator.
The only way to master it is to become a lifelong learner.
How do you do this? I believe the answer lies with two questions.
Who has a smartphone in their pocket?
And who used it today on social media?
Think about the impressions you saw. What you shared. How it made you feel.
Social media gets a bad rap. It saps our attention. It makes us depressed. It polarizes our world. And don’t get me started on the YouTube comments section.
The Pew Research Center says that teens especially can feel overwhelmed by social media drama. You can feel pressured to post content that gets a lot of likes and comments.
I didn’t know I was supposed to delete Instagram posts that didn’t get 50 likes in the first hour, until my daughter told me. My early grams got about 4 likes. Good thing I didn’t know the rule.
But there’s an upside that doesn’t get this kind of attention.
Social media helps us learn. In new and different and fun ways.
Because learning isn’t over until you’re over. It’s forever a work in progress, no matter how many academic degrees you earn.
Access to anything you want to know is on the apps on your phone … for Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube. There’s also Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn … the network for professionals sometimes known as the spinach of social media. More on that in a minute.
By applying some strategy to the content you consume, you can get a degree in life – every day.
The impressions in social media – the stories, the tweets, the snaps – can be a powerful learning system. Social media can make you a lifelong learner in three different ways.
First, you can learn about any topic you choose.
Maybe you want to know more about technology. What’s the latest on artificial intelligence? Augmented reality? Robotics? How are they being applied to business or the arts or social good?
Maybe you want to learn about which media outlets you should trust to report the facts. Or about data science and how it helps companies decide what products to offer and which people to hire.
To start, you can find the leading experts through Twitter – or Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube. You can follow their feeds and view what they post.
You can connect with almost anyone on social media. Commenting on someone’s content or asking a question can often start a conversation. Sometimes I do this with authors and podcasters.
You could try this with your professors when you get to college. You could do this with leaders at a company where you work, especially if it’s hard to meet them in person.
You never know if they’ll reply. People who seem really accomplished are often accessible on social media.
Second, you can learn about the social media platforms themselves.
You can learn about the algorithms that determine who sees what posts. You can study the psychology of online behavior. You can get to know how advertising works and influences you.
You can then use this to your advantage. For example, as my son told me, to make an unwanted ad go away, say for lava lamps, just search on “I hate lava lamps” a few times. No more ads.
Why else is this important? Because social media is a topic you can perpetually study but never master. Two writers, Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick, say the term “social media guru” is an oxymoron, because nobody really knows how social media works.
“No matter how smart you are,” they say, “best practices always change, because the platforms change how their sites work. Everyone needs to keep experimenting.”
I took that advice to heart. In one of my experiments, I posted to LinkedIn every weekday for a month to see what would happen. I was curious to test the data point that it takes 20 LinkedIn posts to reach 60 percent of your audience.
I put my data into a spreadsheet to analyze patterns. I wrote about it, and people wanted to know more. They started asking questions and inviting me to speak.
Third, you can help others learn about you.
A top skill of the future is making yourself known. It’s communicating who you are and what you do in a world where you’re often changing jobs.
In every impression you post in social media, you’re telling your story – like Peninsula High School Service Learning Leadership does here. You’re building your reputation, also known as your personal brand. You’re sharing what you’re doing to make the world a better place.
What’s not recommended is the humblebrag – a boast wrapped in fake humility that makes people want to facepalm when they see it. No one wants to hear just how hard it is to choose among multiple Ivy League acceptances.
What is required is getting on LinkedIn, the network for professionals. This is where you share what you do and what you want to do in the work world. It’s your always-on, 24/7 resume. It’s the way you tell your professional story.
A college admissions officer might look at your profile – especially if you put a link in your application. It’s also a way for people to find you. A job recruiter might contact you, possibly because your dream job wants to slide into your DMs.
People will come to know and trust you. Posting positive impressions lets you manage transitions and successions in life more easily. If social media had existed throughout my own life, my transitions would have been easier. I could have learned faster and shared more about me.
When I got to college, I quickly realized I was in the wrong place. So I transferred to a new school. I got a degree in economics because it seemed practical. I worked in early jobs I didn’t like very much.
Then I got a master’s in communications and found work I loved. I married a great guy and started a family. I worked at a dozen different jobs so far, from a fast-food cashier to a corporate vice president to a business owner today.
Were there ups and downs? Yes. Doubts if it would all happen? Absolutely.
But remember that scary social media project? It turned out to be one of the foundations of my business.
What made this happen? Learning. Growing. Experimenting. Every day.
This is why we all need to be social seekers – of new knowledge, perspectives and experiences.
Social media is the key that opens the door.
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