Continuing to Expand Ourselves as Experts

 Even as a subject matter expert with over 2 decades of experience, after each keynote, workshop, and training I still take the mindset of eternal student. In order for me to continue to elevate myself as a speaker, I must always maintain a beginner's mind.

Last month I presented two workshops at the 21st Century Community Center's 21st Annual Summer Symposium. The first was about "How Listening Drives Our Behavior" and the second on "How Building Emotional Intelligence Can Help Mitigate Burnout in Educational Professionals"

The success and responses from the workshop were more than I could have asked for... 100% engagement, thoughtful comments and questions, post-workshop inquiries and discussion... and declarations of how they were going to use the tools I taught in their classrooms, community programs, and lives.

After the conference, I pulled aside a couple of my participants and asked what made the difference. What they shared left me with 3 valuable learnings to take away.

1. Less is more. While I always feel like I'm not quite giving enough, the feedback I received about my workshops reinforced that I gave just the right amount. Sometimes we want to leave all the knowledge on the floor but that can be overwhelming for some. The participants felt that I gave the perfect balance of knowledge, examples, tools, and discussion to help solidify the understanding of the principles I taught.

2. Being yourself is better than being what you think others want to see. In my early, less experienced years, I thought I had to be very "academic" with my speaking... And while I can be that way, it's not ME. I realize that I sometimes can underestimate the impact of my authenticity. I have learned that my personality is one of the things that keeps people engaged... I'm learning to lean more confidently into my authentic expressions.

3. Flexibility of behavior is a big strength in these settings. In my second workshop, I was leading the group through an exercise when I got a volunteer to come be a demo for the exercise. It was not in my original plan, but it also didn't adversely affect my timeline. This flexibility led to an elevation of the exercise the deepened the results for the entire room. While I don't make it a habit to go off script in this way often, I know the impact it can make when it's called for.

At the end of the day, it's important for me to learn as much from the stage as I teach. As I continue to reflect, I will look for ways to expand myself so I can continue to elevate the experiences I give my audiences. The best is yet to come.

What are ways that you are continuing to expand yourself?

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