Episode 12

Road Trip! Where is Kirsten Speaking in October?

In this week's episode of Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking, Kirsten and Kellie preview Kirsten's upcoming speaking gigs, talk about the value of adapting in the moment, and share mistakes they both made early in their careers.

Key take-aways:

  • When your work is doing the thing you love to do, it’s really fun
  • Adapting in the moment means your content flexes with every audience
  • Both Kirsten and Kellie tried to control presentations too rightly early in their careers

Join our Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking Skills group on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14104216/


Rourke Training’s webpage: https://www.rourketraining.com/

Ongoing Masgtery: Presenting & Speaking page: https://ongoing-mastery.captivate.fm/


RSS feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/ongoing-mastery/

Read a transcript of this episode: https://share.descript.com/view/6kVK91AZRV6

For the video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/A0g35W9JmVk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstenrourke/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kirstenmalenarourke

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kirstenrourke?lang=en

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rourketraining/

Looking for a kick-ass speaking group? Use our affiliate link to join Innovation Women: https://bit.ly/innovationwomen


Need a speaking coach or looking for speaking courses? Here's our affiliate link for Kirsten's speaking coach, Tim David: https://bit.ly/3eCUFPy


Transcript
Kirsten:

Hello, everyone.

Kirsten:

Welcome to Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking, the podcast,

Kirsten:

the community, the way of life.

Kirsten:

I'm Kirsten Rourke.

Kellie:

I'm Kellie Donovan-Condron.

Kirsten:

And we are your shepherds today on the journey of the

Kirsten:

life on the road for a speaker.

Kellie:

Road trip!

Kirsten:

Which is where, yeah, "Where in the world is Kirsten Rourke?"

Kirsten:

is pretty much what today's episode is.

Kirsten:

So, you get rid of me for like five weeks, almost.

Kellie:

No, no, no, no, no.

Kellie:

I get to live vicariously through your fabulous adventures.

Kirsten:

I like that much better.

Kirsten:

So, yes, I will be, starting in a week and a half, hitting the road, and popping

Kirsten:

on the road and then back, and on the road and then back, for five weeks.

Kirsten:

And I'm starting beginning of October, going to the Adobe Learning

Kirsten:

Summit 2020 and talking about converting storyboards into eLearning

Kirsten:

content with Adobe Captivate.

Kirsten:

So it'll be how you can make eLearning projects and it's a really fun hour and

Kirsten:

a half where we're going to take some content and be able to just quickly go,

Kirsten:

make a project and let's see all the bells and whistles we can put in, and have

Kirsten:

fun, and then ask questions around it.

Kirsten:

So it's going to be an adventure.

Kirsten:

It's always, the eLearning summit is all things eLearning and Adobe.

Kirsten:

There'll be demos.

Kirsten:

There'll be parties, we're going to hit a concert.

Kirsten:

It'sgoing to be a lot of fun.

Kellie:

That sounds great.

Kirsten:

So there's that, and then I will get on the road and fly from Vegas.

Kirsten:

Oh, and it is in Vegas, at the Mirage.

Kirsten:

Thank you, Adobe.

Kirsten:

And I, I love this because I will get to do my cheesy thing, which is

Kirsten:

going to the roulette table and having a drink and taking my $50 bucks and

Kirsten:

seeing how long I can make that $50 bucks last at the roulette table.

Kellie:

Nice.

Kirsten:

That's pretty much my job is just to sit there with a drink

Kirsten:

and pretend that I'm in a Bond film.

Kirsten:

It'll be, it'll be a hell of a lot of fun.

Kellie:

Kirsten:

Then I'm going fly to Houston for the thing that I'm doing in Houston.

Kirsten:

I got my first TEDx!

Kirsten:

Huzzah!

Kellie:

Yay!

Kirsten:

It's so funny.

Kirsten:

I've been a speaker for a really long time, but I never really, I didn't try

Kirsten:

the journey of going out to the larger speaker community outside of my L&D

Kirsten:

bubble, so learning and development for those of you who are not in the

Kirsten:

know, so that's what that means.

Kirsten:

So larger speaker community, and then was like, "Oh, well, if I can get a

Kirsten:

TEDx," and I know people, who've got their second, third, fourth, fifth,

Kirsten:

and they're like, "Oh yes, TEDx.

Kirsten:

I remember my first," and I hope to get that way someday.

Kirsten:

And then Kellie can bring me down to Earth.

Kellie:

Yes

Kirsten:

But I'm now in the "Yay!

Kirsten:

I got one!"

Kirsten:

And I'm going to record a TEDx Studio for TEDxAlief and the theme is Open Canvas.

Kirsten:

So that'll be

Kellie:

Nice, I like that.

Kirsten:

Hell of a lot of fun.

Kirsten:

I am enjoying the idea for multiple reasons.

Kirsten:

One, hell, it's going to be fun.

Kirsten:

Two, I want to stop dreaming this speech.

Kellie:

Kirsten:

I've been thinking about this speech, I've been performing it, in bed.

Kirsten:

I've been doing it in the shower.

Kirsten:

I, I think it's been what, two solid months of me covering

Kirsten:

this material over and over

Kellie:

at least

Kirsten:

and over.

Kirsten:

And it's only 10 minutes long, but oh my, I've just, I've

Kirsten:

gone completely to town on it.

Kirsten:

So part of me is just grateful that I'm going to be going and making some changes

Kirsten:

that I can obsess about something else.

Kirsten:

So then

Kellie:

Kirsten:

come back, have some time where Kellie and I will be

Kirsten:

recording some podcasts, doing some interviews, having some fun.

Kellie:

Wooo!

Kirsten:

I get to be an attendee at a conference that's

Kirsten:

all virtual for a week and

Kellie:

Nice

Kirsten:

it will be engaging online presentations.

Kirsten:

That is driven by John Chen, and John is an awesome guy.

Kirsten:

He's a drink from the fire hose personality.

Kirsten:

When you're talking with John, you are fully present with John

Kirsten:

because there's no other option.

Kirsten:

He's a lot of fun and I get to be an attendee instead of speaking.

Kirsten:

So I get to do the, it's like going to see a masterclass of chefs and going, "Hmm.

Kirsten:

What spice are you using?

Kirsten:

How are you cooking that?

Kirsten:

Oh, I wanna take notes," and I'm gonna just eat it all up.

Kirsten:

It's going to be wonderful.

Kirsten:

Then off to Vegas again, DevLearn.

Kirsten:

DevLearn is Disneyland for eLearning geeks.

Kirsten:

It just is.

Kirsten:

It is the big event of the season.

Kirsten:

And we are all wearing our best outfits and we are ready to dance

Kirsten:

and I'll be having a hell of a lot of fun there seeing all my speaker

Kirsten:

friends, yay, speaker friends.

And couple of things:

I will be doing a Morning Buzz.

And couple of things:

What a Morning Buzz is, is facilitating a discussion at 7:30 in the morning.

And couple of things:

I will be doing a Morning Buzz.

And couple of things:

Yes, yes, hold up that cup of coffee, mm-hmm, except in your case, it's

And couple of things:

tea, but still caffeinated beverage, on supporting hybrid and remote workers.

And couple of things:

So I'll be,

Kellie:

Nice

Kirsten:

You know, facilitating that discussion and seeing if we

Kirsten:

can make some cross connections and have some fun with it.

Kirsten:

And then my session will be on managing for adaptability.

Kirsten:

So managing

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

Either sales or training or presenting teams on how you adjust

Kirsten:

in the moment, and what the things you need to do, how you prepare to

Kirsten:

be able to adjust in the moment.

Kellie:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

Which is going to be fun.

Kirsten:

And then come back, unpack, take a shower, have a week.

Kirsten:

Get on the road, go to Orlando and I'm

Kellie:

Florida

Kirsten:

doing improving your training team's adaptability, so this is a

focus very much on, all right:

How can your training team structure things?

focus very much on, all right:

How can they work?

focus very much on, all right:

What are great ways to bring in new trainers and upskill, being able

focus very much on, all right:

to boot camp people so that they're ready, but still have that mentoring

focus very much on, all right:

piece in there, all of that component.

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

And that's

Kellie:

going

Kirsten:

to be a heck of a lot of fun.

Kirsten:

And I get a panel and I'm really looking forward to this one because Mark Britz

Kirsten:

is Director of Programming for the e-Learning Guild and he's, he's a doll.

Kirsten:

He's super smart.

Kirsten:

He's written books.

Kirsten:

He's done speeches.

Kirsten:

He's, he's, he's the man and he's going to be on it.

Kirsten:

Tony Bowie and Sonya Overstreet and we are all going to be talking

Kirsten:

about advancing learning leadership career tips and best practices.

Kirsten:

So we're going to be just giving our thoughts on "As a learning

Kirsten:

person, as a learning leader, how are you going to be moving forward?

Kirsten:

What can you do to grow?"

Kirsten:

And that kind of ties in with what we're doing here.

Kellie:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

Ongoing mastery, it's all about

Kellie:

Definitely

Kirsten:

your growth.

Kirsten:

So in our case, it's very much presenting and speaking focused, but

Kirsten:

there it's learning leadership focus, so very much learning and development.

Kirsten:

So it's going to be,

Kellie:

I love that there's a whole panel on that.

Kirsten:

Yeah, it's great.

Kirsten:

Well, Mark is, Mark does great panels.

Kirsten:

I'm really, really thrilled to be on a panel with him, because it's a lot of fun.

Kirsten:

He's a sharp cookie.

Kirsten:

And it's always nice because the last panel I did with him, the

Kirsten:

other people that were on it I'm now connected with through LinkedIn.

Kirsten:

And again,

Kellie:

Awesome

Kirsten:

And you know, when there's the people who are just,

Kirsten:

they're so sharp, so on their game.

Kirsten:

They have a depth of knowledge that you're looking at and going,

Kirsten:

"Oh, Ooh, that's really cool.

Kirsten:

Let me go dive in there."

Kirsten:

So it's great because you get to meet new cool people and and talk about

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

fun things.

Kirsten:

So life on the road, that is

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

what's going on.

Kellie:

I appreciate that you're going to be talking about kind of

Kellie:

the same throughline, but just still different aspects for different

Kellie:

audiences of the work that we're doing.

Kellie:

And it's not, it's not the same thing, right?

Kellie:

As you come to each

Kirsten:

Yep

Kellie:

of the audiences, you'll adjust in the moment a little bit.

Kellie:

I kind of want to hear how two separate Vegas trips go so close together

Kirsten:

Kellie:

yet for different groups.

Kellie:

I think that would be an interesting compare and contrast exercise.

Kirsten:

Well, the first one, thank you, Adobe, I will be at the Mirage, yay.

Kirsten:

The second one, I will be working at the Mirage, but I will be staying off,

Kirsten:

off the strip in what I can afford down the street at a very nice little place

Kirsten:

that my husband's hotel points cover.

Kirsten:

It'll be a very different experience, but the audiences, yeah, it's, what I

Kirsten:

love about the work that we do is, when we're working with coaching clients for

Kirsten:

the first time, often it's a surprise to people that our belief is that every

Kirsten:

time you present or speak or train, every one of those is a unique event because

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

the people that are there determine how it goes.

Kirsten:

So even if you have set content, that flow and the flex and how you phrase things and

Kirsten:

where you put the emphasis and all of that is going to be different because you have

Kirsten:

different people that you're working with.

Kellie:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

And you're getting responses back from them.

Kirsten:

So, it it's a dance and you're dancing with different partners each time.

Kirsten:

So,

Kellie:

And the connections from the other content of the conference

Kellie:

you're at right now is going to be different, so people are

Kirsten:

Yup

Kellie:

Going to pick up on different threads of what it is you are delivering.

Kirsten:

Yeah, I will be taking notes during the keynote sessions

Kirsten:

and seeing if I can incorporate them into the throughline, always asking

Kirsten:

people kind of what they're getting from the material, what they're

Kirsten:

getting from the conference, kind of

Kellie:

yeah.

Kirsten:

What their needs are and really flexing.

Kirsten:

Again, everything is about, you have your core material, you prep it cold,

Kirsten:

you prep it till you know it in your sleep, but then you have it in pieces

Kirsten:

so that it can adapt and you can take a piece out or you can flex it, or you can

Kirsten:

go ahead and do this one first and you can compress or expand as you need to.

Kirsten:

So once you've got that, then it's really the performance in the moment.

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

And that's the way I like to work, and that's the way I love to help

Kirsten:

other people work, is it makes it a lot more fun than what used to happen.

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

When I was a younger trainer, I would teach, I remember seeing Outlook

Kirsten:

show up on my calendar for teaching usually was the, "oh, no" moment.

Kirsten:

Because at that point, I was new enough that I didn't know that I

Kirsten:

was supposed to be working with the audience, with my students, and

Kirsten:

having it flex and dance with them.

Kirsten:

So I was doing a lot of talking at them.

Kirsten:

I was doing a lot of quote unquote "training," which isn't.

Kirsten:

I was lecturing.

Kellie:

So dull

Kirsten:

And this is why, this is why, we were on a conversation, you and I

Kirsten:

Kellie, recently on Innovation Women

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

when one of our friends was talking about training being

Kirsten:

delivering content in a lecture.

Kirsten:

And I started shaking my head going "No, no, no, no, no, no, no."

Kirsten:

And she pinged me afterwards and said, "I wanna talk with you.

Kirsten:

What was that about?"

Kirsten:

So we're going to get on a call and we'll be like, "Yeah, sorry,

Kirsten:

bad training is like that."

Kirsten:

That's bad training, bad training is you, your content doesn't change

Kirsten:

regardless of who's in the room.

Kirsten:

The people in the room just have to deal, like they have to flex.

Kellie:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

And I was taught that way.

Kirsten:

I was taught that the students are going to have to kind of meet the material

Kirsten:

and that's not how humans learn.

Kirsten:

That's not how it works.

Kirsten:

You have to, there is a give and take, you have to flex.

Kirsten:

And if you need to get people to a certain place, you've got to have

Kirsten:

their cooperation to make that happen.

Kellie:

Mm-hmm

Kirsten:

So I, you know, I remember that early on that it was like, I

Kirsten:

was teaching an Outlook class and I think I was at the Federal Reserve in

Kirsten:

Boston teaching either Outlook or Lotus Notes or something, but it was, it

Kirsten:

was "Now we're going to send an email and we're going to click this button.

Kirsten:

Wait, have we done this part before?"

Kirsten:

And I had to ask because I honestly couldn't remember because I'd done the

Kirsten:

same thing 14 times in the last 12 days.

Kellie:

Oh my God.

Kirsten:

And it was like

Kellie:

terrible

Kirsten:

"Oh please."

Kirsten:

So I used to have to take notes and tick off when I'd covered stuff, because I was

Kirsten:

covering the same thing, the same way.

Kirsten:

I had the jokes in the same place and, oh my God, if I could go

Kirsten:

back to my old self and be like, "No, no, you're doing it wrong."

Kirsten:

But

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

that's how we learn.

Kirsten:

We grow.

Kirsten:

So

Kellie:

I used to, when I first started teaching, I had a really highly-scripted

Kellie:

set of notes for how I wanted to get through whatever we were doing that day.

Kellie:

And I teach multiple sections of the same class.

Kellie:

And so there's a need to be consistent across the three sections.

Kellie:

But it was really tight and it was less fun.

Kellie:

And now, we're doing Jekyll and Hyde this week, I have sticky notes and I'll

Kellie:

just turn to a page and be like, "Hmm, what did I write down on this page?

Kellie:

Let's look," right?

Kellie:

And it's just,

Kirsten:

Kellie:

It's just much better.

Kellie:

Or someone will stop me and say, "But I want to back up to something

Kellie:

on the page just before then."

Kellie:

I'll be like, "All right, fine.

Kellie:

Let's go there."

Kirsten:

Mm-hmm

Kellie:

And it's just a much more interesting way to do the same things.

Kellie:

We get to the same place.

Kellie:

It just takes different paths and it's a much more engaging class that way.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

It, what I'm finding is, I occasionally will see a presenter or trainer who

Kirsten:

gets thrown by the fact that either they're not getting feedback from

Kirsten:

the audience, or they're not getting people connecting to the material

Kirsten:

in the way that they intended.

Kirsten:

And I see that frustration and I see that, the clenching of the jaw and

Kirsten:

the breathing that tells you that they actually are pissed off at you.

Kellie:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

But they're being "Okay.

Kirsten:

Well, let's go back and talk about that."

Kirsten:

And that for me is a, "Yeah, if you prepped your material so that

Kirsten:

it was modular and themed and able to cross-connect, this wouldn't

Kirsten:

bite you in the butt the way it is.

Kellie:

Oh, yeah

Kirsten:

But unfortunately, that's not the typical way of doing it and it it's

Kirsten:

always painful to be in the audience or in the back room for that, doing

Kirsten:

the Zoom producing thing, and going, " Please stop."

Kirsten:

You know it's, oh, oh, it hurts.

Kirsten:

So, the theme, the theme in all of this, ongoing mastery, you're always growing.

Kirsten:

You're always learning.

Kirsten:

You're always improving.

Kirsten:

You're never done.

Kellie:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

The time you think you're done with your material means you've killed it.

Kellie:

Yup

Kirsten:

If you're ever completely 100% done with it and you know "I

Kirsten:

never need to work on that again," great, you've just buried it.

Kirsten:

Awesome.

Kellie:

You just stop growing when you're dead.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

I mean my speech coach, Tim David, says that your keynotes, you never stop working

Kirsten:

on your keynote unless you want your keynote to suddenly start sucking, in

Kirsten:

which case you can stop working on it.

Kirsten:

Because then

Kellie:

Kirsten:

you've killed it and it'll suddenly have no life.

Kirsten:

But you have to keep always being current with, "Well, okay.

Kirsten:

What could I refine?

Kirsten:

What could I do?

Kirsten:

How could I flex or dance or do this?"

Kirsten:

Now we didn't have it as much when I started, but now there's all sorts of

Kirsten:

bells and whistles you can pull in.

Kirsten:

And putting up a QR code on the projection behind you and having everyone on their

Kirsten:

phones go to that and open up a page and give you feedback and then build a

Kirsten:

word cloud on the screen and be talking

Kellie:

Love that

Kirsten:

about, okay, this is what everybody thinks.

Kirsten:

I mean, that's a hell of a lot of fun that in 1998, it's like that would've

Kirsten:

seemed more like,"What are you doing?"

Kirsten:

And now I'm like, "Oh, cool, yeah, that's fun.

Kirsten:

I like it."

Kirsten:

So, yeah.

Kellie:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

Alrighty.

Kirsten:

I think that that's pretty much the topic for today.

Kirsten:

We've kind of

Kellie:

yeah

Kirsten:

covered life on the road, where in the world is Kirsten Rourke?, and

Kirsten:

then how it's all about ongoing mastery.

Kirsten:

It's all about enhancing your craft.

Kirsten:

Please come find us on all the socials.

Kirsten:

And for those of you who were with us in season one, thank you for coming back.

Kirsten:

In season two, we are now doing video, so we will be up on YouTube and we

Kirsten:

will also still be doing the audio version that is going out through

Kirsten:

Spotify and Apple and all of the others.

Kirsten:

So we're enhancing our delivery a little bit.

Kirsten:

So

Kellie:

And we have our LinkedIn group, Ongoing Mastery:

Kellie:

Presenting & Speaking community.

Kellie:

Find us there.

Kellie:

Leave some comments.

Kellie:

Tell us where Kirsten should go in Vegas.

Kirsten:

Yes, yeah.

Kirsten:

In Vegas specifically.

Kirsten:

Please don't just say where I should go, because believe

Kirsten:

me, I've gotten that feedback.

Kellie:

Kirsten:

So, specifically in Vegas.

Kirsten:

All right.

Kirsten:

Thank you everybody.

Kirsten:

We will see you next time.

Kirsten:

Have a good one.

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Presentation and Speaking Skills for Business Leaders

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Kirsten Rourke