The Communicators Who Make You Speak Up
For a long time, public speaking made me awfully uncomfortable.
Social anxiety, the fear of embarrassing myself, the impression of not being credible enough – there was always a reason for me to keep my thoughts to myself, despite being pretty opinionated and passionate about quite a number of topics. The situation was so bad that I preferred to edit my Winter School application video with (stressfully) curated voice-overs to distance myself from my words.
Never could I ever have imagined becoming a confident speaker until I met Luisa Baldini, former BBC correspondent and communication expert. She pushed me to try out different speaking paces, to embrace silence instead of filling my hesitations with “uh” and even to finally give breathing exercises a chance. While I could speak publicly before her intervention, I just would not want to. Her masterclass showed me that with the proper communication instruments, magic could happen.
However, it still didn’t feel completely right. “Why should I speak more?” is precisely what I wondered. Ironically, the European Leadership Academy taught me that skills don’t necessarily build confidence and a sense of legitimacy – those are things to develop from within.
Even though our brains tend to overly focus on negative remarks and create limiting beliefs out of them, it is fundamental to learn to trust the uplifting feedback from those around us. “You should try this”, “You would do a great XYZ”, “You have a talent for that”-- these words can sound like flattery, but they are a helping hand to broaden your horizons.
In my experience, your mentor is funnily enough not always the speaker you expect, or even a speaker at all. I was lucky to cross the path of the late Richard Medic, a wonderful creative director and communication strategist. Be bold, use your creativity, stay unapologetic, create emotions in people, go step by step but always push forward: his advice completely rewired my approach to communication. He made me create my first online portfolio, an eye-opening exercise to face my work: the good, the improvable, the ugly – all of it. I learned the necessity of putting myself out there and to take in all the constructive criticism.
Professionally, meeting Richard was a “renaissance” and led me to dive into new ventures. Not all of them were a success for sure, but as he once said “I’ve learned to love the smell of failure in the morning”. Growing as your own kind of female leader doesn’t stop right after the School Gala – it is an ongoing journey paved with wins and flops, joys and challenges.
Overall, if I had to remember one message from him it would be that you don’t need fancy credentials to give something a shot. Try, dare with the right tools and leave your assumptions behind.
Cara Doumbe Kingue on 12/11/2024
