(Note: The following is excerpted from Claim the Stage! The Workbook, an interactive workbook associated with my book Claim the Stage: A Woman’s Guide to Speaking Up, Standing Out and Taking Leadership. Both will be available to the public by mid-summer)
Taking ownership of our blessings tends to be a lot easier than examining and owning our blocks—particularly when we receive feedback that makes us go “Ouch!”
One of my life and career changing “Ouch! That hurts! But thanks for telling me” moments occurred years ago, soon after I started to give keynote speeches to large audiences on a national level.
After giving an opening keynote at 7:30 am for several hundred restless health care workers at an annual association conference, I left feeling I hadn’t connected as well as I’d wanted to with the members of the audience. On the flight home, I began to make a list of reasons why that disconnect might have occurred:
It was too early in the morning, and the audience was probably pretty hung-over from partying the night before, I mused. The audience members were required to be there, so they weren’t as receptive as they could have been if they’d come at their own volition. The stage was too small and too far away from my audience. The room was too wide and laid out all wrong. And on top of that, the sound system wasn’t that good.
All the reasons I listed conveniently blamed elements outside of myself—which was certainly easier for me to do than to examine what I might have contributed to the audience disconnect.
A couple of weeks after the speaking engagement, I received my evaluations from the meeting planner who had hired me for the event. The scores hovered somewhere between “average” and “above average,” with only a handful in the “excellent” category. In summary, the meeting planner wrote (rather diplomatically), “People felt that if you had been reading your notes less, you would have been even more effective.”
My immediate reaction was to discount the feedback and point to my list of outside factors to blame. But then I took a deep breath and let the meeting planner’s feedback sink in: She was right, I had relied too much on my notes, which no doubt served to keep me more removed from my audience. I realized I needed to own this tendency to rely too much on my notes, and to do what it took to fix it so I could be more impactful as a speaker. This willingness to own the issue kicked me down the path of learning how to speak either entirely without notes or by barely referring to them. The freedom it gave me also allowed me to fully honor two of my blessings: Being comfortable improvising in the moment, and bringing a genuine, authentic presence to the stage. All these years later, I consider it a point of pride to connect with my audience at the expense of any notes I might have in front of me, and my evaluations reflect that—and all because I was willing to take ownership of an issue that was mine to fix.
We often know, in our heart of hearts, what the issues and challenges we need to work on. And quite often, we are pointed to those issues and challenges by people we interface with at work or at home. If you are getting the same negative feedback from people you trust and respect at work, be open to listening to what they have to say, to explore it for any kernels of truth. And then, be willing to take ownership of what needs fixing.
Taking responsibility for fixing whatever issues need fixing that are yours to fix is not only at the core of go take ownership but at the core of great leadership. As Jack Zenger, the author and co-author of sixteen books, and CEO of Zenger/Folkman, a strengths-based leadership firm, writes in an , “Taking responsibility is the highest mark of great leaders…The combination of your responsible behavior with your responsible attitude gives you powerful influence, and accelerates your leadership growth.”
Are you willing to be open to constructive feedback that can help you grow into the best of who you could be? Which of your tendencies, behaviors and proclivities might need fixing, shoring up or shifting for the better? What do you need to do to make those shifts?
Remember: The more willing you are to take ownership of your life and leadership, the more courage and confidence you will generate to create the change you long to make..
Use Your Words to Change Your World!
Because you matter. Your voice matters. And I believe in you.
Eleni Kelakos
The Speaker Whisperer™
President, The Eleni Group