Renata (00:22)
This will be a long episode, but worth every minute, especially if you struggle to talk about yourself at interviews, you get anxious when you’re public speaking, or if you are good at it, but you want to be excellent and leave the audience feeling amazing when they listen to you. Linda Ogelow is a speaking confidence coach, podcast host and author of the book, Delight in the Limelight, overcome your fear of being seen and realize your dreams.
Her strategies and techniques she first used on herself. Linda knows firsthand the challenge of public speaking fear, having once faced a lot of it, that just wouldn’t go away even when people told her that it would. It didn’t go away. So now she dedicates her career to helping entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, artists, and a range of other professionals to transform and enhance their speaking experience.
and the experience of the audience. So in this conversation, Linda shares her expert insights into overcoming speaking anxiety, healing that inner critical voice that you may have and navigating the imposter syndrome. We discuss practical strategies for job seekers and professionals to improve their presentation skills in situations like job interviews.
how they can improve their preparation for job interviews and speaking engagements, handling mistakes when they happen. What do you do right there and then? The goal is not only to do public speaking, but to find the joy in being in the limelight. In sum, this episode is packed with actionable advice for anyone looking to communicate more confidently and effectively and really connect with the audience.
Please enjoy.
Renata (02:20)
Now, I think you probably have been doing a lot of podcast interviews, right? They all start more or less the same, so I’m sorry about that. But we need to introduce you to a whole new audience. I hope that you will have more followers and more people interested in your book. So I think we need to start where it all started. Why are you interested in helping people speak?
Linda Ugelow (02:25)
Mm-hmm.
was interested in helping other people speak more comfortably because I suffered with anxiety when I spoke for most of my life. And I didn’t know that there was anything I could do about it. So I mostly tried to just manage it. And when the online world, you know, became a big part of our lives, I Googled how to get over my anxiety speaking and I’d get all of this.
Renata (02:46)
you
Mm-hmm.
Linda Ugelow (03:13)
advice to like feel the fear and do it anyway, or that it’s natural to feel anxious when you speak in public. And so I just kept going with this idea that eventually I would have the experience, I’d have the repetitions that I would feel calm and collected, but it never seemed to happen. In fact, I was
doing live streaming back in 2015. I was an early adopter for the Periscope app, which some people remember and some people don’t. And the marketing gurus said, you gotta get on every day to build your following. So I decided I would get on every day. Figuring, as I just said, that after a few weeks, I would feel relaxed, I’d feel grounded. But that never happened. The weeks went by, I think I got to week 10.
It was about 75 days and my heart’s still pounding and I’m hyperventilating and I’m disassociating from my body. And this is in spite of every day I had this long routine of meditation, affirmations, deep breathing, power poses, all these mental mindsets like pretend your fear is excitement. And I liked all these things and it helped me to get on. But what I finally realized after day 75 that
My fear wasn’t going away. It was being managed, but it was also waiting for me every single day for me to manage it. And that’s when I decided I don’t want to manage it anymore. I just want to get rid of it. Once I was able to, and we can talk more about how I did that. Once I was able to experience what it was like to be on the other side without this
Renata (05:00)
Mm-hmm.
Linda Ugelow (05:09)
having to put half of my mental energy on dealing with my physical symptoms, being nervous if people saw that I was nervous, not being able to really think about what I want to say, I would get distracted. It was such hard work to be a nervous speaker. So once I got on the other side and I saw, wow, this is so nice when you are looking forward to speaking, when you like speaking, when it’s something that you feel
comfortable with. Everyone should have this because speaking is our human design. We are meant to communicate. We’re meant to use our voices. And I believe that we were meant to enjoy them. And what if we’re not, let’s look at why and let’s figure it out. Let’s clear that away so that you can be effective in your life. So you can enjoy the speaking that you do because you’re going to be speaking. We are all speaking.
So that’s why I decided I want to help people out because the way I helped myself, I looked around and I thought, nobody’s talking about this. Why aren’t they talking about this?
Renata (06:20)
Now I’m so curious. really need to know what made that switch in your brain so that it would stop going instinctively into fight and flight mode every time you spoke to it being so calm and relaxed. Do you think when you were struggling with it, was it the topic? Was it talking about yourself? Was it that you felt that you were not an expert? What was it that was?
Linda Ugelow (06:24)
Ha
Renata (06:49)
the barrier that you then was able to overcome.
Linda Ugelow (06:51)
I would,
yeah, I don’t know. It could have been the topic. No, think it was, I think it was, I was getting triggered. I was just getting triggered by being, no matter the topic, I, that being in front of a group of people or being on camera was triggering for me. So at that time on Periscope, when I decided I’m tired of managing my
Renata (07:01)
No matter the topic, whatever topic. Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Linda Ugelow (07:21)
anxiety, I just want to get rid of it. I made a long list of things that I could do to get rid of it. Cause I thought, you know, Linda, you’ve got a background in expressive arts therapy and psychology. You’ve had 30 years of performance experience. You know, you gotta have some tools to, to make this go away. So I made this long list and I, it was a very impressive list, I must say. And I remember looking at all these things and I said, I think this is going to work.
But before I try to get rid of it, why don’t I look into what it actually is? So I closed my eyes to connect with the fear and I asked if the fear could talk, what would it say? And what came back was, you’re gonna be attacked. And all of a sudden, I had memories of when my sisters used to attack me as a little kid, whenever my mom put me in the center of attention.
She would say, why can’t you girls be more like Linda? She’s the good girl in the family. Why can’t you be like her? Of course they hated her for that. They hated me for that. And as soon as she turned her back, they’d attack me, kick me in the shin, say, shut up, call me stupid. And then it was like, it wasn’t even an aha. It was like a duh. Of course I don’t feel comfortable speaking on camera or in front of a crowd.
because there’s part of me that remembers it was dangerous to be the center of attention. And then I thought, what else is there? And I thought of times that I was bullied, not safe to be seen. Times that I made a mistake and people laughed at me, not safe to be seen. All of these things from my background that kind of glommed together and created this wall of anxiety that got triggered every time.
Renata (08:57)
rise.
Linda Ugelow (09:20)
I was to speak in front of a group.
Renata (09:24)
I bet a lot of people have those inner voices or it’s not even a voice, it’s just a body language and they don’t even realize it.
Linda Ugelow (09:35)
Of course. And the thing
is, we all got stuff. mean, if you went to school, you’ve got educational trauma because in school, the rules are different than in real life. In real life, they say, mistakes are our way of learning. This is how you move forward and how we learn. They say that in school, but they don’t practice it. They penalize you for every mistake you make. They don’t say, this is great. Now you know that doesn’t work.
Renata (09:58)
Mmm.
Yes.
Linda Ugelow (10:02)
What else can we do?
It’s a completely different set of attitudes and perspectives. So we’re all afraid of making mistakes. We’re all afraid of making the grade. And we think that if we haven’t made those grades, there’s something in us that’s not good enough. And if we have made those grades, we think, people like us and we’re worthy because we’re so smart and we never make mistakes. And in both cases, it can get in the way of our speaking confidence because we either feel we’re not good enough.
Renata (10:18)
Hmm.
Linda Ugelow (10:31)
or we’re afraid of making mistakes and we feel anxiety about that.
Renata (10:36)
And even if people that are listening do not relate with those stories, I’m pretty sure I have an assumption here that your technique and the things that you teach will be good for all of them. People that are introverted, people like most of my clients who hate talking about themselves. It’s interesting, Linda, they really enjoy talking about the products that they…
say sale or the organizations that they advocate for. But then when it turns talking about them, they freeze like, no, I don’t want to talk about that. And it could be linked to that body memory or that in a critical inner voice. But I think whatever it is that’s barricading people from achieving more by not being able to present, I think you have nailed it with some of your frameworks and techniques, right?
Linda Ugelow (11:30)
Yeah.
Well, I’d love to just address that Renata, because let’s say we’re not comfortable to speak about ourselves. Why not? Why not? That’s the most basic thing that we have to talk about is ourselves. It’s what we are most expert in is ourselves. We know more about ourselves than anything else, more than any product. And yet we can be afraid. So,
Renata (11:35)
Okay.
Linda Ugelow (12:00)
Maybe it’s that we felt like we weren’t part of the clique, the inside, the clique in school. Maybe we weren’t sitting at the lunch table of the people that we really wanted to be with. We thought they didn’t think we were interesting. So then we get this idea that what we have to say, maybe people aren’t interested in it.
Renata (12:20)
or maybe Linda, you live in a country like Australia or the UK where we have a culture that we call the tall poppy syndrome. Right? I mean, mean, I this exists.
Linda Ugelow (12:29)
Yes, yes. My sister lives in Denmark.
It’s the same thing. Yes, we have messages. Don’t stand out. Don’t draw attention to yourself. You don’t make other people think you’re better than they are. All of these things that make us inhibited, we’re afraid to show ourselves as knowledgeable, as comfortable. You know, we don’t want to look arrogant. We don’t want to look like…
You know, we’re doing something like we love the sound of our voice. You know, even that, it’s like when someone says, that person loves the sound of their voice, like they never stopped talking. But we should love the sound of our voices.
Renata (13:11)
Yeah, yes, we should. I’m gonna challenge you on something. I wanna hear your opinion on this. You said something that it should be true. We should know more about ourselves than anybody else. We should. But I think modern life has taken a toll on us knowing us better. I think we’re so busy working outside of us.
taking care of other people, taking care of the companies we work for and the colleagues and the teams that we lead. We have stopped journaling. 100 years ago, everybody had a journal. Now, nobody has a journal. Like only some woo woo people do and we poo poo them. Like we say, have a journal. Now, everybody should journal. Everybody should do that reflection. I have found that when people go into job interviews, it’s probably the first time.
in many, many years if they worked in the same organization, let’s say, that they have to talk about themselves and then they start workshopping and analyzing things that they hadn’t thought of in years. And the interview doesn’t go well because they’re just winging it, whereas they should have done some self-reflection before they go talk to recruiters. And I see that all the time in the work that I do as a career coach.
Linda Ugelow (14:33)
Yeah, well, you know what? I’m not going to argue against what you said. I totally agree with it. I think it’s true that we are made to believe that our performance is above all else. And what we are sacrificing really is that self-knowledge, that self-experience.
Renata (14:55)
Yeah,
did you go through that? Did you have to find yourself along the way?
Linda Ugelow (15:03)
I felt like I… Excuse me.
I felt like I cycled through that. So in my graduate school studies, I explored a process called authentic movement, which is a branch of dance therapy based on Carl Jung. Carl Jung was a psychologist, Freud’s contemporary, and he was all about making the unconscious conscious. So in this process, it’s
Renata (15:12)
Okay.
Linda Ugelow (15:38)
very simple, it’s very meditative. You close your eyes, you listen to your body, and you allow whatever kind of impulse in your body there is to move, and then you allow the body to simply move and your mind is following it like a movie. And you’re doing your best to hold a space of non-judgment, so not to judge what comes out, but just to be curious and fascinated even, like,
what are my arms doing? I want to cover myself up so nobody sees me. I want to turn my back here. I want to curl up in a ball. And it’s just like noticing the self experience. And at the same time, you’re being witnessed. So you also have that layer of conscientiousness of being witnessed, but they’re also holding non-judgmental space. So you know that they’re benevolent. They’re not watching.
to judge or to evaluate, they’re simply there to hold space for you to explore the self. And then after some period of time, if it was 10 minutes or 30 minutes, we would journal. We would make some art. We would write poetry. And in those moments, I discovered myself to be a writer, an artist, and…
Renata (16:44)
Wow.
Linda Ugelow (16:58)
It was my way of learning about myself, where I was, what I was feeling, what are the things that I was concerned about. So I would say that was a period of my time that I got to know myself in that way. And as a performer, which I was with the Women’s World Music Group for four decades, it allowed me to be on stage completely at ease being seen, completely. So when we were even…
performing internationally, sometimes, you know, it was a big deal that there was a Women’s World music group from the US. So they would have the TV stations come out and they’d have these big honking cameras. And there I would be doing a trance dance with my eyes closed and I felt completely at ease letting myself be seen as I did this transformational dance from Egypt. And I know it was because it was so much like…
the authentic movement I had practiced. However, if I had to introduce the next song, I was completely in a panic because I hadn’t learned that same degree of self-acceptance and connection around speaking. was all, as I said, I was just getting triggered all the time. But when I removed that, and actually Renata, it just took me five days.
Five days, 10 years ago, I got rid of my fear of speaking. Yep. Yes. That’s why it’s like, holy moly, why isn’t anyone talking about this? know, like if we took a little bit of time just to say, what is our stuff? And everybody has stuff. There’s nothing wrong with us for having stuff. We all have it. You know, even in, you know, the best of families, you know, inadvertently, there might’ve been a comment that got made that you latched onto that.
Renata (18:24)
We knew him. wow.
Yeah.
Linda Ugelow (18:53)
eroded your confidence, so it made you feel self-conscious about your self-image or something that made us pull back. So when I got rid of that and I could be present, then I felt like I could really comfortably explore myself on a new level.
Renata (19:16)
Linda, was it just the acknowledgement of the memory of your sisters and the bullies and that kind of solved the problem at least partially or did you have to then do a little bit more work? Spill the tea, otherwise you’re going to finish this episode and people are going to be like, I learned nothing. Tell us a little bit about what they can do.
Linda Ugelow (19:31)
I
Yes. Okay. Well, let’s get into that. Let’s
get into that. Absolutely. And I’m glad you asked because it’s the first step to be able to identify something from the past that may have impacted you. And then the next thing you need to do is deactivate it. Because if it’s getting triggered, we need to neutralize it. We need to address it in a meaningful way so that it’s cleared away.
Renata (19:45)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Linda Ugelow (20:04)
Now, I like to take a multimodality approach because number one, that’s what I did and it worked. And also I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. You know, maybe, you know, one particular approach doesn’t work for everyone, but if you, if you blend a few different ones together, then we’re more likely to cover, address, you know, more of it. What we basically want to do is change our relationship to that experience. So we want to broaden.
our perspective and bring our current wiser, older, more mature self to that younger selves of us that didn’t have the resources, that didn’t know how to handle the situation. We may not have had the parent or the mentor or the teacher or the friend that knew exactly what to say. So we have to be that person. We can do it through journaling. We can, you can simply journal what the experience was.
But then I would say, what would you have wished it to have been? What could have someone said to you if you had a magical being that could go back with you and redo it all, what could they say to you that would have made it a better outcome for you? Or it made you feel okay, given whatever happened, that you felt okay afterwards about yourself still. So journaling.
Renata (21:20)
Mmm.
Linda Ugelow (21:29)
Creative visualization is a similar thing as journaling, but we’re visualizing it instead. You can talk to your younger self and tell that younger you what you wished, the things that that younger person wished they could have heard, that you love them, that you think they are wonderful, that they’re worthy of forgiveness, that you think they’re great, that you’re impressed by them, that they were able to cope with this experience and survive. Anything that you want to give to them.
This is about, this is where healing happens. And then of course, forgiveness is really simple. Anyone can do it. I spent hours at night those five days thinking of every comment that I could conjure up. And I said, I forgive you, mom, for not knowing how to be a better parent.
I forgive you for not realizing the harm that you were causing in my life. And then I would forgive myself for not being able to handle things better. So I like to, you know, I’ve had some clients that I had one client who was a songwriter and he put everything that he discovered in his past into a song. That was his feeling, his healing. I had another who was a poet. She did the same thing with poetry.
I had people who created rituals for themselves, know, gathering stones and all the comments that got made and blessing the stone and releasing it into the lake. You know, so we can, we are creative, our healing is creative and we are creative meaning makers and we can create the kinds of, of rituals that help us. But there is one technique that I learned back in 1992.
from a transformational kinesiologist called EFT. Some people know it as emotional freedom technique or tapping. And it’s a way of tapping on meridian points, mostly around the face and the upper body, and saying statements that bring you from a place of distress to the current, through what you would have liked.
what you would like to be able to let go of until finally you’re in a place of release and envisioning a better experience for yourself. And it’s used for people who have had PTSD. There’ve been lots of studies with war veterans who have used this to remove the PTSD from their somatic experience. And it can be used for speaking these
experiences that we had in our life.
Renata (24:18)
of that. I think we’re bringing a lot of new ideas to a group of people that usually don’t really pay attention to these things. The white collar worker, the corporate environment, and especially if you’ve been in it for quite a while, which is most of this audience for this podcast, has numbed themselves.
from rituals, from self-reflection. They feel like they don’t have time. They’re overwhelmed and they’re carrying the world on their backs. I really learned a couple of things from you and I wanna sort of check that I’m in the right path here, but also translate that to the audience. When you said that you could dance in front of a crowd, but you couldn’t speak in front of the crowd.
think that is such an important story that relates to a lot of my clients because they are so successful in their professions, but then something goes wrong. There’s a crisis, their role is made redundant. There’s a layoff or there’s a career limiting move that they do. They’re suddenly without a voice. are suddenly, they don’t know what to do and they don’t have experience in that and they freeze. Right. So.
The fact that you’re so good at something doesn’t mean you’re gonna be good at everything else. And I think you need to give yourself permission to be human and acknowledge that and don’t feel like you need to be super powerful in every area of your life and then be vulnerable enough to seek learning, to seek coaching or buy your book or do something like that. And the other thing is that we…
in this corporate world that I navigate are very logical. Everything needs to have a logic and a reason and arguments that are within the corporate sphere. And we forget that to persuade people and to win minds and hearts, you need a softer approach as well. You need to include emotions and passions and vulnerability to actually get through.
the other side and opening yourself up to the ideas of doing something like an EFP exercise, for example, would be one of those things. It doesn’t have to be that for you listener. It could be something else, but creating a ritual or doing visualizations, anything that can help you overcome the challenge of going through recruitment and selection, job searching and that sort of.
time in your life that is so uncertain. There’s so much uncertainty when you don’t have a job.
Linda Ugelow (27:10)
Yes, yes there is. And you know, just for it to be clear that I understand when you have a certain level of expertise and experience, you may not want other people to know that you’re struggling with this. And this is in fact a lot of my clients, but I have worked with lawyers and doctors, pilots.
Renata (27:12)
Okay.
Yes.
Linda Ugelow (27:38)
HR professionals, CFOs, you know, in the C-suite. And yet it works. It works for people. And yes, I may not want to put a testimonial on my website because you wouldn’t want anyone to see that, but it allows you to be the empowered leader that you seek to be. Because you don’t want to have these
these blocks or barricades to you expressing what you want to express for participating and influencing on the level that you want to be an influencer and to guide or direct a team or a company.
Renata (28:29)
Yes.
Linda Ugelow (28:30)
And you’ve got to accept that if there is something in the way, the worst thing that you can do is ignore it, because it’s not gonna ignore you.
Renata (28:44)
Yes.
Linda Ugelow (28:46)
But if you are willing, if you really, if your motivation is to be the most empowered that you can be in your career, then you will be brave enough to declutter that stuff that is probably getting in your way, not just in speaking, but in other ways, like in believing that you are good enough for that particular job that you’re applying for.
or that position that you would like to go for, rather than pretending that you are but feeling awful inside. mean, why should we sacrifice our inner experience, our inner wellbeing for a performance measurement when we could feel…
Renata (29:15)
Mm-hmm.
Linda Ugelow (29:36)
acknowledge and grounded and proud of exactly where we are and go after that same position. So I feel that what happens, you know, if you think about like the idea of imposter syndrome and feeling like you have to push past it and pretend that you’re someone that you’re not, I think that comes out of this,
unwillingness to know oneself. Like when we explore ourselves, we learn about ourselves and we can acknowledge and honor, honor just where you are. And you don’t have to be any further along. You don’t have to be smarter. You don’t have to have any more degrees for you to know, I can be helpful here. I can make a contribution.
Renata (30:05)
Mm.
Yes.
Linda Ugelow (30:27)
Because that’s what people want. They want to know that you have the belief that you can fill this position and make the whole company move forward through your participation. And you have that kind of conviction when you are fully in yourself and not separate.
Renata (30:47)
on the internet.
Linda Ugelow (30:56)
from parts of yourself.
Renata (30:56)
Yeah,
I love that. Linda, you probably know this, but I just want to rewind and talk to the listener here. What you just said is such a common argument that people make with themselves that when they lose a job, instead of going back to the market, the lack of confidence that they have makes them want to go back to study first. no, I need a master’s degree before I go back to the market. I need to study. And people don’t realize that.
Higher education at that level of executive development, professional development is actually an industry everybody. They’re marketing at you and they are making you believe that you need extra study to go back and find a better job. And that’s not always true. In fact, that is actually quite risky to do when you’re unemployed and cannot afford a very expensive degree. So.
I’m not saying don’t study. I teach at a university. Yes, go back to study. But you have to do that intentionally, strategically to upskill and re-skill and not because you have imposter syndrome.
Linda Ugelow (32:14)
Yes, yes. Because, you know, if you’ve been in a position, you have all that experience. And even if you’ve made quote unquote mistakes, and we all have made mistakes, that is even better. Because when we’ve made mistakes, then we understand what not to do next time. That is
Renata (32:15)
and
Linda Ugelow (32:37)
You know, if everything is always going your way, you don’t always know why it’s going your way. You don’t know what’s working. But when things aren’t working is when we get the chances to evaluate, what could I have done differently? And what could I try differently next time? Which I think is a super valuable skill set to have.
Renata (32:56)
Yes.
Linda, I love that you talked about mistakes. I really want to dive into that because what if you’re making a mistake whilst you’re speaking? How can you self correct? Because people tend to get really nervous if they have they noticed that they said something inappropriate or made a mistake about what they were saying and they want to sort of fix that. Do you have any techniques or tips that you can tell us?
Linda Ugelow (33:28)
I do, I have lots of them.
Renata (33:31)
Okay.
Linda Ugelow (33:32)
The first thing I would say is whatever kind of mistake you are likely to make, I want you to feel prepared to make them because mistakes are gonna happen. You’re going to lose track of what you’re saying and not know where you are. And if that happens, admit it. In fact, just say, I just lost my train of thought, where was I?
Renata (33:56)
Okay.
Linda Ugelow (33:57)
And practice saying that there’s nothing wrong. In fact, people enjoy that little bit of quote unquote audience interaction. You can also, if you prefer, like if you’re online and nobody is able to like come on, maybe you’re doing a training of some sort, you could just take a pause or say, hang on a minute, I wanna look at my notes. But the point is to…
Renata (34:05)
Yes.
Linda Ugelow (34:25)
Be prepared for that mistake. Another mistake might be that you skipped over something that you really wanted to talk about. Well, number one, think about in the moment, is this something that really needs to get communicated right now? Or could I send an email later or a memo later on to include that? In fact, and sometimes in some cases that might be better because it allows you to have follow-up. However,
Renata (34:51)
Mmm.
Linda Ugelow (34:52)
If it is something that people need to know to understand what you’re going to be talking about, you can simply say, let’s take a pause. Cause I realized before I get into this, you may need to understand this for part first, but that’s something else that you can prepare yourself for. Another quote unquote mistake might be that you, you said the wrong data point and you can simply say,
Renata (35:06)
Mmm.
Linda Ugelow (35:21)
Did I just say that? I didn’t mean that. I meant this. The point here is that mistakes are gonna, number one, happen, that we can handle them with poise. We can even handle them with humor. For instance, now I like to speak without notes. And I remember after COVID, I hadn’t been speaking for a while and I was giving, I was talking about getting comfortable on camera and I had six points I wanted to make.
And as I was preparing myself, I thought, Linda, you probably aren’t going to remember all six points because you don’t have enough time to really memorize them all. So what are you going to do if you forget? And I made a plan. So when it did happen, I got to point number five. I said, I can’t remember point number five, but don’t worry. It’ll probably come back to me. And if it doesn’t, I’ll just send you an email. And then I went on to point number six.
And then I remembered point number five and I just said, here it It came back and everybody laughed. And not only that, but people came up to me afterwards and said, thank you so much for being so lighthearted about making the mistake because you just modeled for me that I could do that too without feeling horrible about myself.
Renata (36:39)
Yeah, yeah, that’s lovely. And you’re right. And what you said before about client testimonials and not having them on your website, you know, I think that we don’t like to talk about mistakes or failures. We only talk about success. You know, that’s the criticism on social media, on platforms like Instagram. Everything looks pretty, yes, et cetera. So modeling it is important. Yeah. And what you said before,
I think is really great, the preparation, prepare for it, practice failure, practice mistakes, I love that. Yesterday I was with a client who is in May going to speak at a conference and I explained to her, people if you’re looking at on YouTube, you will see that I’m using my fingers to show something, that most people think of a speaking event as a…
Pointing time, so they’re like, there’s a baseline and then there’s the speaking event. There’s a spike where you get stressed, you get excited and nervous and everything and then sort of as soon as that ends, your body relaxes and you’re fine again. When I worked in events, I explained to my team the concept of a bell curve, right? There’s a lot of preparation that goes before that and it was an events team so they understood that.
but they didn’t understand the back end of it, right? After the event, that bell curve continues and we need to, I know you’re exhausted and tired, but we need to continue working on the other side of speaking engagements. Because if you use the stage, I mean, I’m working with professionals that want to advance in their careers, they want to progress, they want to find jobs. If you use that speaking engagement,
strategically, there should be a call to action there at the end of your speech or at the beginning of your speech. You need to sort of engage with more people, find money for your organization if you’re a not-for-profit, get funding if you’re an academic or a scientist, get a job if you’re being interviewed by a board, and then you need to do your thank you notes and connections and make sure that everybody is still in touch with you and keeping you top of mind.
So I will include that preparation for failure as part of the left side of my bell curve with my clients. Because I had never thought of that, you know. Let’s pretend you didn’t get it right. What would you say? So I will use that. So thank you very much. What do you think about that bell curve idea? Have you thought of that in the past?
Linda Ugelow (39:19)
Yeah. Yeah.
I
have and I love it. I love how you describe it and I love how you use it. I would add a couple of things to each side. One is that before you speak, you can do other kinds of preparation. In fact, I’m right now working on a speaker preparation journal that creates that kind of bell curve. So at the beginning, you can think, well, what are my concerns about this? What do I want to remember for myself?
Renata (39:33)
Awesome.
Linda Ugelow (39:55)
What am I grateful for? Why am I looking forward to this? What can I feel excited about it? What do I want the audience to know? What do I know about the audience? These kinds of things. How do I want to feel? What are the ways I want to feel as I’m speaking? And then on the other side, and then I have a checklist of ways that you can prepare, kind of physically, vocally, mentally. But then on the other side, there’s the debrief. What did I like about that? What went well?
Renata (40:07)
Mm-hmm.
Linda Ugelow (40:24)
What do I wish went differently? What’s the feedback that I got? What will I want to do for next time that is different?
Renata (40:36)
I love
that checklist. When is it going to be available?
Linda Ugelow (40:40)
I hope maybe next month it’ll come out. Yeah, yeah. And I can share it with you if you want a little advanced peek inside. Yeah.
Renata (40:43)
Okay, okay.
I’d love to. Are
you going to sell it? Is it like a free? To buy. Oh, I’m excited.
Linda Ugelow (40:52)
No, it’ll be available online to buy. And in fact, I’ve been thinking of,
yes, yes. So I’ll let you check it out. I’ve been thinking about making a series of different ones for different kinds of situations, like for podcasting, for instance.
Renata (41:07)
Yes, yes, that would be great.
I would recommend my other guests to go buy it.
Linda Ugelow (41:16)
Yes,
and I feel like, I mean, I want this. This is something that I want to use. I do use, but I realized at some point I thought if I just had this in a journal form, it would be so much easier because right now I do it in a very haphazard way and I want to be more organized so I can look inside and see what is my progression, how have I grown. And I think that would be very helpful.
Renata (41:19)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Linda, I have an out of the box question for you because I just thought about it yesterday. Earlier this week, I was working with a team in an organization doing a team workshop and the topic came out about facial expressions. You know, when you’re in Zoom and everybody’s kind of blend in vanilla.
in on video or even if you are in an office environment, the corporate environment can be very bland and people don’t show their feelings or their emotions. They walk into a meeting and they have that face that says nothing. And one of the but one of the people in the room has very high positive energy. And we were just discussing how frustrating it may be. It is for her to walk into a meeting and not sort of read people’s.
expressions and have no emotion in the meeting. And then of course, I was researching you and there’s this lovely picture of you in your book behind this. If people are on YouTube, they can see it and you have a lot of expression. And I think it comes from, you know, your background and the performance background that you have. Have you ever discussed that with clients, you know, to add some brightness and energy into the way that they present?
Linda Ugelow (43:05)
Yes, absolutely. I actually have a client from Microsoft right now who is working on exactly that. And he reported yesterday that even after one session, people said, wow, that was a great presentation. You had so much energy and I really enjoyed, it just was so clear. And I would say it’s beyond our facial expressions. It’s also in the way we use our voices. We are used to, this is one way we protect ourselves.
don’t show anything, don’t reveal, but we don’t realize that we’re cutting off the resources we have for team building, for encouraging each other, for our enthusiasm, because I mean, don’t we want to work with people that are enthusiastic, that are having fun together? And let, how about we build our capacity for that? We want…
If you want other people to act out greatness, let them feel great about themselves by telling them what you like and appreciate about what they just said, about their idea, about how they showed up. That’s gonna like build them up. And like we can create better, more vibrant communities of teams by doing that.
Renata (44:26)
Mm-hmm.
Linda Ugelow (44:28)
So yes, facial expressions. we let people know that we’re, like when we nod, when we smile, it lets that person know that what we’re saying is making its mark. Now that doesn’t mean that what you’re saying isn’t making its mark, but you’re not giving anything back to the person. As a performer, we used to laugh about this thing. It’s like we used to look around the audience and we would say, did you see that person who looked like they were?
you know, frowning the whole time, but afterwards they came up and they said, wow, that was amazing. So it’s not like you ever really know. However, as a performer, I definitely gravitated to the people who were smiling, who were nodding, who I felt were, I could read their response. So yes, you can learn to be that person in the room and invigorate the whole group of people there.
Renata (45:16)
Yeah.
Linda Ugelow (45:26)
But it’s not just in our face, it’s also in our voice because we hide behind our voices. We speak in a flat tone, we speak like this that has very little energy. The monotone, the loud, it’s just like, like it’s almost, I wouldn’t say robotic, it’s robotic. It’s not robotic, but it’s lacking in expression. And when…
Renata (45:30)
Yeah.
Monotone, monotone.
Linda Ugelow (45:54)
You don’t realize that when you speak in a way that emphasizes the words that you’re saying, then all of a sudden, number one, people hear the articulation better. They understand what they should be paying attention to. And they are able to experience better comprehension because you are phrasing the words in a way that they understand the meaning.
Renata (46:10)
Mm-hmm.
Linda Ugelow (46:23)
We all know that syntax matters, but we don’t really practice it. I like thinking of it this way. You are being a tour guide for the people listening to you by the way you speak.
Renata (46:25)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Linda, I have just noticed that you don’t have filler words in your speech.
Linda Ugelow (46:47)
That’s why, because I am thinking of
how am I going to express these words? And I’m not thinking of or like, or right. I am inside what I want to express. And that’s how I teach getting rid of filler words actually, is by being inside what you wanna say.
Renata (47:12)
Do you think-
Do you think getting rid of filler words also has to do with not being afraid of silence between sentences? Yes. Okay.
Linda Ugelow (47:21)
yes, yes, yes. And
not only that, I think actually we learn filler words in school. There are a few theories I have. I don’t know if they’re right. They’re my own theories. One is that the teacher asks you a question and you’re not sure of the answer. So you wanna fill up that space so it doesn’t show you as not knowing the answer. And kids across the country do this and I feel like it’s just
Renata (47:33)
Okay.
Linda Ugelow (47:51)
become school culture. The second reason.
Renata (47:54)
Yes, here in Australia,
it’s very cultural. In fact, I’m Brazilian. So when we first moved after a year, I had a job and my manager invited us for dinner. We went to dinner and my husband and I came back home giggling in the car because every time somebody was talking, all the others on the table were hmm. And we had no idea what happened. Yes.
Linda Ugelow (48:18)
That’s a little different. That’s a responsive sound,
yes.
Renata (48:23)
But it’s something that’s very Australian more so than anywhere else. I lived in the US. It’s not the same Linda. I’ll tell you what
Linda Ugelow (48:29)
Yeah. And Denmark, as I mentioned, my
sister lives in Denmark. Everyone goes,
Renata (48:36)
Yes, how funny. Yeah, it’s It’s different.
Linda Ugelow (48:38)
Yeah, they do this little in-breath and it’s like saying, uh-huh,
uh-huh, uh-huh.
Renata (48:44)
Yeah, yeah. And filler words say something about you to others. Others make assumptions. So if you’re very young and you’ll be interviewed for a scholarship. I used to work for a scholarship organization and we used to prep the candidates for the scholarships and they were very young and some of them used a lot of like, like, like, like, like. And the advice that we gave them, it was like you are going to be interviewed by people that are three times your age. So.
practice removing the likes. It’s very hard for them. It’s very hard. Do you have any techniques that you can share to help people remove words?
Linda Ugelow (49:19)
Yes.
I always go back to let’s play with the words we already say. So let me give an example. Let’s play with the words we say. Let’s play with the words we say. Let’s play with the words we say.
Renata (49:46)
lovely I love that okay
Linda Ugelow (49:48)
And when you are aware of all
these different ways that you can say words, you realize every single sentence that comes out of your mouth can have its own cadence. It has its own melody. It has its own expression. I don’t know why that happened to me. You can bring out any kind of character and tone and playfulness and volume to our speech.
that all of a sudden those things become irrelevant because you are playing with the words you wanna say. Now, it could be that you wanna say like, you may wanna say it’s like this or like that. And that can be part of it, but it’s not like it’s habitual. Once it gets you out of the habit, when you start exploring,
Renata (50:28)
I think that helps.
Yeah.
Linda Ugelow (50:48)
how you express yourself in words.
Renata (50:52)
I think it helps both with filler words, also with tone. Yes? Yes.
Linda Ugelow (50:56)
Absolutely, absolutely.
Well, tone, know, tone is one of these things that I think takes a bit more awareness and exploration. In fact, in my, I have a delight in the limelight accelerator that is starting next week, actually. And part of that is loving and transforming the sound of our speaking voice because we all have vocal habits. We are programmed and conditioned to speak the way we.
We do just like we are programmed and conditioned to be afraid or comfortable when we speak. But there is a way that we can.
This is something that I really spent a lot of time with when I was writing my book and it’s my chapter 11, The Breath We Take and The Sounds We Make. I realized as a singer, I was taking vocal lessons every single week for 40 years and I was still afraid to speak and I was afraid to speak because I had reasons and I wasn’t taking time to look at the reasons and clear them away.
That was number one, that I needed to clear the root causes, just like I say around speaking. But number two, I realized that I was being asked to do things that were further along than where I needed to explore. I needed to go back to the very beginning. Like, what does it feel like to make a sound, to pass the air over the vocal cords? Like, where do you find the resonance? Like if you…
I said like, like if you, like if you, I heard that. If you play the violin or if you never play the violin, you do have an idea that there’s a bow and there’s a string. And probably when you pull the bow over the string, it might sound, or it might sound, you know, like smooth. And it’s the same thing with, as we’re,
Renata (52:52)
Yeah. Yeah.
Linda Ugelow (52:59)
passing the air over the vocal folds. We are vibrating them. And depending if we’re tight in it, it like creates this scratchy sound or we go into vocal fry. know, a lot of people are speaking with vocal fry now. That’s a whole other way in corporate. And men do it too. It’s not just women, men do that too. Those are vocal habits that we can bypass. We can learn to expand.
beyond and out of. Not that I don’t have anything completely against vocal fry. I think it’s a little bit hard to listen to all the time, but I don’t mind it once in a while. It’s part of what we do with our voices, but I think it’s limiting. It’s limiting in how you can express yourself. So the tone is important and it all comes back to learning and paying attention to how you make sound, but it does take some
it does take some time and attention to changing your habit.
Renata (54:04)
I love that. I love that so much because I do a lot of interview preparations and people listening are also very keen in the sort of job hunting techniques. There’s just so much about what you said that can be applied for that because usually what people do when they don’t have a career coach or they don’t listen to this podcast is that they have an interview coming up and they will sit down in silence and
prep for questions. They will read questions online, they will Google questions, and then they will read the answers. If they are a little bit better than that, they will write down in silence the answers to their questions and then walk into an interview. And then the voice, because of the fight and flight response, just doesn’t come out quite right. Yeah. So that idea that, you know, your body language, your
Linda Ugelow (54:53)
I know.
Renata (55:01)
facial expressions, your tone, everything will say something about you, will enhance and add layers to your executive presence, not just what you said. And it’s above and beyond the resume that’s sitting on top of the table. Yes, your resume is great and you’ve done a lot in your career, but if you can’t express that with the executive tone that the audience expects of you, you’re not going to get the job.
Linda Ugelow (55:29)
Yes. And even, you know, when you have the job, it makes a huge difference. I was working with somebody who was speaking to all the heads of her industry. It was a male dominated industry. So it was two women. was one of two women in a room full of 70 men. They were making decisions about the whole industry and the training of the industry. Notice that I’m being vague.
Renata (55:37)
Agree.
Mm-hmm.
Linda Ugelow (56:00)
And she was
very concerned about the tone of her voice. She didn’t want to sound like a man. She didn’t want to go down here. And, you know, she didn’t want to like adopt that masculine tone. She wanted to be herself, but she wanted a particular tonality of confidence, competence, authority, that, and warmth, and warmth.
that really resonated and she wanted to be able to step up to the microphone and have her voice fill the room from the very first moment she opened her mouth. And she got amazing feedback. know, people came, I mean, it went beyond her wildest dreams of outcome and people said that was amazing. You know, they believed in her. They wanted to follow her recommendations because she had that
Renata (56:42)
Mm.
Linda Ugelow (56:56)
conviction in her voice. It was so empowering. It is very empowering to trust the sound of your voice.
Renata (57:06)
Yes, I love that. You know what it made me think? It made me think of… I’m never going to find this podcast again because Adam Grant, he just has so many episodes. But there was an episode of Adam Grant’s podcast where he had found his presentation that he did at South to Southwest in the 90s.
Linda Ugelow (57:33)
Mmm
Renata (57:34)
about his idea of a four hour week work, the book that he then wrote. And the presentation is outstanding. Somebody recorded it on like a cassette tape and then kept it forever and then found it and said, I’m going to send it to him and send it to him. And he then had it right now. The reason why there is no other recording of it is that the sound system wasn’t working. The slide deck didn’t work. Nothing worked.
Linda Ugelow (57:39)
Mm-hmm.
Renata (58:05)
Right? And it was one of those situations where it’s like, he’s not well known yet. Nobody knows him. It’s like a tiny room. was kind of there wasn’t a lot of technology involved or sound systems involved. So and he explained how he prepared and he prepared for weeks, you know, in someone’s garage in Texas where he was staying and he was just going over and over and over.
how he was gonna say certain words and he explained the whole process. If anybody knows which episode of his podcast this is, please send it to me because I would love to listen to it again. And that process reminded me, what you just said reminded me of the process he followed. Yeah, which then led to him becoming such a huge influencer with his books and his thoughts and ideas. So there you go.
Linda Ugelow (58:57)
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I just want to like
piggyback on what you said about, you know, that kind of preparation. A lot of people as you, first of all, prepare in their heads instead of out loud, but then they, if, if you’ve got something high stakes, don’t let that be the first time you do a talk. You know, make sure that you’ve got, you set up like three or four, you know, times that you invite people on and don’t necessarily ask for, you can ask for feedback, specific feedback like.
Don’t ever let people give you any kind of feedback. When you’re preparing for talk, ask them, is there any place where you got confused or what was your favorite story or be very specific. But you’re going to feel so much more confident doing a talk in a high stakes environment if it’s not your first time doing it. In fact, there’s one of my mentors, name’s Andrew Davis.
Renata (59:38)
specific wood.
Linda Ugelow (59:55)
He will give a new talk 12 times for free. Like go to your library, go to your rotary or get a couple of people online to do it in front of. And it’s okay if you don’t have it all memorized. I have said, hey, I’m going to be using my notes. I might stop a few times. Just take care of the expectations. People are appreciative to be part of your process and you’re going to feel so much better.
Renata (1:00:23)
Awesome. You know, there’s an online community of women called Lead to Sora, I’ll put the link below, and we do that all the time. So when women need to do a presentation, they go to this community. It’s like, it’s like, I don’t know, hundreds of women from all over the world. A lot of them are from the US and they will say, I need to do this presentation. I want to prep with you ladies. Can you come, you know, on this zoom in a few hours and people will come and give feedback. It’s lovely. It’s a great idea. Yeah.
Linda Ugelow (1:00:51)
That’s amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Renata (1:00:54)
Linda, I love this, you know, this conversation. Thank you so much for reaching out and talking to my audience and talking to me. I really I want to read your book now more than ever. I want to buy this book for my clients. So I will be in touch with you about that. But do you have any final messages that you would like to leave the audience that have just found you?
Linda Ugelow (1:01:21)
Well, if you want that speaker preparation checklist that shows the ways that I warm up and prepare myself before I speak, can go to lindaugalo.com, U-G-E-L-O-W.com forward slash rituals.
Renata (1:01:39)
There will be a link in the episode show notes as well, everybody.
Linda Ugelow (1:01:41)
Okay, great.
And, and otherwise I would say I want you to know that
You’re wonderful the way you are. And I want you to honor and accept yourself exactly where you are in the journey because life is a journey. Our career is a journey and allow it to unfold in magical ways.
Renata (1:02:06)
What a way to finish. Thank you so much for that. So inspirational. Linda, thank you once again for joining us.
Linda Ugelow (1:02:12)
Thank you, Renata.
