During my career, I’ve seen many candidates struggle with a common interview question: “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”
When thinking of strengths and weaknesses for job interviews, try to focus on the underlying question. What this actually provides is the perfect moment to impress the hiring manager.
To be clear, there’s no correct answer. But there is a proper way to answer this common interview question. A good — or even great — answer will depend on your skills and experiences. But your approach and structure to the answer will determine how you come across as a person.
To give the best answer possible, it’s easier if we look at each part of the question separately.
“What is your greatest strength?“
This question allows you to show off attributes and skills that you might not have mentioned yet in the conversation. You can also reinforce the positive image of yourself in the interviewer’s mind.
However, that doesn’t mean you should reel off a list of the qualities you feel make you look good. Despite the positive connotations, there is still a wrong way to answer this question.
Align your strengths to the job description
First, make sure that anything you say is relevant to the company and, more specifically, the role itself. Use the job description as a reference for what you’ll need to carry out the role successfully. Then, make sure you’re ticking off the skills/experience mentioned for the role.
If you haven’t already, research the work environment and company culture. Great places to start include their website and social media channels. This research will help you to understand whether they will be the right fit for you. You can also identify what they’re looking for in terms of attributes.
Sample Answers and Examples Of Strengths
For strengths, include a combination of:
technical skills
transferable skills
personality traits.
The former should be apparent in your CV or cover letter — but the person interviewing you may not have read these thoroughly. It’s always worth reminding them of what you can offer.
If you are applying for a role that demands hard skills that you lack, it’s best to focus on traits and soft skills. Demonstrate how you can apply your skills to the role. You could also say that one of your strengths is the speed at which you pick up new technical skills. Try to use past examples to prove this.
Avoid obvious answers
Remember that this interview is an opportunity for you to stand out from the other applicants in the job search. As such, you should make sure that your listed strengths set you apart from the rest. Don’t say anything obvious that any candidate could claim.
In my opinion, one of the worst so-called strengths that candidates give is: “I work hard”. Believe me, this has the opposite effect to the one the speaker hopes to have. Everybody should feel this about themselves. I doubt any other applicants will have said, “I don’t work hard”. So think about what makes you unique and the best fit for the role.
It’s also important to be specific. It’s good to describe the traits and soft skills that make you an ideal employee. But even if you’re being honest, any vague descriptions could appear insincere. Choose a relevant area to which you can apply these successfully and, ideally, use examples again.
“What is your greatest weakness?”
The weaknesses job interview question is where people are more likely to struggle. The most important thing is to view it as an opportunity to impress, rather than a trap to catch you out.
Many people are tempted to “um” and “ah” as they struggle to think of anything that could be conceived as a weakness. Please do not make this mistake. This is a common interview question and you’ll seem unprepared or that you have a lack of confidence.
Always be honest
Remember to always be honest. Avoid blaming others for the weaknesses you mention, or making excuses for any weaknesses. This approach will suggest that you are not willing to carry out professional development.
Instead, show self-awareness. This is a desirable trait for employers, showing you can do quality work as a team player. It highlights that you are able to carry out self-reflection and improve. Take this chance to show how you learn from constructive criticism and move forward.
Balance honesty with positivity
Of course, there is also the risk of going too far in the other direction. If anything, it’s possible to be too honest and list too many examples of weaknesses. In this case, the person hiring for the role might think you lack the required skills or traits.
Try to find a balance between giving a valid answer and being too harsh. Consider what the interviewer actually wants to learn. For example: you will inevitably struggle with some challenges in your new role. So, it’s important to explain how you have reacted to other problems in the past. The aim is to prove that you have learned from this and improved.
Tell the interviewer something intrinsic about yourself
You shouldn’t try and spin your weaknesses by implying that they are a strength. We’ve all heard, “I’m a perfectionist”, “I work too hard and struggle to have a work-life balance”, or “I need to be busy”. The interviewer’s not going to fall for it.
Instead, use these as a starting point. You can talk about your self-improvement or why you want the job. For example, replace “I’m a perfectionist” with:
“Sometimes I spend too much time focusing on details. This role would allow me to develop my ability to look at the bigger picture.”
Alternatively, discuss any weaknesses you’re working on or any previous problems. Talk about how you went about learning or upskilling as a result. For example, did you take an online course or learn from team members?
Ideally, use a story from your previous work or academic experience to demonstrate your journey. This is what the interviewer really wants to know.
Don’t Be Too Self-Critical
When answering the weaknesses job interview question, avoid using overtly negative words. Do not use words like:
Failed
Unsuccessful
Poor.
Using these won’t help the interviewer’s perception of you — even if it’s happening subconsciously. Instead, give constructive feedback on your experience. Explain that a project or task “didn’t go as well as I’d hoped” or that “results could have been better”.
This approach will show that you hold high standards and are always looking to do the best job possible. Think about how your answer reflect on your attitudes towards time management, problem-solving and work ethic.
After providing an example, let the interviewer know why you believe this happened. What would you do better next time?
Weaknesses: Job Interview Example Answers
Another interview tip is to choose weaknesses that aren’t necessarily relevant to the role. For example:
Is this a role in recruitment or sales, or one that will require good communication skills? If not, then maybe mention that you have a hard time being shy at times. Or state that you’re still working on teamwork and leadership skills.
Will you have to speak on stage or to camera often? If not, you could say that you can be nervous before public speaking.
Will you need to use a particular app, piece of software or functionality? If not, you can admit your technical inexperience. Just make sure that it’s somewhat relevant to the conversation (i.e. these skills were required in a previous role). Or else it might seem strange to mention it in the first place.
This is another case where your research around the company and the role will be used. The more you know about what you’ll need to succeed, the more you’ll know about what is relevant. These can be your listed weaknesses.
Job Interview Weaknesses — It’s A Common Job Interview Question For A Reason
Interviewers choose this question because they can learn a lot about your personality, skills and application. Take the time to structure each of your responses and frame the desired outcome as a positive. This approach will help you give off the best impression possible. That way, you’ll truly stand out from the other candidates in your next interview.
Looking for more tips on answering a common interview question? You might also like:
No matter your field or discipline, a greater understanding of the ways in which the mind works is vital for a leader, as grasping this can have significant impact on your own performance as well as that of your team or company.
Today, I’m joined by Doug Strycharczyk, Dr Peter Clough, and Dr John Perry, authors of ‘Developing Mental Toughness: Improving Performance, Wellbeing and Positive Behaviour in Others‘. The book is now in its third edition and explores how mental toughness relates to leadership, performance, and motivation, amongst other things.
1. Can I ask each of you to introduce yourselves and tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and how you got to do the work you’re doing today?
(1:02) Doug: I’m Doug Strycharczyk. I’m the CEO for AQR International. And it’s a business, which is now predominantly about taking this concept of mental toughness that we’re going to learn about today and taking it to literally everybody on the planet. It applies to everything that anyone does. So, it’s a big mission for us. I’m privileged and delighted to be part of the core research team that has been taking this concept and applying some thought leadership to the idea, and it’s really created this concept that is extremely valuable. So, that’s me.
(1:43) Peter: Hello, I’m Professor Peter Clough. I’m a research psychologist and I initially developed the model back in 2001/2002 and I’m a third of the core research team Doug was just mentioning. So my areas are theoretical work, psychometrics, and applied psychology.
(2:06) John: I’d be the final third, I guess. I come from an academic perspective. So I’ve worked in universities based over in Limerick in Ireland now and I tried to bridge the gap best I can between academia, research, and some of the applied elements. So my background is actually in sports psychology, which of course, mental toughness, also has a background in as does as Peter. So really, what I most enjoy doing is trying to see how we can continue to develop more evidence for how the construct works, how it can affect people and apply that to practitioners. I think this is something that we often miss in academia which is learnt from the practitioner community and which is why it’s been so good to be involved in these kinds of things, which actually stimulates a lot of really good ideas for new bits of research because sometimes people come up with great ideas. And I think, okay, I don’t think there’s evidence for that, but it sounds like a really good idea. So we can go and research and, and kind of be that conduit really between evidence and practice.
2. Today, we’re going to talk about mental toughness. To help kick us off, could you contextualise it for us? What is your definition of “mental toughness”?
(3:36) Doug: Okay, so we’ve developed a definition of mental toughness that contains two or three keywords. First of all, we now know it’s a personality trait, which means it’s in every single one of us. So it matters to every one of us. And it’s a significant factor in our mental responses to stress pressure, opportunity, challenge. And basically, I’m describing everything that faces us in life. And if you look at leadership those four terms apply to leadership especially so. So that’s a broad definition. The most significant bit of it, though, is it’s a personality trait and people are used to the idea of personality. And most people have completed personality questionnaires, especially in recruitment. But I would say that 99% of the time, they’re looking at behavioural aspects of personality and assessing behaviours which really are, “How do I act when something happens?” What we’re looking at here is “How do I think when something happens?” And how do I think is a big factor in how do I act.
So we’re looking at something quite fundamentally important. We’re looking at, for a big part of the explanation of, “Why do I act the way I did?” That’s really its significance. But some people respond to the term toughness a little bit negatively. It’s one of John and Peter’s predecessors in a sense who coined the term “mental toughness”. So it is what it is, but the concept isn’t about toughness in a macho, aggressive sense of the word. It’s about toughness in the resilience and positivity sense of the word. And that’s quite important because it’s bringing together two concepts or two ideas that people don’t often sit together. The idea that “I need to be resilient to deal with what happens in life. But also, it’s going to be a big advantage if I can be positive about what’s happening in life.” So we’re bringing those two ideas together and in doing so, we actually embrace lots of common ideas that are out. So I think one of the big virtues of the way we have articulated the concept is we’ve been able to join up a lot of dots for a lot of people. So that’s really what mental toughness is.
3. Doug just described it as a personality trait. Does that mean some people are optimistic people, some people are pessimistic people or some people are mentally tough people, and you either have this personality trait, or you don’t? Or is it something that I could develop?
(6:13) Peter: I mean, the good news is, you can develop mental toughness. It’s a matter of personality trait. But our understanding of personality in the psychology community is far more plastic than we thought. So the idea that, you know, you’re an extrovert, you’re an extrovert at seven, your extrovert at 17, doesn’t really hold water anymore. So even the established big five personality factors change and modify. And yet, I think people listening will understand as you get older, your personality changes. That is mental toughness. So, some people are born mentally tough and have a mental toughness advantage. Some people are more sensitive, which is, not a weakness. It’s more sensitive and can develop mental toughness. But the third element we put in is, some people don’t want to develop mental toughness, which is being mentally sensitive. So, we’re not pejorative. But yes, you can change it. You can change it for a short period. Look like exam pressure or a job interview. You can change it fundamentally or you can say where you are. So there’s a whole range.
4. How does mental toughness affect the way we behave or out there, particularly for our listeners in the workplace and in careers?
(7:32) John: Yes, I guess tying in with Doug’s earlier suggestion there, is traditionally we kind of focused on adversity and those kind of difficult situations. So through the 4 C’s model, we talked about: control, which would be where someone would stay calm or take responsibility; commitment, where they’re likely to stay the course or remain focused; challenge, where they’re more likely to adapt and seek kind of see a positive mindset, and confidence, where they’re going to back themselves, and communicate effectively. But one of the things we’ve learnt over the years is that it’s not just that this is a group of people who are less affected by extraneous variables, this situation, the pressure and what other people are saying. But there is this more proactive sense as well where mentally tough individuals are more likely to actually enjoy pushing themselves outside of the comfort zone. They’re going to look for those challenges. Stress is not necessarily this bad thing that just happens to us. Stress is a fundamental hormone essentially that gets us up and gets us active and keeps us going.
So what we found from a more positive slant is, it’s not just about getting through the tough times. But mental toughness helps people to feel comfortable in situations where others might feel uncomfortable, being prepared to push yourself outside what you’re currently able to do or what you know you’re able to do. And that’s how you can learn to actually enjoy experiencing bits of uncertainty and some of those manageable stresses and actually gain greater belief in what you’re able to do. And I suppose I’m coming again from a sports background there. But the way you get better is by doing something that you didn’t realise you could do. So that’s kind of how I see mental toughness permeating itself in the workplace and in behaviours, whereas we traditionally thought it was about, when it’s really tough, you stick at it. It’s actually much more positive and proactive than that.
Very recently, we had, at the London Marathon here in London, I’m having the pleasure of recording from London. And you saw so many people exhibiting this mental toughness: elite athletes, people of all shapes and sizes, people doing their tenth marathon or their first, but pushing themselves further and harder and it not being easy, but them excelling and getting huge smiles at the finish line and there were all of those photos that we shared on social media because they had done something very difficult and completed it. And that’s not to say, I’m sure, they went struggles and challenges along the way. But it was a lovely in-person illustration of people fighting a tough battle and succeeding.
5. I must say when I first read the title, I did think of those connotations of toughness, about it perhaps being a very masculine trait, about not expressing emotion, but that doesn’t really fit with your definition at all, does it?
(10:59) Doug: No. Not at all. I have an advantage that might be a disadvantage. I’m a little bit older than any of you – I’m probably older than any of the listeners you’re going to have but when I first started work, I was sent on a training course and the training course was about Scientific Management Theory. You don’t hear about it anymore, except perhaps in academic classes, talk about the history of leadership as a character called FW Taylor at his belief that if you told people exactly what you expected from them, then you can demand that from them. We’ve moved on a long way since then. And in fact, we probably do almost as much research on leadership as we do on mental toughness because it’s one of the biggest areas of application. And what we’ve learnt is that within all the mishmash of theory and speculation about what is leadership, in fact, two ideas come shining through. One is it’s about performance, trying to achieve something out of the ordinary. Otherwise, there’s no point in leadership.
And the second thing is, you’re going to do it through engaging with people and that’s about motivating them. So if you look at that, both of those are really challenging activities because they don’t come easy. So I’m just going to, for the second, go round the mental toughness concept. It’s got eight factors. So the factors are, broadly: have I got a sense of self-worth, can I do it? A leader has to have that. It’s going to be trouble, so I’m going to find emotional pressures. Can I manage my emotions and maintain points? A leader has to have that. Now, if I’m going to perform and get high performance, I need to know where I’m going, so I need to have a goal orientation. That’s part of mental toughness. And then, if I’m going to go get there, I know I’m going to have to make some effort and get other people to make an effort. That’s about achievement orientation.
And then, in order to do something out of the ordinary, I’ve got to do something that hasn’t been done before. So I need to, to some extent, be prepared to take risks, not reckless risks, but push the boundaries. That’s an aspect of mental toughness and they’re not all of these things will work. Now I can give up and they don’t work or I can say “Right, we didn’t do well there. How can we do it better?” That’s about learning orientation. That’s another aspect to mental toughness. And then finally, we come around to, “Okay, the world’s full of opportunities. I’m the person who’s bringing leadership to this group, have I got the abilities to take us there, and have I got the interpersonal confidence to bring people with me.” So, I’ve just described the eight aspects of mental toughness. The eight factors of mental toughness. Every single one of them is crucially important for leadership.
There’s another dimension in this. When we talk about mental toughness, yes, it’s an inherited trait. But it’s also something that is capable of being developed, and we learn that from being in an environment. So, leaders shape our environment. So here I’m talking about culture. So when I talk about resilience and positivity, I don’t know of an organisation I’ve ever dealt with that doesn’t want resilience and positivity as aspects of his culture. And that’s going to come from the leadership. To have those elements present in the leadership of an organisation, to be able to influence the content of the organisation, and by that I mean, its employees, is extremely significant. But again, there’s another element, that is, self-awareness. And we’ve not used that phrase at the moment yet, but it’s the big phrase in this. It’s one thing to know that there is mental toughness and what mental toughness is. It’s another to understand your own. And because mental toughness sits in the head, it can be invisible.
So, you can get people, who are mentally tough to fail at leadership and they fail because they’re not self-aware. So a very simple example might be, okay, I’ve got to my position and I know I’m the perfect person to lead this group because I’m a real go-getter. And then, when I turn to my colleagues or my followers, I say, “We’ve got a big challenge. I can do it. Why can’t you?” I mean, every time I use that phrase in the presentation, everybody looks at each other, and nods, and smiles. Because you hear that phrase everywhere. And to me, that’s a little indication of, there’s a mentally tough individual. It doesn’t understand his or her mental toughness. So you’ve asked a really, really, really good question there, massively complex, but I’m going to have to stop there or else I’ll take over the whole podcast.
6. Is there anything actionable that I can do when I get back to my desk, or when I’m back with my team? So that not only am I more resilient myself, but I’m setting a good example.
(16:08) Peter: I mean, there’s lots there. Relating that to your marathon running mention, I’d actually did my Ph.D. on people run marathons, believe it or not, in the late 80s. I started off thinking it was about resilience: hanging in, dealing with horror, and they run because they enjoy it, mostly. And it is, you hit on it, when it’s a smile on my face and it’s the achievement. So when you see somebody being resilient dealing with pressure, they look shattered. When somebody’s going in a more mental toughness element that they look positive that they’re reassured. So it sounds here at the outset, a fairly negative concept is a positive concept.
So, to answer your question, it’s about enjoying what you’re doing. Putting yourself in a position where if some people enjoy challenge, when they enjoy challenge it’s about balancing that so that people don’t overstretch themselves and don’t burn themselves out, Well, when I’m talking to undergraduates, there’s no such thing as a stressful situation. As John points out, stress is part of life. Stress is neither good nor bad. What you find stressful, what each of the listeners finds stressful is different from what I find stressful.
So it comes back to that self-awareness: “where are my pinch points?” and working on the pinch points. So, my first annual publication was the classic, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So, it’s about self-awareness, it’s understanding yourself and it’s working on those areas. So it’s not just becoming mentally tough. We get frustrated when people talk about “sucking it up” or just dealing with pressure, or the classic, “don’t worry.” – how to make somebody worry: tell them not to worry. So it’s dealing with what’s going on, understanding yourself, understanding the situation, and then putting in a whole range of different methods. There’s positive thinking, there’s anxiety control, there’s relaxation, there’s visualisation – all based on self-awareness. I’ll borrow one of John’s phrases: all these techniques work, but they don’t all work for everybody. So it’s finding out what works for you, experimenting and taking your time.
Funny enough, if it was that easy, everybody would do it. People understand about diet and they understand about exercise. But if you’re developing your mental toughness, there are no quick fixes. There are slow fixes and there’s monitoring. So hopefully that makes sense. It’s working out what you want to do, bit by bit, inching forward because the fundamental is understanding yourself and actually understanding you don’t enjoy the situation. As an example, when I first started out working with elite swimmers, Olympic swimmers, you’d think what I’d do as a mental toughness expert is say, “Keep going”. But actually, the first question is, “Do you want to do this? Do you want to get up at five’o’clock every morning and swim for four hours?”. Some don’t, some do. So it’s actually more mentally tough sometimes not to do it, to change the situation. And we’re seeing a lot of that with COVID. People changing their working habits, changing their jobs. It’s not being sensitive to change – actually sometimes that’s more mentally tough. So it’s very complex but these techniques, the whole range of techniques, goal setting, do it step by step, work out what works, and don’t be surprised that it works for you. So for example, my wife is a physiotherapist and very keen on yoga. It works spectacularly well for her, but terribly for me! I just fall over! So what we have here is: fit the individual. It’s individual differences based on the foundation.
7. A lot of people are thinking about their own leadership traits at this time and what they can do in a period of great uncertainty, to be a better leader. Is this something that’s come up? Is this something that you’ve found people questioning, wanting more advice and guidance on?
(20:49) John: Certainly what the pandemic has given everybody is a period of reflection. And reflection can be one of the most powerful tools available to us. So, when we talk about mental toughness, Peter was talking earlier about how some individuals might be sensitive and might be content with that. Doug was talking about how some individuals might be mentally tough but lacking self-awareness. And the greatest development tool you can have is to understand yourself. So recognising your own attributes, your own traits, isn’t necessarily about wanting to change who you are or change aspects of your personality, but think, “Okay. How can I align elements of what I do to what I know I’m good at?”
If I undertake an assessment, say for mental toughness, and I find that actually I’m very good at managing my emotions and I’m very good at kind of taking control of situations, then maybe there are elements of my work and my career that I can better align to that. And I think that’s what this is giving people an opportunity to do. The more self-aware people will have identified better opportunities where they can develop individually. And what we’ve seen over the course of the pandemic is, there’s no huge great shift. It hasn’t broken every one. It hasn’t made everyone stronger, but that has perhaps been a little bit more of a separation where there is a mental toughness advantage. If you experience a lot of change, a lot of uncertainty, perhaps a lot of adversity and you’re already mentally tough, then you learn and you grow and you might become more mentally tough.
If you experience that and you don’t have appropriate support around you and you’re mentally sensitive, then it might actually make you more sensitive. So, I think that’s kind of what’s happened over the past 18 months to two years, where the opportunity for reflection has been great for some, but I do think we’ve kind of seen this polarisation a little bit in terms of people’s mental toughness. The important element there was for the mentally sensitive; if they’re not appropriately supported and mentally sensitive, then we have seen a little bit more of a decline towards the bottom end there.
8. What are the signs that the leader might want to try and be more self-reflective? Is there anything that people should be aware of, or considering their own behaviour or mental state, that they might want to take some time out and reflect?
[(23:53)] Doug: It’s a really good question, Chloe. And I can link it to the previous question because one of the things that we’ve observed in the 18 months of the pandemic. In the first nine months, business obviously slowed, almost stopped at times, but about 90% of our business came from leaders – people in leadership roles. That wasn’t the case beforehand. Leaders were applying mental toughness to their organisation and not so much to themselves.
Suddenly, they were saying, “I’m struggling. I find myself in a completely different situation. I don’t understand why I’m not dealing well with it.” And I think that’s the first thing. The first point is: is there something that you’re doing or not doing that’s creating a consequence for your effectiveness? When I’ve described the eight factors before, the answer will always lie in one of those eight factors. What we’ve found very, very useful, is that, when we talk mental toughness, it does consist of those eight factors. So there’s no such thing really as “you are mentally tough or mentally sensitive”. You’re mentally tough or mentally sensitive on any of those eight factors. So, you can be mentally tough on six of them and mentally sensitive on two of them. And you might, through your life, have learnt how to cope with those two, but COVID suddenly created a situation that our coping mechanism no longer works and suddenly you’ve got a problem.
So again, we come back to this idea of self-awareness. What is it? What is my profile? Where am I mentally tough, and where am I mentally sensitive? And where will my mentally sensitivity create a problem for me in time? And what can I do about it? And where will my mental toughness create a problem for me in time and what can I do about it? And it’s incredibly hard to create that self-awareness. And so one of the things that the three of us have produced is, we’ve been managed to create a very high-quality psychometric measure. It can give you a very good insight into your mental toughness down to that level of those eight factors. And, like any psychometric measures, it’s not entirely foolproof. It does need consideration and reflection. But it is probably the most important advancement in helping people to become aware of who they are in terms of this important quality. So, the starting point has to be, “Why am I suddenly struggling? Why am I not doing what I expect to do?” And part of the answer, maybe the whole of the answer , will be found in your mental toughness and in your mental approach to events.
9. Of course, leaders aren’t just about looking inwards. They’re also the ones who guide and support and mentor a team. As a leader, what can you do if you can see your team perhaps needs some development or perhaps even more than that, someone’s struggling? How can you coach that in someone else?
(26:55) John: In terms of what a leader can do to support somebody when perhaps they’re becoming a little bit overwhelmed, or stressed, or might look like they’re becoming burnt out, or even bored, I suppose, is recognising that there’s an interaction between perceived demand and perceived resource. And I always kind of imagine these two things as a couple of test tubes or measuring jugs that can fill up and empty at any point. Now, as long as the perceived resource is greater than the perceived demand, that person will keep going. Now, what I would suggest is: we don’t want to just drain away either perceived demand all the time and just say, “Well, let’s wrap everybody in cotton-wool and make the world and lovely, fluffily place”, because ultimately something bad will come along and they’re less able to deal with it. So, we want that stress, that requirement, to be there. So, the other option is, we need to find ways of filling up that perceived resource. Mental toughness is a really big contributor to that. I think a good starting point is to assess their mental toughness, be aware of their own profile.
As Doug said, it’s not about being really mentally tough or really mentally sensitive. Almost everybody that takes it [the test] has so many areas where they’re tougher and some areas where they’re more sensitive. But once you know that, you can work on how you maximise your mental toughness, how you protect your sensitivities and consider ways that you might then develop that mental toughness. And in doing so, you can kind of build up your resource to be able to manage that. So as a leader, if I can help those in the team to build their own personal perceived resource, they’ll manage with higher demands and, even better if their perceived resource is much greater than the demands, they have resource left over to help support other people. Because when you’re kind of using all of your resource to manage getting through each day and somebody comes to you with a problem – and this is a really big one for leader – you just don’t have enough left to be able to offer them it. So, leaders can develop their own resource and help members of their team develop their own resource, so, hopefully, we would have this greater supply of mental toughness, that can kind of be shared because essentially, it means that, if I’m more mentally tough and somebody’s struggling, I’m able to support them. If I’m just about keeping my head above water myself, I don’t really have the emotional mental energy to be able to deal with somebody else’s troubles.
10. Do you have any advice for those either seeking to support their team or navigate the challenges of what’s been a very difficult, for many, eighteen months?
(30:16) Peter: I think it’s about, as we keep saying, understanding your team, but being aware about the differences and asking people what they want. Too often organisations put on a confidence-building course, or “let’s all do assertiveness”, and we’re back to that. Some people need it, but then the people who need it often don’t want to do it. And there’s a whole range. Just try to get people to understand themselves. You understand the rest of the team. And just taking care because people are vulnerable.
Back to this idea: has everybody suffered in COVID? No. People have had challenges. I was reading a recent paper and some people prospered. You know, if you’re a stable introvert, this is an ideal environment. If you’re an extravert, who is slightly sensitive, then it’s more complex. So, it’s about not putting in these quick fixes, such as “We’ll have a ‘Wear a funny tie day’”. Because for some people that feels patronising and difficult. Some people think it’s the best thing in the world. So, I think that that’s the issue. The last bit: it’s not being driven by the noisy people. The noisy people are fine. There’s nothing wrong with them. But they’ll put forward their points of view. The interesting thing’s the people you don’t know. If you sit around, have a list of people you work with and you know a lot about Ben and nothing about Fred. Now that might be what Fred wants as ideal but that’s the starting point.
People think they know people and also people think they know people from the outside stereotypes, you know. With an accent like mine, you think I’m as tough as old boots and the nothing would rattle me and that could be true, or may not be true. And then it breaks into more diversity issues. You know, is that normal for that particular group? And we’re back to: we’re all human beings, we’re all individuals, let’s get around that. So, it’s targeted interventions, understanding, listening and being aware some people just don’t want to be involved in such a thing. That doesn’t make them bad. They’re just fine.
The starting point is, psychologists sometimes overegg the problems, overegg the clinical conditions. At certain parties, most people are okay most of the time. If you ask people, “Do you have a problem?” People will answer, “Yes.” Also, these really are things where you’re struggling where people would tick a box, but most people are okay. Start on that basis. Some people need a lot of help. Some people need a little help but don’t try. It takes me back to that “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.”
11. I’d like to finish on a question that we ask all of our guests, which is, what do you think are the three qualities that make a good leader? And crucially, do you think these qualities have changed as a result of the pandemic?
(33:19) Doug: Okay. So if you’re a leader and you think you’re a factor in producing sublime performance and a fantastic work environment, the starting point is: what am I bringing to this? How am I going to do this? So we’ve mentioned it several times: self-awareness. And that is at the heart of our work. And self-awareness becomes more involved because really what leaders are doing is helping us to plot our path through a lot of change. We talked about change all the time, but these days it’s not so much about change – it’s about the pace of change. And you think about the pandemic, it just arrived out of nowhere. And in a couple of months, it changed all our lives. That’s what threw people. It’s the speed at which it happened, it all happens. And, you know, I’m just mindful of a comment I heard the other day, that the pace of change now has never been greater. The bad news is, it’s never going to be as slow as this again. So we think mental self-awareness is going to be more and more important for leaders. They have to become self-aware about that.
(34:34) Peter: I would go reality. So, reality testing, understanding the world as it is. So by that, there’s a lot of push towards positive psychology, which is fine. We’re in the positive psychology of domain. The example I give when I’m physically training: I put on a tutu and think positive that I’m going to be a great ballerina. And I’m not, because there are skills and there are resources and the whole lot. So, you’re positively thinking, “this isn’t a problem”, but it can be a problem. So it’s not about just inspiring people to be positive and motivated. It’s doing a skills audit. It’s supporting people. It’s looking at what people can do.
And sometimes that’s seen as negative. When I’m working with kids I do get, again, a bit frustrated about “you can be anything you want to be” – you can’t! It’s simple. I cannot be a basketball player and I probably can’t run marathons. Now, that sort of positive thinking doesn’t help to that extent. It’s about that reality without being negative and to some extent, yeah, it’s about letting yourself off the hook in these conditions. We all make mistakes. None of us are perfect. We get a bit stroppy and so does everybody else. So it’s not about this perfection. Is there a perfect way of dealing with what’s going on? No, you give it a go, you review. And the mental toughness concept was in the Times when it first came out. They interviewed me and it was seen to some extent, as I’m from Hull [north of England], to be a northern measure and a northern concept because it’s not just about thinking about all the positives you have: it’s also thinking about your negatives you have. Putting them together, and dealing with them. So that’s my starting point. Reality without negativity.
(36:34) John: From my own experience, I’d probably fall on compassion. I think you have to care for people, and they have to know you care and people are clever. They can spot when somebody is just paying lip service and saying “I’ve stuck a well-being seminar on”. I suppose from my own sort of leadership experiences, where I think the benefits come from, is that if you genuinely care for people, and they know that you genuinely care and you want them to do well, they’ll let you off. That means when you do take a risk, when you make a bad decision, when it messes up, when you’ve probably created more hassle for everybody, they know you’re coming from the right place. So it kind of gives you that credit in the long run as well. And I think when these kinds of things happen, leaders who were well respected and had shown care in the past when lockdowns happened, and everything goes wrong and everybody’s having to do this, that or the other and probably getting a bit fed up, I feel like life is probably a little bit easier for those leaders who built up that credit from how they’ve treated people in the past.
Doug Strycharczyk, Peter Clough and John Perry are co-authors of ‘Developing Mental Toughness: Strategies to Improve Performance, Resilience and Wellbeing in Individuals and Organizations’, which is available in hardback, paperback or as an ebook here. Use code HAYS20 for a 20% discount.
Did you enjoy this podcast? Here is some related content that you may be interested in:
From succeeding in your current role to finding a new job, we always face challenges and obstacles in the world of work. Frustration, anxiety, and feelings of powerlessness can leave many other struggling to perform at our best.
Today, I’m joined by Doug Strycharczyk and Dr Peter Clough, whose work in psychology led them to co-author the book ‘Developing Mental Toughness: Improving Performance, Wellbeing and Positive Behaviour in Others’.
Now in its third edition, the book explores how mental toughness relates to employability, performance and motivation, amongst other things. Doug and Peter will be discussing psychology in the workplace and the importance of developing one’s own mental toughness during your career.
1. Before we begin, can each of you please introduce yourself quickly to our listeners.
(1:19) Doug: Okay, I’ll start. I’m Doug Strycharczyk. I’m the CEO for AQR International, and the core of our work today is to take this concept, mental toughness, around the world. As a measure of its impact, we are now working in 81, and if we did this next week, it will be 82 countries, around the world. So, it gives you a measure of the growth of the concept around the world.
But within the context of this podcast, I’m privileged and proud to be associated with Peter. I’ve worked with Peter for about 30 years and another colleague, Dr. John Perry. And, I think we can lay claim to be thought leaders globally for this concept. I’m a practitioner more than an academic, but a lot of their academic credentials and approaches have rubbed off on me.
(2:12) Peter: I’m Professor Peter Clough. I developed the 4 C’s of mental toughness in the early 2000s. I’m a long-term academic and a research academic. But before that, I was also a paid professional sport and was a drummer in a seminal punk band. So, a varied career and it all ties in because I’ve always been interested in working with Doug and John in performance, well-being, and toughness.
2. We’re here to talk about mental toughness today. So, could you tell us what the term “mental toughness” means?
(2:54) Doug: First of all, I’ll just tackle the elephant in the room. The word “toughness” seems to upset some people and that varies around the world. In some parts of the world, they just take the concept in their stride. When we talk about “mental toughness”, we’re talking about a personality trait – I’ll come back to that in a minute – which explains to a large extent how we approach things mentally when faced with a challenge, opportunity, setback, threats, and problems. Those words that I’ve just used pretty much typify most of our experiences of life. It’s a blend of things that go wrong and opportunity and challenges.
So, it embraces two ideas. One is resilience, and the other one is positivity. So, the idea of resilience is, “I can deal with things that go wrong” while positivity is “I can see the sunshine in the clouds, and I know that tomorrow will be a better day.” These two ideas, which come together, create this notion of mental toughness. When we talk about mental toughness, we’re not talking about it in the sense of being match or aggressive. We’re talking about it in terms of being able to deal with life and thrive in life.
So, if I just come back to this term “personality” – and Peter’s going to explore that a little bit more in a moment – most people, especially in the world of careers and employability are familiar with completing personality measures. Most of the time those personality ideas and personality measures are what we would call behavioural measures. In other words, they are assessing how we act when things happen to us and around us. Of course, for a prospective employer that’s an important thing to understand. I don’t know the individual and here is the ability to kind of predict their behaviour.
Well, we’re looking at here is how we think when things happen to us and around us, and we know that thinking is very often a precursor to our behaviour. So, it’s a more fundamental aspect of personality in many ways. It reflects what employers will often describe as attitude. Very often, when you talk to employers and say, “What is the secret ingredient that makes a great employee?”, the answer you get is “attitude”. And what we’re talking about here is mental attitude.
(5:30) Peter: Sorry. If it’s fine, I’ll build upon what Doug said. When we talk about mental toughness, the model we’ve developed over the years is called a ‘4 C’s model of Mental Toughness’. Mental toughness is a narrow personality trait and people will be familiar, probably, with the Big Five. So, it’s a more targeted and specific. The first thing I really want to add into what Doug’s saying is personality traits are not what we thought they were 20 years ago. There’s more plasticity. So it can be developed. People have a starting point, they have a functionality, but it can change over time. And we know that the Big Five personality measures change over time.
When we’re talking about the 4 C’s model, it’s the easiest thing in the world to say somebody is lacking mental toughness or “he’s mentally tough”. I come from a sports background a long time ago and that’s a question I was often asked by coaches: “on a 1 to 10 scale, how tough are they?”. And it’s far more complex than that. The model is more complex, individuals are more complex than that. So there’s the 4 C’s, which are all independent to some extent.
So, you can be high on one, low on the other and you build up a profile. I’ll briefly describe and come back if we need to. We’ve got Control, Commitment, Challenging, and Confidence. And each of those is made up of eight factors. So, it’s nuanced. We go back to what Doug was saying, the “mental toughness” name, sometimes people think it’s a simpler model than it is, but it’s actually very sophisticated. It gets under the skin of people.
We’re trying to find out what people are thinking and it’s one of the great problems. A lot of the early research on mental toughness was getting coaches to rate the mental toughness of players. The coaches saw it very differently than the players themselves! So, unless you get some understanding of what’s inside somebody’s head, it’s hard to make a judgement on somebody’s mental toughness. So, we’ve got a general background, and then the specific model.
3. What are the various factors that contribute to a person’s mental toughness?
(7:55) Doug: Okay, perhaps I’ll start with that. So, if you look at the 4 C’s model that Peter has described. He said that there are four constructs, and each of those constructs has two factors. I’m going to look at it from the perspective of an employer and somebody who’s seeking to develop their career or find a job.
So, the first of the constructs is Control, and that’s really describing to what extent do I feel in sufficient control of me and my life to be able to achieve what I want – Henry Ford and his very famous saying, “If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re probably right.” So, our ability to do things often isn’t anything to do with our skills or knowledge, or ability. It’s to do with what’s going on in our heads.
The first of those elements,:”Do I think I can do it?”. Some people, despite having the most wonderful set of qualities often think they can’t. So, the first element is: “Can I do it?”. The second element is when I’m under pressure, I’m not going to allow my emotions to rule my actions, or do I manage somehow to manage my emotional responses?
Then the second element is Commitment and that’s very simply “Am I somebody who understands what I’m trying to achieve? Do I have a goal? Can I visualise and articulate that goal? And if I have that goal, the second factor is, can I actually make the effort? Am I prepared mentally to make the effort to deliver that goal? Those two factors are Control and Commitment, and those two broadly equate to the thing I was describing earlier ─ resilience. That helps us to survive. When things happen, these two can help us manage what’s going on.
However, the other two elements help us to thrive. They are the positive elements. The first of those is Challenge, and that’s got two elements. One is risk orientation, and that isn’t about taking huge reckless risks, this is about being prepared to push yourself, stretch yourself, push back boundaries, try new things, meet new people, learn new skills and techniques. These are things that employers value. This is all part of employability.
And then even when you do that, you don’t always get it right. Some people when they don’t succeed, let’s say when they start a course and it doesn’t work, they give it up. If they gave it up and never go back, then they still lost a lot of their time. Some people will say, “Hang on, I really need to master that skill. This is the reason why it didn’t work the first time. I’m going back to have another go.” They’re learning from their experiences. And again, that’s a really important quality that employers value. If you’re an individual hoping to develop a career, these are the things that employers are looking for. These are the things that you need somehow to be able to present to an employer. And then, the final element is Confidence, and that’s got two bits. One is confidence in abilities. The curiosity here, and I’ve often seen in all my career, is you have incredibly talented people who don’t think they’re talented, and they do themselves down.
It’s a measure of self-belief. And then the final component is interpersonal confidence. If you’ve got it and you’ve got something that you can offer to other people, to employers, to colleagues, you need to engage with them. So, that’s about engaging with them and influencing them as much as they do you. So, you don’t find yourself squeezed out of a discussion or disregard it.
These are the eight components and are very important for an employer. If you speak to most employers and give them that as a checklist and say, “Which were those would you like?”, they’ll tick every box. If you are a person trying to find a job, that’s a checklist of the things that the employer is looking for. If you’re in a job and you’re hoping to prosper in your career, that’s also a checklist of the things you need to attend to,if you’re really going to progress in your career. That’s a quick introduction to those eight factors.
4. So, you took us through the 4 C’s: control, commitment, challenge, confidence. Should you use them as, I suppose, a checklist of sorts? What are the signs that somebody needs to work on their mental toughness? Should they go through those and take them off and identify areas where they need to work on it?
[(12:31)] Peter: I think the starting point to “how do you know if you need more mental toughness?” is what’s going on in somebody’s head. So, the opposite end of mental toughness isn’t weakness, it’s sensitivity. There’s lots of sensitive folks who were very happy, who are performing really well. Yes, mentally tough people have a certain advantage in high-pressure situations, and developing a little bit more mental toughness is always quite useful.
So, when you look at those elements, it’s more about understanding when it goes the wrong way, it’s going wrong. Take one example, say interpersonal confidence. You’re unhappy at work, it’s not functioning very well. It could be that you’re not talking to people, you’re not receiving the help you need and you’re not pushing information upwards. So, it’s really about getting 360 degrees of feedback of what’s going on. I’m just using it as a way of understanding your own internal state.
None of these models are perfect, but it gives us a shared language. So, you can look at all those things and it’s really important people don’t beat themselves up for not being mentally tough or high on all 4 C’s, because you don’t have to be. None of us are perfect. And even somebody who was extremely mentally tough has drawbacks. There’s advantages of being sensitive. There’s disadvantages of being tough. It’s just understanding, not being judgey. If you have a recurring pattern of something going wrong, it’s trying to understand and explain and discuss with people what mechanisms could be taking place.
5. Is it possible for someone to develop their mental toughness? And if so, how does someone go about it?
(14:26) Doug: Okay, so, it’s a really interesting question. Actually, it covers another question. Firstly, you can develop mental toughness and the techniques are pretty well-known. They rest on things like positive thinking, visualisation, anxiety control, the traditional stress management stuff. Then, ones that are often omitted are attentional control and goal setting. Those are the common tools and techniques that you can use.
However, there’s a more fundamental question: do I want to change my mental toughness? That has two implications. Firstly, Peter said there are people who are mentally sensitive and mentally tough. Actually, when you look at those eight factors I described before, you could be mentally tough on some of them and mentally sensitive on others. It’s understanding yourself to the extent that you understand where, what your profile is and what does it mean for what you’re trying to achieve. Not every area of mental sensitivity is going to hold you back, but one of them might. Not every area of mental toughness is helping you to propel your career forward and you need to work that out and understand that.
Then, the second bit is reflection. Is it important for me to do something about my mental toughness profile and my mental sensitivity profile in order for me to achieve what I want to achieve in life? If it isn’t, some people do not want to change. They’re quite happy the way they are. They just want to learn to cope with the days when it all goes wrong or a problem arises. That’s fine. There are also people who say, “Right, in order to be more successful with what I want to achieve, I need to change in some way.” Now, if they’re minded to change – and that’s important! You can’t change somebody who doesn’t want to change. But if they are minded to change, then those tools and techniques can work.
The only downside is there’s a lot of experimentation required. These techniques work, but they don’t all work for all people. And sometimes the progress in changing can seem painfully slow. It’s got a long answer to a very simple question, but we’ve tried to cover the different aspects of your question, too.
6. You mentioned different profiles that are mentally tough or mentally sensitive. Are there any common ways in which people with these different profiles can interact in the workplace? And if so, how?
(17:11) Peter: Doug’s got a lot more experience and actual practical cases in this area, but, some psychological truth is we function better with people who are very similar to us. Even if we don’t know they’re similar to us. A mentally tough person communicates more effectively with another mentally tough person. They see the world the same way in that respect, and you get this level of misunderstanding.
So, mentally tough people can be dismissive of sensitive people who find things a struggle. Sensitive people can be scared of mentally tough people because they always seem really together. The key here is, we’re all human beings. We all have doubts. We all have issues. We all make mistakes. But understanding is key – not everybody has to be the same. We live in a world which is moving towards a more diverse world.
Actually, a lot of our work in mental toughness is surprisingly somewhat about diversity. We don’t want to produce an army of mentally tough people stomping around. What we want is a range and we look at the overall mental toughness of a team, the score for everybody. But when I pass over to Doug, the bottom line is respect for different styles. Some people are sensitive, most people in the middle by definition, some are tough. Understanding that and respecting it [is important] because we all have different strengths and we all have different development needs. I’ll pass to Doug.
(18:40) Doug: Okay. Thank you, Peter. So, just to give it some very immediate context. One of the things we’ve noticed in our work in the last 18 months is that we’ve had more enquiries from leaders than almost any other group. The enquiries are nearly always, “I’ve been able to operate successfully for many, many years. COVID comes along and suddenly, I’m not as effective as I used to be. Why not?” That’s an issue of self-awareness. I’m going to illustrate this with just looking at one of the factors.
So, one of the factors is called ‘live control”. It’s where the sense of can-do sits. People who are mentally tough on life control are people who tend to be very high achievers. They’re not frightened about anything. If you ask them to do something that they’ve never done before, their immediate response is “yeah, I’ll have a go.” Because they will always have a go, they tend to achieve more than the average person. And so, they tend to get a reputation as the achievers: “If I’ve got a difficult job, give it to so-and-so”. They are usually very comfortable. They like this sort of self-image or the self-perception of somebody that can get things going.
But if they’re working with other people, sometimes – and this is what Peter was alluding to, that you can have sometimes downsides attached to being mentally tough – sometimes that approach, when they’re all gung-ho and wanting to get on with things, what they want to do with other people is to turn around and say, “Well, I can do it. Why can’t you?”. And that doesn’t exactly motivate people around them, that switches them off. That’s an example of, “I don’t understand my own mental toughness and I don’t really understand why somebody else is not responding to me the way I would have responded.”
Similarly, a person is mentally sensitive, who’s got a low level of mental toughness in terms of life control, they’re the sort of people who are very cautious, very hesitant about doing anything. They ask all the if’s and but’s questions and so on before they would even consider doing something that the more mentally tough person would just get on with. They will look at the more mentally tough individual and say, “Why is he shouting at me? Why are they jumping up and down? Why do they want to get on with this before I’m ready to get on with it? I don’t understand.”
And so, you can often have this kind of gap between people who are mentally tough and mentally sensitive, and they don’t realise that ─ if you like, if you want to call it a problem ─ the problem lies within them because they don’t understand themselves and they don’t understand the implications of that, for the way that they see other people. So, what we are really trying to do here with the mental toughness concept is bring out into the open this quality that is just hidden. It’s invisible. It’s in our heads. We can’t see it. We can see behaviour. We can describe behaviour. We can describe the emotions. We have the greatest of difficulty of dealing with mental toughness because it’s invisible.
And so, in creating the eight-factor framework, we’ve given people a language and an understanding of what’s going on in their heads. We’ve also been very successful at developing psychometric measure, the MTQ Plus, which is very effective at helping people to become self-aware and to understand the mental toughness and mental sensitivity in others. Like most psychometric measures, it needs to be handled properly and professionally. But it’s beginning to give us the ability to understand ourselves better and understand other people better.
7. Why is it important that we understand not only our own mental toughness but also our colleagues’ as well?
(22:32) Peter: I think there’s two elements because clearly in business, people are interested in efficiency and productivity, and that’s fine. Also understanding why things aren’t working, and the more tools and more information you’ve got [the better], because people make assumptions. Why are some are not delivering? They’ll make guesses, they’re lazy, they’ve got other things on their mind, but having something to base it on [is important]. The other element is more and more important. It is wellbeing.
So, somebody who is really well-suited to what they’re doing and is managed appropriately and a leader who is comfortable in their own skin will probably have higher levels of wellbeing. That won’t necessarily relate to better business outputs, but it’s an end in itself, more and more. I’m an occupational psychologist by training. In the 1980s, it was all about business efficiency. Now, wellbeing itself is really important. Those are two elements running side-by-side. So, understanding where you are, understanding where people are, and helping people to achieve their full potential, both in their careers and in their wider wellbeing is why it’s important to understand.
(23:46) Doug: And I would add something. It’s to do with this phrase “attitude”. I think I said before, when you go to speak to employers and ask them, “what is the secret ingredient of a great employee?”, the answer you nearly always get is “attitude”. I won’t name the organisation, but not so long ago, I worked with an organisation that sold a major division, in fact, it was more than 50% of the business, to its competitors.
One of the things they did before they let go of the division was to go through that organisation and identify the people with a great attitude and transferred them into the bit that wasn’t being sold. Because that’s the one quality they value more than anything else. If you’ve got a great attitude, you will learn new skills, you apply your skills, you’ll be highly responsive, you’ll be resilient, you’ll be positive. And I don’t know of an organisation that doesn’t have resilience and positivity as two key components in its culture.
So, from an employer’s perspective, this is what you’re looking for. This is one of the things you’re really looking for. But as I said before, it’s invisible. You can’t see it. From an employee’s perspective, you develop in your career. You need to understand to a significant extent that this is what makes you valuable. And as Peter said, we’re a mixture of these qualities. We were mentally tough and mentally sensitive. It doesn’t matter that you’re mentally sensitive up to a point. What matters is, “Do you understand your mental sensitivity? And have you developed approaches that minimise any negative consequences of that?”. Employers will really appreciate that. They just want the most flexible employee that they can get. From the employee’s perspective, what matters is “Can I offer employers this bundle of qualities that they desperately value?”
8. We know that some of our listeners find job interviews challenging, and that obviously links to confidence as well. How would you suggest someone approach a job interview? How can they make sure that they’re prepared for it mentally?
(26:04) Peter: I think, again, lots of scope with different people. So, somebody who’ss mentally tough sees a job interview, and probably even a podcast, as a way to put the information across: “Great. I’m going to talk about myself for a bit”. Other people see it as an opportunity to fail. So I come from a sports psychology background many years ago. It’s the “what if’s”. People are scared of interviews and are really sensitive about interviews – “What if it all goes wrong? What if they ask me a difficult question? What if I don’t come across [well]? What if my dress sense isn’t right?”
And they just have to turn that on its head. These are simple methods because you want a baseline of building mental toughness. But also, in the short term, you can use mental toughness techniques to deal with these pinch points.
What people visualise is that the rejection email coming through, or the letter coming through the door or hearing nothing. But it’s the same mental energy to think, “What am I going to do when the positive letter comes through?”.
“What if it goes wrong?” – it’s just switching it to “what if it goes right? What if every question I answer really effectively?”
It’s then balancing out arrogance with positivity. So, the other point is you’ve got to do prep. So, it’s the hard work, it’s the preparation. But it’s recognising your own skills, recognising what you’re not so good at, but thinking that there’s going to be a positive outcome. And I started off the work many, many years ago, looking at goal kickers in rugby league and how they deal with the fact that they’ve got a kick in the last minute, they miss and the team lose. Why don’t they go home and never play again? It’s the same with goalkeepers.
It’s because they understand the percentages, they understand the difficulty. So, if you’re going for a really high-level job, yeah, that means you will be trying to do a postgraduate degree Oxbridge and you get turned down. That’s a rare phenomenon. So, if it’s a job you should walk into, that’s one element, but be realistic about your chances.
One of the things, I think, that puts job seekers off is they’re applying for things they have no chance of getting. That’s not lack of positivity. They’re just not suitable. They turn up to interviews when it just isn’t going to work. Are you suited? Did you have the skill set? Do you have a chance? But understanding your chance. Is it a 90%? A 30%? Or is it very unlikely? Just keep that mental approach.
The final bit is, if you’re halfway through with some dialogue, answering a question, you’ve got to put a stop to reviewing your performance while you’re doing it. The classic, the worst I’ve seen is a job interview at the University I was head of department of. During the presentation, the internal dialogue lead to the external dialogue, and the guy was standing there saying “This isn’t going very well.”, “Oh dear. I’ve got this a bit wrong.”!!! And that’s what people think. Just shut it down. You just focus. You don’t think, you stay in the moment. So, that’s the key. And mentally tough people can do that more naturally. Sensitive people can do that, but for a short period of time. And for the sensitive person, give yourself a big treat after. Well, if you’re getting the job or don’t get the job. Yeah, 40 minutes you can play and be mentally tough. You can role play and be mentally tough, but you need to unwind at the end.
9. I don’t know anyone that has managed to get every job interview that they’ve ever gone to. So, it’s inevitable that we’re all going to face rejection at some point when we’re looking for a new role. How do you move on from that? How do you move on and pick yourself up to go at it again?
(30:12) Doug: So, being rejected for a job and if your interview hasn’t gone well, I mean, that happens to us in many different aspects of life. So we got to get used to the setback in some way and part of it is putting it into perspective: “There was only one job and there were a hundred applicants. I got to the last three”. Turning that into a measure of success, right? “I got close. Maybe next time, I’ll get a bit closer”, that sort of thing.
But the other thing is one of the elements of the mental toughness concept that I described earlier. One of the factors is something we call “learning orientation” and that’s where we understand that some people are better at reflecting and learning from their experiences. So if something’s gone not right and I haven’t got the job, first thing to do is to think about “Well, what did I do? What could I have done better? Having been through an interview, I’ve got a better understanding of what they were looking for. How could I tweak my CV? How can I tweak my interview approach in order to be more successful next time?”
We’ve got to be in that constant learning frame of mind. We can’t just start out with one approach and then keep throwing that at the situation and hope one day it sticks. It won’t necessarily stick, but you will just improve your chances of getting a job if you start learning from your experiences. In a way, that is also a form of success: “I’m learning something, I’m getting better at what I’m doing”, and that can help to build a degree of confidence. So, I would say that that’s an important part of it. But there’s another element that we sometimes forget that an interview is all the textbooks say it’s a two-way discussion. We sometimes forget. We think it’s a one-way discussion. It’s the employer grilling me for a job. It’s also my opportunity to learn about the organisation and the different types of organisations are out there.
In my career, I have twice succeeded at getting jobs and regretted getting those jobs because I found out the culture in the organisations just didn’t suit me! Also, you need to use the interview to learn about the organisation and learn about whether it would actually suit you. So you might be getting rejected because the employer understands you’re not going to fit very well, but it would be nice if you also understood that. So, I think there’s a lot in these situations that people can use if they reflect on their experience and extract the learning from me.
(32:52) Peter: Yeah, and it’s legitimate. It isn’t not being mentally tough to be disappointed if you don’t get the job you really want, or to be really upset, but you just put a time limit on that. Yeah, you don’t get it, it’s upsetting. I get turned down for many, many, many jobs. Yeah, you’re frustrated. My colleague, co-author Dr. John Perry talks about two test tubes. One with resources and one with the demands. I think, my final advice on this is you don’t use your resources and spread too thinly. If you haven’t got a chance of getting the job and you’re a sensitive person, don’t apply, don’t go to the interview. If you’re a mentally tough person, you can live with rejection. The chances of you getting it are really, really small but you give it a go and you learn from it. Other people, it just wears them away.
So I often hear stories in the press of people applying for 200 jobs, but the downside is you’re going to get rejected far more than you’re going to get accepted. So, be a bit more targeted, go in and I advise my students quite often that sometimes you want a practice interview. You maybe haven’t got a good chance at a Blue Chip company, but see what the rules are and how it works. And that’s the terms you go into, but don’t waste resources on a speculative shot. If you want to go for it, go for it. If you sense that and there’s a sense of mourning and disappointment, just then get back going.
10. We’re on to our last question now and this is one that we ask all our podcast guests. If you had one piece of advice to help our listeners navigate their careers throughout the pandemic and beyond, what would that be?
(34:37) Doug: Peter knows what I’m going to say! I’m going to leap in first because I’m pinching it. It’s self-awareness. This is an important quality. It’s part of all of us and it affects virtually everything we do. But we’ve got very low levels of self-awareness about our own mental toughness and the implications of our mental toughness and mental sensitivity for the way we engage with the world around us.
First, the most fundamental thing that we can do is create at least some level of self-awareness. What is it that I am bringing to a situation? What is it about me that might hinder my progress in a situation? And that then becomes a starting point for a lot of things. Now, for development, for the way you’re going to present yourself to other people. But if you don’t know who you are to start with, you’re struggling.
(35:33) Peter: When it comes to careers, take a long-term view. I mean, as you get older, you look back and you think that the short-term disappointments can sometimes dominate people. I wanted to be, firstly, a rock star! I was in a fine band but that didn’t quite work out. I wanted to play a professional sport, yet I became a psychology Professor. So it’s not glib about “one door closes, another opens”. But when you look back on your career, when you’ve got some mileage there, you’ see how it works. There’s always another way forward. So, you might want to try it but when people put a hundred percent into and that’s their only option, that becomes problematic. Another of our colleagues at Lincoln University looked at football apprentices and 99.9% of them get dropped. The ones who’ve been gone to prosper and have interesting careers and do interesting things are the ones who always have a plan B, a plan C, and it took some time to re-evaluate.
So you’ve got to give yourself other options as well. Take some time to recover, go a hundred percent for it, but then think, “what do I do now?”. Because nearly all of us end up in places we didn’t expect to be. It’s kind of the same with the mental toughness research, same with my career, same with Doug’s career. Yeah, it’s great to be talking to everybody and we really enjoy this sort of stuff, but thirty years ago, we wouldn’t have thought we’d be doing this. So, it happens. It’s called not catastrophizing. Yes, I had one terrible where the women fell off her chair! Ok, you’re not going to get the job, but it’s not the end of your career, other things happen. So, take a longer view, have longer goals. With short-term disappointments, as Doug said, you have to deal with them.
Doug Strycharczyk, Peter Clough and John Perry are co-authors of ‘Developing Mental Toughness: Strategies to Improve Performance, Resilience and Wellbeing in Individuals and Organizations’, which is available in hardback, paperback or as an ebook here. Use code HAYS20 for a 20% discount.
Did you enjoy this podcast? Here is some related content that you may be interested in:
As you juggle your workload, perhaps with the added stress of having to create a hybrid working pattern by working from both home and the office, do you find yourself wishing: “If only I had two more hours each day”?
Creating a balance between the hours spent at different work environments and doing things just for yourself can seem impossible, while the very act of trying to attain it can leave you depleted of energy. Plus, deep down you feel that you are unproductive despite the long hours you put in, so that unhelpful voice in your head tells you that you are a procrastinator, rendering you not only tired but also demoralised.
If you search online for ‘Productivity Hacks’, you will see that being productive, or ‘in peak flow’, is down to many things, including:
The importance of energy management
Cognitive, physical and sensory energy boosters
Being centred and changing your mindset
Workflow productivity hacks
Improving your energy levels through diet
In 2019, 100 million + Americans (1 in 3) cited depression as an issue. The causes of it are many and having depression in your life compromises your focus, energy, and joy. Some of the causes can be physical, so be mindful of:
Vitamin D deficiency
Folic acid deficiency
Vitamin B12 deficiency
Gluten intolerance
Hormone imbalances
Omega 6 fats from processed oils
A diet high in sugar and starch and low in fat is extremely harmful. The brain loves saturated fats. They are not called essential fatty acids for nothing!
To gain optimum nutrition you need to include whole foods, plant-based foods, healthy fats, Omega 3 fats (avocados, nuts, seeds), grass-fed animal protein or natural protein that provides amino acids, plus good oils (e.g., coconut).
Show me a child on a beach and I’ll show you someone who runs into the water at some point or plays with it. We seem naturally drawn to water, perhaps because 97% of our bodies are made up of it.
Water is essential, yet few people drink enough of it, leading to dehydration. Before you feel thirsty, you will experience many signs that are less noticeable. These include lethargy, lack of concentration and lower tolerance to stress.
Aim to drink 8 – 10 glasses of water a day on average. Start to replace other drinks (e.g., tea and coffee) with water during your day. Don’t drink caffeine after lunchtime as it will adversely affect your sleep. Diet drinks should be avoided altogether as they have additives that the body stresses to remove.
Sometimes we confuse hunger for thirst. Drinking a large glass of water half an hour before eating will cut down your appetite, but do not drink it with your food. This will dilute the natural digestive enzymes in your mouth and slows down digestion. If you are bored of water, try herbal teas.
Exercise for increased focus
Our bodies were designed to move, and we now do not move enough. Make sure that you are moving each hour by stretching or walking around and add some exercise into your routine every day. If you really feel like your head is in a vice, then get some oxygen into your system quickly by finding a private space and stretching and deliberately yawning for a minute or two.
One of the most common blockages to people making time to exercise is that they just don’t feel motivated enough to do so. You need to tap into your reason for this:
Write down all the personal reasons why you would like to look and feel better through exercise.
Now write down all the possible outcomes of NOT exercising.
Take a moment to think how looking better & being healthier will make you feel.
Now take a moment to write down how the outcomes of NOT exercising will make you feel.
Then work out how you can make it fun.
For me it is rebounding on a mini trampoline to loud 80s music or joining an online class with a teacher I love. Tracking your exercise progress is key. Most importantly, keep a note of your energy levels at points in the day (scale of 1 – 10) and journal the changes.
Recharging through sleep
Sleep lets your brain relax and integrate your day. It evacuates stress, aids learning, and finds answers to problems. When you sleep your body gently relaxes and quietens, your heart rate slows down, and your body temperature lowers as you release tension and let down your guard.
Not getting the sleep you need will impact your physical and mental health as well as any steps toward increased focus at work. It can increase your stress and anxiousness, it can have a negative effect on your mood and your ability to concentrate and be productive.
To ensure a good night’s sleep:
Prepare your room for slumber (dark/cool/quiet)
Remove as many digital devices as possible
Have a clean comfortable bed.
Prepare your mind for closing via a regular sleep rhythm – go to bed and get up at roughly the same time every day, associating your bed with sleep (not TV or food or work!)
Prepare your body for calm (avoid alcohol, caffeine, cigarettes, food in the hours before sleep. Avoid intense sport in the hours before sleep. Do a mind-detox just before sleep by writing down everything that is on your mind and then put the list aside).
Use the 12-hour Board Meeting hack. If you wake up at 2am with something on your mind, write it down immediately then say to your subconscious: “Thanks for that.I’ll schedule a board meeting with myself in 12 hours at 2pm when I’m fully awake and able to deal with it well”.
Then, prepare for morning by having a glass of water by your bed that you can drink to rehydrate your body with when you awake. In addition, wake up to a nice soothing alarm or music, meditate or do a morning affirmation by welcoming in the day by finding ten things to be grateful for.
So far so good.
Increased focus and productivity at work
Now you are at work, hydrated, having slept well and eaten wisely and you still find that as the day becomes more hectic and you are just about to do “the thing” when the phone rings, and it is only later that you remember that “the thing” never got done.
Knowledge workers spend their days juggling dozens of tasks and projects at once, while being constantly bombarded by more. Without an effective way of prioritising/editing/storing all these tasks, they literally remain “on your mind”, creating an overwhelm of whirligig thoughts.
This in turn – despite your best productivity hacks – makes increased focus difficult and leads to an inability to concentrate fully on the work at hand, or a trade-off where you just about manage to get through it all, but the cost is that you are spent at the end of the day and just want to switch off and numb it all away.
All of the unfinished tasks whirring around your head, are, according to Matt Serna: “open loops”, and your brain will constantly remind you about them, whether you want it to or not. This is distracting; you can’t possibly expect increased focus when thoughts like “Remember to deworm the cat” keep intruding.
Indeed, according to ‘The Zeigarnik effect’, the mind has a natural tendency to return to incomplete tasks. It is a product of ‘open loops’ that hinder your mind from doing your work effectively by distracting you with other unresolved task and issues. Your mind will keep being flooded with these unhelpful reminders well into your evening (stopping you from switching off at home) and then intruding into your sleep, leading to more mental exhaustion and overwhelm.
The solution is to close the loops. Remove the cognitive burden of having to decide what to do and when with some simple task organisation tools. These can include daily:
A simple piece of paper with all your tasks written down on it.
Looking back at all the tasks and items you have, highlight them with either a Red or Amber (Yellow) or Green highlighter (RAG system). Red = urgent, amber = important but not urgent, green = noted but not needing to be done now.
An easy-to-use method of task prioritisation such as the Eisenhower Matrix.
Then each week create a Loop Closing Checklist as follows:
It’s no longer needed and can be deleted.
No action is needed right now, but you may need to do something about it later. Create an ‘Awaiting response’ file and review weekly.
It’s information that you may need later, like the budget for a project you plan to undertake. Put that into the correct reference/library file.
If you need to still do the action or there is more information you need in preparation for it, create a shared project board using your company system. Then have a master Projects List (with projects ranging from: ‘Complete the £££ pitch document’ to ‘Finish my online course’ to ‘Pay for the weekend away’ etc.)
If it comprises a single, non-urgent action, put it into your Calendar with a time/date specific plan to do it
This can extend to all those boxsets you’ve downloaded and never watched. Either delete them or set time aside to watch them. As you watch the third episode of The Queen’s Gambit you can call it good mental health!Finally, it is OK to have a ‘Decide not to decide now’ or ‘Someday’ list just for all those future dreams or plans that you don’t want to forget and which, with your renewed energy and increased focus, will find their way to the top of your list sooner than you dared to hope for.
Do these problems sound familiar to you? You might also like:
What are the traditional definitions of leadership? Or, rather, what are the skills and characteristics associated with successful leaders? Of course, these may vary depending on the role, but many people would discuss a leader’s ability to be decisive, dictate strategy and motivate those around them. Regardless of which is deemed to be most important, one thing we can be certain of is that Mental Toughness will have a direct impact.
Despite this, until now the concept of Mental Toughness has largely been overlooked or even misunderstood, with those interested often using the wrong definition as an inspiration or point of reference. However, as we come to learn more about it and its key components, its importance as an aspect of leadership is increasingly clear.
Developing Mental Toughness as a leader can have many positive benefits for yourself and your team. In addition to an improvement in your response to challenges, you can gain the trust of those around you while empowering your team to work at their best, seeing their belief in their own abilities grow alongside your own.
What is Mental Toughness?
We can start with something of a definition. Mental Toughness is a personality trait which determines and explains, in part, how we respond mentally to stress, pressure, challenge and opportunity – irrespective of circumstance.
Albeit increasingly less so than in the past, some will still look at the term “toughness” and assume that it is somehow related to being aggressive, macho and even masculine. It is none of these. Toughness has many meanings. We are discussing it in the sense of the word that relates to resilience and positivity, and research shows that Mental Toughness patterns are largely similar irrespective of gender.
For the most part, people’s understanding of personality is confined to behavioural aspects; for example, describing and assessing how we act when things happen to us and around us. Mental Toughness is focused on how we think when events occur.
There is a key phrase in our definition of which we must take note, though: “in part”. This means that, while Mental Toughness is a big part of the solution for performance and wellbeing, it’s not the silver bullet. It is, however, a personality trait which it is possible to develop in order to improve one’s leadership mindset.
The 4 Cs of Mental Toughness
The term “Mental Toughness” was coined by Jim Loehr, the legendary sports psychologist, who understood the importance of developing an athlete’s mental skills, as well as their technical and physical skills.
In 2002, following eight years of working with colleagues, Professor Peter Clough was able to describe for the first time the components of Mental Toughness in what is called the 4 Cs model, now the most widely accepted and best evidenced explanation. The 4 Cs are Control, Commitment, Challenge and Confidence. By 2020, we knew that our mental approach to events was influenced by eight factors. These are described briefly below:
MENTAL TOUGHNESS
What this means … the eight factors
CONTROL
Life Control – I really believe I can do it Emotional Control – I can manage my emotions and the emotions of others
COMMITMENT
Goal Orientation – I think in terms of goals, I visualise what needs to be done Achievement Orientation– I am minded to do what it takes to achieve important goals
CHALLENGE
Risk Orientation – I see opportunity where others see threat Learning Orientation – I reflect – I learn from all that happens – including setbacks
CONFIDENCE
Confidencein Abilities – I believe I have the ability to do it – or can acquire the ability Interpersonal Confidence – I believe I can influence and engage with others
.
Why is Mental Toughness important for business leaders?
Now we have a definition of Mental Toughness and an explanation of the 4 Cs, it becomes easier to see how it is applied in a leadership environment.
Before we begin, it is important to realise that it is not useful to think in terms of strengths and weaknesses here. Generally, a mentally tough leader will have an advantage in many settings, but not always. It is perfectly possible for a mentally tough leader to struggle. It is equally possible for a mentally sensitive leader to prosper.
Demonstrating leadership often requires maintaining poise in the face of difficulty, keeping focus on what is truly important, being bold to see opportunity when others see threat and having belief in one’s own capability to deal with whatever arises.
Stress, pressure, challenge and opportunity are consistent features of everyone’s lives. Those who aspire to provide leadership have a heightened sense of the stressors and pressures of work and life; to succeed in providing leadership, we still need to bring mental toughness to bear on what we need to do.
As Henry Ford once put it: “If we think we can, we can. If we think we can’t, we are probably right”.
Indeed, we have always known this to be important. Plato spoke about fortitude, the Romans spoke about stoicism, others talked about resilience. However, until recently it was too difficult to describe in such a way so that every person could grasp it, develop self-awareness and ultimately use this to be the best version of themselves that they could be.
Developing this self-awareness is crucial for any aspiring leaders, and there are two factors to be considered.
Firstly, what is my mental toughness profile and what does it mean for me in striving to deal with the world around me? Which factors can hold me back and which factors are an asset? That is contributing to my leadership capability.
Secondly, and of equal importance in leadership, what does my Mental Toughness profile mean for the way I engage with other people? Does my understanding of Mental Toughness enable me to understand why others respond the way they do when asked to do something?
Here we present the eight factors listed earlier, but this time indicating their significant implication on leadership.
Assessing your own Mental Toughness
An important by-product of developing the concept of Mental Toughness concept has been forming a reliable and valid psychometric measure – the MTQPlus. This helps users to assess one’s levels across overall mental toughness, the 4 Cs and the eight factors.
Like many psychometric instruments, the MTQPlus uses what is called a Sten Scale to indicate the level of mental toughness. The MTQPlus is also a normative measure.
This means that the level of an individual’s mental toughness is shown on a scale of 1–10, compared to the average score achieved by a normal person. An example can be seen below.
The “norm” for an average or typical person would be 5.5 on each scale. The scores often associated with mental sensitivity are those in the 1–3 range. Scores achieved by the mentally tough tend to fall in the 8–10 range. Sixteen per cent of most populations fall into these categories. Around two thirds of us score in the 4–7 range and can therefore consider ourselves to be reasonably mentally tough.
However, the important thing here is that we are all different. Our profiles may vary even if our overall level of mental toughness is the same.
How to build Mental Toughness
As explained above, it is possible to build Mental Toughness.
When training Mental Toughness, the essence is to create self-awareness of our current level. From that we can decide whether we need to develop aspects of our Mental Toughness or stay as we are and, instead, learn coping strategies for those times when it might create an issue for us.
The concept and the measure have become increasingly frequent components of leadership development programmes.
As with any development activity it will progress through key stages:
Self-awareness, reflection and diagnosis
The above example of a test output is real. The individual had many advantages in dealing with a very challenging leadership role. However, we can see that there is indication of mental sensitivity around two factors – Emotional Control and Learning Orientation.
Initially the individual agreed that they didn’t stop to think about things that didn’t go to plan. They disagreed that they were less able at managing their emotions. In fact, they saw revealing their emotions as an example of their passion for their role.
2. Deciding to take action
Feedback and discussion led to an awareness that this perhaps wasn’t always an advantage. The leader acknowledged that this was an issue and concluded that this was a priority for development because it was affecting their own and others’ performance and wellbeing.
3. Action
The individual was introduced to techniques for managing emotional responses and committed to practice these. Guided imagery was a particularly effective intervention.
The result: restoration of wellbeing and performance.
Mental toughness is in one sense invisible. It is describing what goes on in one’s head. Unlike behaviour, we can’t see it. But it has a big impact on leadership effectiveness. The concept and the measure enable us to access this.
In the words of one user: “It’s making the invisible, visible”.
Doug Strycharczyk, Peter Clough and John Perry are co-authors of ‘Developing Mental Toughness: Strategies to Improve Performance, Resilience and Wellbeing in Individuals and Organizations’, which is available in hardback, paperback or as an ebook here. Use code HAYS20 for a 20% discount.
Most leaders will be familiar with giving presentations to their peers, team members, customers and clients. However, presenting to the C-suite brings its own unique challenges and can be a daunting prospect.
Today I’ll be chatting with keynote speaker and presentation skills coach Jay Surti, author of The Presentation Book For Senior Managers: An Essential Step by Step Guide to Structuring and Delivering Effective Speeches. We’ll be discussing the best practices involved in delivering a presentation to the c-suite and the ways in which you can effectively engage with this unique audience.
1. Could you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell them a little bit about who you are, and what you do?
(1:10) I’m an author and speaker on the topic of presentation skills. But before that, I was a lawyer who became fascinated with public speaking, and that Fascination came out of necessity because for a very long time I had a debilitating fear of public speaking so I wanted to find a solution to be able to cope with that. And through that, I just became really interested in all things presentation. Now, I help other people create an impact with their speaking.
2. A key role of leaders is to inspire change, how do you think a really strong set of presentation skills can help them do that?
(2:05) Well, inspiring others requires effective communication skills, but most importantly understanding other people’s perspectives. You can have one message but you actually need to adapt it for every member of your team or every person in your audience, whatever that might be. When you work on your presentation skills or holding your presentation skills, you have to plan for that. You have to think about your audience very carefully and adapt. And so, by doing that, I think it makes you a much better leader, a much more effective communicator. And then that, then translate into being more inspiring and being able to motivate people in your team. The key things are understanding that you have a variety of people in your audience and to have some kind of empathy and then be able to tailor your message is really important.
3. I think any presentation can present challenges, but what are the unique challenges that leaders face when presenting to really senior executive or C-suite audiences?
(3:15) They’re very busy people. Today, they tend to think strategically, so they may not be interested in the minute details. So when you are thinking about presenting or getting ready for it, think about key messages and the highlights rather than getting bogged down and being tempted into putting in too much content. Actually, that’s something that a lot of speakers fall into the trap of. But with a very senior audience, a C-suite audience is thinking about what your objective is. What is it that you want out of that interaction, but more importantly, what do you want them to do. So, being clear about your objective is the first place to start because it might be that you need them to make a decision or to give you something, whether that’s funding et cetera. So, being clear about your objective, understanding that they’re busy. The other thing is, you might well get interrupted, so you might have a plan for your presentation, and then somebody will jump in and divert you, so being prepared to go with the flow and make sure you have enough preparation is really important. And then the last thing, timing. So, just make sure that you have practised to stick to your time slot because you might not get a second chance, and if you don’t finish and get the result that you want, then all that effort doesn’t really go anywhere.
I think your point there on preparing for those interruptions is so interesting. I’ve seen it in world leaders, perhaps when they’re presenting on the news or being asked questions that they’re in this great flow, they know what they’re delivering, and then they’re really thrown by an interruption, and you lose the thread of your argument or of the point that you’re trying to make. It can be very disruptive and derailing.
(5:07) Yeah, it can be but it doesn’t have to be.
4. Is there anything else that they can do to really help them prepare well for a very important presentation?
(5:23) There are a number of things. The key thing is setting aside time to prepare because most professionals are busy themselves. One of the key things that I have found when working with lots of different people in various different industry sectors is the intention is there to prepare but other things dive in and take over your time. You might have good intentions, but you don’t prepare, and you absolutely need to. I think the only way to do that is to put some time in your diary, 15 minutes every other day. You’re doing something in terms of planning for your presentation, and that is researching your content and thinking about what you want to say. That can include, if possible, asking members of your audience, what are the key points that are relevant and how does the audience want to receive that information because that can really help you plan properly. So, researching content, planning your structure, those are really important aspects. You might have some visual aids and slides et cetera. So, you need to set aside time to be able to put that together or get them over to help you with it.
Another really important aspect is to make some time to rehearse. This is where people typically cut corners because they might spend all their time on content and slides, but not actually set aside time to rehearse. The benefit of rehearsing is you need to know how long you’re speaking for. If you have 10 minutes or 15 minutes, you need to know what that feels like. If you are really comfortable with your material and you’ve rehearsed it in chunks, then if you get interrupted and you get thrown off course, you can mentally adjust and come back in where you need to, and make sure that you at least finish with your strong conclusion or whatever that is. Taking time to make sure that you’ve planned properly, doing your research, and then rehearsing it is really, really important. And of course, focusing on your objective. Now, that’s the starting point actually. When you know what you want to get out of that interaction or what you want the audience to do with it, you can then reverse engineer your content to make sure it leads to that ultimate goal.
5. Do you think there’s a risk of seeming stale or over-rehearsed. Is that a really unlikely risk?
(7:57) It is really unlikely. It’s funny you say that because that’s the pushback that I get quite a lot, is that I don’t want to be over-rehearsed, I’m going to come across as really sort of stilted. The trap that people fall into is thinking that they need to memorise their presentation word for word. Actually, it’s the opposite. By practising and rehearsing you get to vocalise what it is that you’re saying because it looks very different to when it’s on paper, and I always suggest that people don’t write a script, you just have your key points and every time you rehearse it, it will come out slightly differently. But that’s okay, as long as you’ve got signposting.
The other key thing to remember is, in the moment, the audience are listening to your presentation for the very first time. You might have rehearsed it a hundred times, but you need to be mindful of the fact that your energy and your vocal variety or tonality needs to reflect that. For them, it’s their first and possibly only interaction with this particular presentation. So that’s what you need to focus on rather than worrying about learning it off by heart.
6. Would you recommend that the people go as far as to arrange meetings with key members of the audience prior to that presentation to ensure the messaging is relevant?
(9:31) Yeah, absolutely. Every time. Because it gives you that insight in terms of how people are thinking and you want to hit the right mark. I don’t think there’s any danger of spoiling the reveal because you’re bringing your personality into it, so it’s not necessarily just about the content. But at least you get an idea of who sat around that table, are there people that actually do want that detail because even though I’ve suggested earlier that you’re focusing on strategy and high level, you still need to be prepared to dive into that minor detail if somebody asks. So, having that knowledge in advance helps you to plan properly. Sometimes it’s not possible to actually speak to somebody who’s going to be in that audience. The next best thing is to research elsewhere and you could do it with mentors or other people in similar roles or situations outside of your organisation because that’s still very helpful.
7. Do you have any advice or tips on how our listeners can better present a really complicated topic in a clear and impactful way?
(10:46) Yeah, absolutely. Don’t make your audience work too hard, even though they’re a highly intelligent audience. There are several things that you can do to break down a complicated topic. The obvious places to start are thinking about quite often charts and data. Yes, it is necessary quite often to have that level of complex detail. But if you’re using visual aids whether that’s on a slide or handing out something, think about how you can break it down and take it in stages so that it’s easier to process and digest.
Other things that you can do, not only to make it easier to process information but to make it more interesting is to create hooks. So if you are explaining a point, can you put it next to something that’s much more familiar or can you put it next to a story example or case because that not only makes the content easier to process, but it makes it memorable, and that’s really what you’re going for is your interaction, your presentation. You want it to be sticky.
I can give you an example of comparison. A few years ago. I worked with somebody to find ways to cut waste, and the particular commodity that they were dealing with was a beverage. The volume of waste, coincidentally, was something that would fill an Olympic swimming pool, which is 2.5 million meters. So obviously, if you tell that to an audience, we all get a reference of what that is, but when you put it next to something that people can relate to, you get a visual image, you know mental image of an Olympic swimming pool, and that makes it much more memorable by comparing a figure or statistic to something else. It’s probably unrelated but that doesn’t matter. It just makes it easier to follow.
8. How important that you have a really strong start to your presentation, and do you have any examples of a good way to start?
(13:27) Yes, it’s always good to have a strong start, particularly with this audience. Attention spans can be even shorter, so you have a few seconds to grab their attention. I would say rather than spending too much time introducing because they probably know who you are or introducing the topic, dive straight into the presentation. There are a few ways in which you can do that in an interesting way. It could just be as simple as you’re setting the scene and explaining what the objective of the presentation is, but you could open with an interesting fact or statistic. You could open with a short story because that’s an unusual way to start, or you could ask a question. That example that I shared with the Olympic swimming pool, that speaker just to break the ice, introduced a quick pop quiz and just ask people in the audience to guess. What is the volume of an Olympic swimming pool, and then when they told them, they said, “That is how much we are wasting, so what are we going to do about it?” and then move into the presentation.
9. What advice do you have for those who do suffer really bad nerves or stage fright?
(15:11) I learned the hard way. Just by speaking to lots of speakers and watching, and then I became a bit of a geek. After all of that, I came to the realisation that actually, for me, it was two key things and they’re really simple. One was my level of preparation. I could take comfort in the fact that I had planned, and prepared, and rehearsed, and that would give me the confidence to know that I couldn’t get lost and I’d always be able to find my way back. There are no shortcuts with that route, but it’s absolutely necessary. So it was good for me and good for the audience because they would have a better experience.
The second realisation was that shifting the focus for me to the audience was really important. Because ultimately, the whole point of me being there is to create that experience for the audience, and presenting something for their benefit, to add value to get some kind of decision. So, preparation and shifting the focus from me to them really helped. Other things that can be useful, mindset is really important. It can be really easy to go down a negative mindset and start focusing on feeling less confident.
And by the way, it’s not just people that fear public speaking, sort of generally, it can happen to anybody at any time. You could be the most confident speaker, but because the stakes are high, this particular presentation is causing you some anxiety. So it’s just making sure that you focus on the positive because you get what you focus on. Thinking about how much preparation you’ve done, that you’re an expert in this particular area, all of those things. Choose to focus on things that you can control and other things, leave them to one side.
Other techniques that are really helpful are visualisation, which is used quite a lot in sports psychology. Imagining your presentation or pitch or whatever the interaction is going exactly the way that you want it to, and using all of your senses to make it really rich and sensory can help because unconsciously, you’ve gone through that process, so when you deliver your presentation, it is not for the first time. And simple things like breathing that deep breathing exercises before you present can be really helpful during your presentation because we have an adrenaline rush. And that’s a good thing because it just means that you’re ready for action, but because of that sometimes breathing can get faster, and then that can come through in your voice and you can come across as less confident. So remembering to stop at places, take a pause, and breathe will help to regulate any nerves that there are. That also gives your audience an opportunity to process what you’ve just shared. It’s quite a good technique to build in places where you can stop and pause.
Lastly, having some kind of ritual and to get you in the right zone before. The right frame of mind before you get up to present, and that could be as simple as listening to a piece of music that puts you in a really good mood. I’m sure most people have a favorite track that takes them to a particular place where they felt good and confident.
An often touted but perhaps controversial piece of advice about visualising your audience in their underwear, but clearly not, visualising a successful presentation, that makes a lot of sense.
(19:43) That’s a myth, isn’t it? A lot of people talk about it. It doesn’t work for me, but everybody’s different and it’s just finding your thing isn’t it, so whatever helps you to feel calmer or ready to present, then don’t have to tell anyone you have to share it with anybody.
Also, I think you said something really fascinating there about the adrenaline, the nerves, they can actually be a good thing if you keep them under control. It can increase the power of your delivery, your energy.
(20:18) Exactly. That’s the reframe, isn’t it? It’s thinking about it as actually a positive thing, not a negative thing because it shows that you care and you’re interested in the outcome and the interaction. So definitely a good thing but there are things you can do to control it.
10. Are there any body language and tone of voice considerations that our listeners should be mindful of when presenting to that executive audience?
(20:47) Yes. I’m a big fan of natural delivery, and I always recommend that people adopt a conversational tone of voice because that’s your personality coming through. It’s what you see is what you get, and sometimes it can be really difficult to emulate that because you’re thinking about so many different things. So, ironically, need to practice that through rehearsal. The tone of voice from that perspective, having it conversational and natural is important, but also at the same time, your voice box is a really important tool and it’s one that people don’t often use that well. You can use it to your advantage to change the pace, change the volume, all those things at different points in your presentation to add some colour to your presentation. What is less good is if you talk too fast or you become breathless and you forget that the audience is there, just be mindful of that.
Other nonverbal things that could play a part in your presentation are unconscious fidgeting, moving about because I like to have a sort of natural style. I think it’s okay to have some kind of mannerisms, some people talk with their hands. What the test is though is, is it going to be distracting for your audience? and the only way that you can find that out is either get somebody to give you feedback or better still, record yourself on video. You don’t have to share it with anybody else, at least at that point, you can see and hear what your audience will, and you then have the choice to make some adaptations to iron it out. So in a nutshell, is it going to be distracting for the audience, and then you can do something about it. So that way you’re coming across as confident, and natural, and much more engaging.
I’m sure that some people would disagree with me and advocate that there is really only one way to be when you’re presenting. I disagree with that. I think we’re human beings and we all have our unique personalities. So, much better to do that than to have a sort of robotic persona.
11. I’ve heard an awful lot about the potential of power poses. If I’m presenting to a C-suite, a really senior audience that I want to sway, should I be putting my hands on my hips, and trying to adopt something like a Superman pose or is that a bit nonsensical because it’s not very natural for me?
(23:51) Maybe. That concept comes from Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk, and in a nutshell, that’s about our mind-body connection. So, when you adopt a powerful pose for 2 minutes that helps you feel more confident, so it’s definitely a good thing. However, it’s something that you do in private. I talked earlier about rituals and listening to music. So, adopting a power pose whether that’s hands on your hips, or arms in the air, or a fist pump, whatever works for you, if you do that in a separate room or in the bathroom before you go into the meeting space, that will work really well. But in the actual presentation room, you can do something similar and that is just to have open body language. So rather than hands on hips, it’s just making sure that you have good posture, you maintain good eye contact, and you have open body language because that, unconsciously, conveys confidence. So, rather than looking ridiculous, you can do those things in private, but just remember that when you’re actually in front of an audience, you still need to be aware of how you’re coming across with your body language.
12. Do you have any advice specifically for how to deliver a really impactful presentation when you’re just talking to a screen, and maybe you can’t even see your audience?
(25:49) Yes, that does pose a challenge. It’s about reminding yourself that you do have actual people on the other side of your camera lens and trying to bring that in-person experience through the medium of technology. A lot of it will be, again, your tone of voice and being as natural as possible. The other challenge with delivering through a camera, there are some tech issues to be aware of. So even if you can’t see all of your audience, you might be able to see some of your audience, they can probably see you and it’s making sure that you are emulating the feeling of eye contact because you would connect with a live audience by looking at people.
So to do that, do it through the camera lens and it’s making sure you have your laptop or device camera at your eye level and you might need to put your device on a pile of books or on a stand so that you can do that. And when you speak, it’s really tempting to look at your screen because if you can see other people’s faces it’s almost as if you’re talking to them, but actually, you’re not, you want to look through the camera. So there’s that, but also on the flip side because your audience are in their own spaces, they can switch their cameras off and they can multitask, and you won’t necessarily know that they’re engaging with you. So, you can do the best you can with your delivery and be engaging, but make sure that you keep your audience with you. There are things you could try like using the chat box or functionality, introducing some polls or just literally just pausing at certain points in your presentation and just opening up for a bit of a debate or a Q&A session, so that you’re bringing people back in and having that engagement because you’re trying to create that connectedness that you would if you’re in the room with people.
13. What signs can someone look out for the C-suite audience is engaged with what they’re saying, perhaps, when they are in the room or failing that when cameras are turned on, what should they be looking out for?
(28:25) In a way that is quite intuitive. I think most of us know when people are listening to us or not, and you can tell that through body language and eye contact. So, people are looking in your direction and nodding along, that seems quite obvious. But that’s not to say that if they’re not looking at you or that they’re writing something on the device that they’re not listening, they can be. So, don’t be tempted thinking you’ve lost people in the audience. Focus on what you can control, and that is having a really good presentation. You being enthusiastic and engaging for the audience. If you think you’re losing people, break the pattern.
There are a few things that you can do, and that could be that you just pause. If you just pause for what might seem like an eternity for two or three seconds, people think I don’t know if I missed something, and they’ll just sit up and listen. You could throw some questions out to the audience, and they could just be rhetorical questions, getting to just pause and think, or inviting a response from the audience. You can use your voice to change it up or down because that will wake people up.
There are things you can try, but ultimately, if some of those don’t work and there are still people in the audience that look like they’re disengaged, that’s okay, too. You don’t know what’s going on in their mind, they might have something that is bothering them. Sometimes you just won’t get a hundred percent of the audience. You could have delivered that same presentation yesterday, knocked it out of the park and had everybody engaged, and yet, that same presentation with a different audience today might not necessarily resonate with everybody. So what I’m saying is do what you can, control the things that you can control, and take the pressure off yourself because sometimes you won’t get a hundred percent of the audience, and rather than focus your energy on the one person who’s not engaging, divide your attention with the rest of the audience who are engaged. So it’s about balance.
It’s amazing how powerful something as simple as a pause can be. Because I think it can be tempting to always fill all of the space, all of the time with words, but as you say, I would look up for even from the most fervent note-taking if the speaker had paused talking, thinking what have I missed or what’s happening here, and it would possibly help recapture my attention if I had been distracted by a pressing email or other concern not related to that presentation.
14. Assuming the presentation has gone brilliantly, there is so often an opportunity for a bit of a Q&A session. Can you share any tips for our listeners to help deal with inevitable tough questions that can come either at the end of the presentation or sometimes during it?
(31:29) People worry about the Q&A session even more than the presentation itself because one of the common fears is, am I going to be asked a question that I don’t know the answer to, and I’m not going to look as professional as I could. There are things that you can do to combat that and prepare. So, when you are preparing for your presentation, your brainstorming content, at that point, or when you’re interviewing members of the audience, think about questions that could come up. Think about all the possible curveballs, put yourself in their shoes. You’ve got some content that you want to share, but obviously, you can’t cover everything that you know about that topic.
So there’s going to be things that you leave out. Taking all of that information, list a handful of questions that could come up, and practice your answers in the same way that you would for the actual presentation. That will take the sting out, a lot of it. Genuinely, there will be times when you just can’t answer the question, either because you have a brain freeze or you hadn’t thought about it. So at that point, you can also rehearse your version of, “I don’t know,” or “It’s something I hadn’t thought about,” and if possible, “Can I come back to you later?” if the scenario lets you do that. It’s about how you deal with it. So if you can confidently convey, “Actually, you know what? I don’t know. I’m okay with that” or even ask other people in the audience if that’s a possibility, “I don’t come across that. Does anybody else in the audience have an opinion?” So it’s just finding ways that you can cope because it is absolutely okay not to know the answer and rather than being a rabbit in headlights. You just own it and say that you don’t know and move on from that.
[(33:20)] Host: That’s so interesting. From my own experience, I would always rather someone admit that they don’t know or they need to go away and check that or come back to me than have someone make up an answer that wasn’t either factual or right. I respect their expertise and their credibility much more if they were honest. That’s not something that we’ve considered or I’d need to check to ensure that I give you an accurate answer to that, but we can feel all the pressure that we should have answers to absolutely everything at our fingertips, and be able to deliver them at a moment’s notice.
(33:57) Yeah, and if it helps, I always suggest that buy yourself some time, ask the question to be repeated, or even jot it down, so that you have some time to think, and you’ve got in front of you what it is that you need to answer rather than panicking in the moment to give a response. That’s not the right one.
15. If there is one key piece of advice for our listeners, what would it be?
(34:36) Develop your personal brand. And by that, I mean personal brand is what people think about you. It’s your visibility. It’s your profile and that is online and offline. Focusing on offline because obviously, I’m passionate about presentations is finding more opportunities to speak, whether it’s chairing a team meeting, contributing to a team meeting, giving a seminar, all of these things help to add to your personal brand bank account. So, proactively develop that.
16. If our listeners would like to find out more about you and the work you do, are you on social channels, do you have a website they could check out?
(35:31): Best place to find me is on LinkedIn.
Did you enjoy this podcast? Here is some related content that you may be interested in:
To succeed at work, the ability to deliver strong presentations will always be important. Whether you’re a novice, or a seasoned public speaker, it’s always a good idea to brush up on our presenting skills.
That’s why today I’m lucky to be joined by Jay Surti, keynote speaker and author of several books including Ultimate Presentations: Master the Art of Giving Fantastic Presentations and Wowing Employers. Jay will be discussing the dos and don’ts of giving presentations at work, as well as how best to tackle any fears or difficult scenarios.
1. Before we dive into the questions, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself for our listeners?
(1:11) I’m an author and a speaker on the topic of presentation skills. But before that, I was a lawyer who became fascinated with public speaking. And that fascination actually came out of necessity because for many years, I had a debilitating fear of public speaking. And so, I was really determined to find a solution. And now, I help other people create an impact through their speaking.
2. Today, we’re going to be talking about how to perfect your presentation skills. What do you think the common habits are of a strong presenter?
(1:49) Well, essential things are, and some of these will sound obvious, but good preparation, having a natural delivery style, because this is an opportunity to showcase your personality and for people to see what it would be like to work with you, so a very conversational style. And it’s really important to tailor your content for your audience because you want them to engage with you. So those are the ingredients for a really good presenter.
3. I suppose the opposite to that, which might still be really useful: what do you commonly see poor presenters doing?
(2:31) And that is quite a common thing actually. And it’s when people obviously don’t prepare and they wing it. That becomes quite obvious because quite often the presentation is rushed. It could create an experience of talking at the audience. So then it’s obvious that the content hasn’t been tailored with the audience in mind. There’s very little engagement and the pace can be quite fast as well. But the real issue that comes up quite a lot, I’m sure many of you will be familiar with the phrase “Death by PowerPoint”. There’s a temptation to rely a lot on slides and put a lot of text into the slide. And quite often, we’d often say, those are the key things to avoid.
4. And when it comes to presenting, how important is a strong start? I mean, not only for your own confidence obviously, but in terms of engaging your audience from the outset.
(3:29) For your own confidence. That’s one key aspect of making sure you have a strong start because it sets the scene and then you can go on from there. But the other more important thing is that you only have a few seconds to grab the attention of your audience. So you want to make it impactful and probably what’s going through their mind is, what’s in it for me. Why should I sit here and listen to you? And as a speaker or presenter, you need to be able to answer that. So you have a few seconds to be able to frame your presentation and grab their attention. In a way, the whole presentation is important, but quite often I would suggest that the beginning is probably more important because that’s where you set off.
5. You mentioned Death by PowerPoint where there’s too much information. I imagine that communicating verbally is only one aspect of a good presentation, still. Do you recommend that people use visual aids as well, such as a slide deck? And if so, how can they make them as powerful as possible?
(4:47) First of all, I think it’s important to just highlight that it is possible to deliver a fantastic presentation without any visual aids. And you can do that through bringing your enthusiasm and energy in your delivery using stories and things like that, which we’ll probably come on to in a little bit. But if you are going to use visual aids, then remember this, you’re the presentation and any visual aids that you introduce in your talk or speech are there for the benefit of the audience. And so, if it enhances your message then think about incorporating them. And quite often, it does help the audience if there’s something visual for them to be able to process what you’re sharing. So, slides are the most common visual aspect. But don’t forget, depending on the size of the audience, you can use things like flip charts or props, for example, a product or a model. But because slides are the most common visual aids that people think about, you’re right, too much text in the slide can be something that detracts from your presentation because anything that you put up on a slide will direct your audience’s attention towards that. So if they can read what you’re also talking about, you might as well just give them a handout. So, I always suggest thinking about your slides and making them more visual, use images rather than text or graphics or some kind of flow chart that enhances or supports what you’re sharing rather than putting in bullet points and text. So the two of you work together, your slides support you.
6. There might be people listening to the podcast thinking, “It’s all well and good saying that you need to engage and get people’s interest from the beginning, but might consider their topic dull or boring.” So, how can a person make a boring topic interesting when presenting?
(6:52) So a lot of that comes down to your delivery. But your energy and enthusiasm has to carry through because your audience will pick up on that. So, that’s a key part of it. And the other is how you position them, the key points on messages. And so, to make your content more interesting, you can create hooks and put the points next to something like a story, an example, or a case study. So that your content not only is more interesting, but it’s more memorable as well. So you’re creating a much better experience for your audience. And you can borrow those examples and stories from anywhere in the public domain. So, I quite often will read books or articles or blogs and all, see something interesting and I will bookmark that because at some point it will come in useful for me to put into one of my presentations and I have that ready for whenever I do have to put together a presentation. And I’d like to recommend things like titles and there’s one in particular that I always refer people to, because it’s a really good example of how you can introduce very short, simple examples or stories to put next to a very serious or important point. And that title is Ken Robinson, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”, and it’s a really good video to watch to give you an idea of how you can quite easily introduce short stories or examples, because it doesn’t have to be a difficult thing to do.
That’s great, thank you. I’ll make sure that I check out that video and urge all our listeners to do the same as well.
7. Over the course of the pandemic there’s been some big big changes to the world of work, and one of those changes is remote and hybrid working and it’s very much the norm now, and virtual presentations have become more and more common as a result. Do you have any tips to our listeners to help them feel more prepared and ultimately give a good presentation when doing so remotely?
(9:05) Yeah, absolutely. The first thing to remember is that we’re still engaging with other people. It might be through the lens of a camera or a device. But it’s a good idea to try and focus on the fact that you are presenting to other people, other human beings, and to remember to bring that into the tone of your voice and making it very conversational and imagining that you’ve got other people on the other side of the camera, and then some techie stuff, so the audience may or may not be able to see you. And with all the platforms that we’re using, quite often you’ll only see a few faces on your screen. But regardless, position your camera at your eye level so whether they can see or not, you are trying to create that eye contact that you would if you have people in the room in front of you, and it might be that you need to put the laptop on a pile of books or a laptop stand. So at least you’ve got that experience, and sometimes it can also help to put a sticker behind your laptop where the camera is to remind you to keep looking up because it’s really tempting to look at the screen when you’re seeing other people. The other challenge that you have is that it’s really easy when you’re presenting to people virtually for the audience to turn the cameras off or to multitask, and you’re not necessarily going to know if they’re engaged with you. And so, in your presentation, if you can have breaks where you interrupt the flow by getting them involved, you can use the chat facility, introduce some polls, pause because sometimes they’re doing something else and there’s a little bit of silence, it might bring them back and, ” Hang on. Have I missed something important?”, or even just pause for questions. So those are things that I would recommend that you do to keep your audience engaged. And remember, they’re a live audience.
Some fantastic advice there. I really like the idea of putting a sticker behind the camera because I’m guilty of that. I always look down at my screen. And also about including the audience as well. With the technology that we have through these platforms, we can do polls, there are chat functions. So some really really good advice there.
8. Now, it’s not uncommon to have a fear or certainly a dislike of public speaking. How would you recommend someone overcome that fear?
(11:35) It isn’t uncommon that some very senior people that I’ve worked with have this, but it’s often embarrassing to be able to admit to that, and it happens to us all. Even if you’re the most confident person, outgoing, it just depends on context. So if it’s a presentation that’s important to you, we can have those nerves. But there are things you can control. And so, two things that worked for me, firstly, adequate preparation. If I felt comfortable with the content and I’d had enough time to practice, I could rely on that and that will give me confidence to know that however lost I might get, I could always come back to where I was in a presentation and carry on. There’s no shortcuts to that but it always helps. And the other key thing for me was remembering that it’s always about the audience experience. So shifting my focus for me to creating a good experience for the audience would really help.
Mindset is a very important thing, and it can be quite easy to go down that rabbit hole of thinking, “I actually don’t feel very confident. I don’t feel that prepared.” And it’s about habit, “Did you get what you focus on?” You can choose to focus on how small it is, but something that’s positive, how much preparation you’ve done or how good you are at a particular bit of content or expertise. So that comes with practice, but it is definitely something that you can do. Another couple of techniques on visualisation which is used quite a lot in sports psychology and imagining your presentation going exactly the way that you wanted to and making it really rich using all of your senses, that can be a very powerful technique, as well as, this seems obvious and really simple, but your breathing. When we feel fearful or there’s that adrenaline rush, your breathing can quicken and then that comes through your voice and then you come across as less confident. So breathing deeply before you begin your presentation is quite good practice. But actually, throughout the presentation, putting in points where you remind yourself to stop, and that could be at the end of a section or a point and pausing, will not only help calm you down but it also gives the audience time to process what you’ve just shared. So all of those techniques or just that finding something a ritual that helps you because it will be different for everybody and it could be something like having a really great piece of music that always takes you to a good place and just listening to that, before you start your presentation, quietly in a room by yourself can help. So there are lots of different ways but it’s just mainly focusing on what you can control and choosing something that works for you.
Again, that’s some great advice. I’d never thought about the effects that listening to music beforehand could help as well. I already know what song I would pick. So I’m going to use that next time I do a presentation.
9. Do you have any advice to help our listeners tackle any tricky questions that they may be asked during the presentation?
(15:12) Yeah. Quite often the question and answer section worries people, as much as, if not more, than delivering the presentation itself because a common fear is, “Am I going to be standing there and not know the answer?” You might have a brain freeze. And that’s completely normal, it happens to us all. So, there are definitely things that you can do to set yourself up for success. And one of those is, when you’re preparing for your presentation, at that point when you’re brainstorming what content you want to include, think about your audience and think about possible curveball questions that are going to come up and then prepare for that. You can rehearse in answering questions in the same way as you can rehearse for your presentation. So that will give you a lot of confidence, having thought through and planned for questions. Of course, there will be situations where you can’t answer the question in that moment, either because you do have a brain freeze or you just genuinely don’t know. And we can’t know everything all the time or plan for every eventuality, but that’s okay. What’s important is dealing with it in a confident way and practicing your version of, “I don’t know.” I don’t know right now or if it’s something I hadn’t thought about. And if it’s an opportunity for you to be able to come back to that audience, then say, “Can I come back to you? Or can we pick this up later?” And again, depending on the circumstance, you could throw it out to the audience and say, “That’s not something I’ve come across. Does anybody else have an opinion on this?” But that depends on how well prepared you are, what your audience is, and how confident you feel. But there are lots of different things that you can do. And the two things are mainly to prepare and rehearse your version of, “I don’t know.”, so that you feel comfortable in being able to say that and it’s okay to do that.
10. It can often be part of an interview process where you have to give a presentation, that can obviously be a unique challenge. Could you share any particular advice that you would give our listeners who are in that situation?
(17:31) Interview presentations are a unique set of circumstances because what you’re being tested on is much more than your presentation skills. So typically, what prospective employers are looking for is your ability to think on your feet, cope under pressure, whether you can be confident in that moment, whether you could tackle questions that are unexpected, and timing. And all of these things you can prepare for. So, there might be a couple of different scenarios where, one, you might be giving your topic in advance, which is great because you can research and plan and prepare in advance. Always rehearse. Do it in front of other people, and then get them to heckle you or to ask you questions, so you have that experience of being interrupted. And the benefit of rehearsal is that you get to practice timing. Because the last thing you want is to be cut off. You’ll have a set amount of time to deliver your presentation and you don’t want to be cut short before your strong conclusion. If you don’t have the topic in advance, this is quite common, you might turn out to us an assessment center and just be given a limited amount of time to prepare, then you need to plan properly. And rather than try and memorise what you want to say, my recommendation is pick three key points and then focus on a really strong opening and a conclusion. If you need notes, that’s okay. Just make sure that you have them written down so it’s really easy for you, in that moment, to be able to refer to them. So they’re there to give you some comfort. And if you want to use them, I don’t think anybody is going to think less of you. And then, leave time so that you can rehearse out loud, even if you find a quiet room, just to be able to speak it out loud so you can time yourself and you can get a feel for the flow of the content. So that is really important. It doesn’t matter how much or how little time you have, setting aside some time to actually say your presentation out loud will make a big difference.
11. If you had one piece of advice to help our listeners navigate their careers throughout the pandemic and beyond, what would that be?
(20:16) Without a doubt, develop your personal brand. I wish somebody had given me that advice when I was getting started out. Your personal brand is what other people think about you. It’s your profile, and it’s your visibility. And so, think about how proactive you are online and offline. So if it’s online, how often are you sharing interesting content or opinions, but also how much you’re contributing to other people’s posts. Because by doing that in a thoughtful way, you’re increasing your visibility and your profile. And offline, the obvious thing is finding ways to be visible through speaking and finding opportunities to do that. And that could be just contributing to the next team meeting, volunteering to chair a meeting, taking opportunities to speak at seminars. All of that increases your personal brand and visibility.
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