The Seamus Fox Podcast.
This podcast has been created to share real life experiences from inspiring people in all walks of life, those who have engineered change in their own lives through a shift in thinking and beliefs. I want to share my own journey and have others share theirs so that it can help inspire others to crete the internal changes thats needed to create long lasting life changes.
The Seamus Fox Podcast.
Harnessing Inner Strength Overcoming Doubt and Embracing Imperfection
Ever wondered what it takes to break free from self-imposed limitations and explore uncharted territories? Join us for an insightful conversation with Camilla Long, a communication coach whose journey from County Meath's countryside to Tokyo's bustling streets offers a roadmap for personal growth and transformation. Camilla's adventurous leap from studying computer science in Dublin to navigating the tech scene in Japan exemplifies the power of pushing past comfort zones and embracing the unknown. Her story highlights the significance of building meaningful relationships in foreign environments and how those experiences laid the groundwork for her impactful role at Bespoke Communications.
Business partnerships can often be fraught with challenges, but what if we told you mindset and coaching could be the key to overcoming them? Explore the dynamic world of telecoms with us, where we dissect the importance of open communication in aligning visions and expectations. We'll share how personal failures can morph into growth opportunities and why understanding core values is essential in enhancing team collaboration. Camilla's journey underscores that failures are not setbacks but stepping stones to greater achievements, emphasizing the art of turning adversity into advantage.
Leadership isn't just about guiding others; it's about understanding oneself and embracing vulnerability. Discover how stepping out of comfort zones can elevate leadership quality and why empathy is the secret ingredient in connecting with teams. Through Camilla's lens, we examine how embracing imperfection can lead to authentic communication and challenge the notion of perfection. Our conversation rounds off with tips on overcoming self-doubt, leveraging meditation, and using mantras to remain grounded. Gain insights on public speaking and learn why celebrating successes and accepting constructive feedback are crucial for both personal and professional growth.
Guys, welcome back to the podcast. I am looking forward to speaking to this morning's guest. It is Camilla Long. Camilla, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Seamus. It's so fabulous to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is. I met Camilla, I think was it four years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's around about that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, about four years ago Camilla coached me for my TED Talk and it was the only coach that I've had first coach that I've had around speaking and learning how to actually speak properly for a TED talk and Camilla was a fantastic help to me, really, really helped me understand, I think, that the depth, a lot of the times it goes into a TED talk and how to actually present it something that people maybe don't understand and maybe comprehend what actually goes into it. So we'll touch on a lot of those things as we go, camilla, but what I like to do with all guests first and foremost is get a wee bit of understanding about who you are and kind of what has brought you to this point. So where did you grow up, what was it like as a young Camilla Long and what were the early inspirations growing up in your household, in your area?
Speaker 2:Oh, seamus, where do we even start with all of this? Well, where I'm at at the moment is I run a business called Bespoke Communications and our raison d'etre, our whole purpose and our whole mission, is to help people to achieve their potential. So we work with businesses to develop high-performing teams, and a lot of that is about helping people get past blockers, mindsets, some limiting beliefs that they hold about themselves. And really, if you talk about inspiration and how I arrived at this point, it's been my own imperfect journey through life. That's really been the inspiration for so much of what I've studied and what I work on with people every single day of the week.
Speaker 2:I grew up in a rural household. I grew up on a farm in rural County Meath, and in many ways it's such an idyllic place to grow up. You have freedom. I mean, my back garden was hundreds you know, hundreds of cows looking at me over over a fence. We had dogs, we had cats, we had just about everything that you can imagine for children to grow up in a in a fulfilled environment. It also puts well, it's a choice, isn't it? But it can put limitations on you in terms of where you think you can go, and I think I carried that oh sure, I'm a wee girl from afar around with me for a very long time and you can find yourself in situations where that almost pinch yourself moment can occur. And so I did take opportunities during my career to push myself out of my comfort zone.
Speaker 2:I studied computer science in Dublin and the defining moment, I think, of my life was a decision that I made in my final year at university to not take up a graduate job in Dublin like so many of my peers, but to actually travel 5,000 miles and just take up work in Tokyo, in Japan. Now, seamus, the truth of the matter is probably a lot of the inspiration for that came from a little bit of a broken heart at the time. The island of Ireland just wasn't going to be big enough for the both of us. Off, I went to Japan anyway, and can I tell you that whole idea of being a girl from a farm? You just have to throw that out the window and you just have to base into whatever has been put in front of you. So that actual challenge that I put in front of myself has probably enabled me to go on and to take on so many other challenges that perhaps I never would have imagined myself doing.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. I want to go on to that as we go, camilla, but I suppose even going back, like growing up in County Meath, growing up on a farm, rural, loads of cats and dogs and cows and things like that, but, as you said, sometimes that can be really idyllic for sure. But then it's also something's missing, because something that I want to to fulfill and drive like in school. Was there anything in school that was inspiring you at that time? What were the things that you were really interested in that kind of like? Is there a thread between what you do right now? That maybe was there the whole way through school growing up?
Speaker 2:Seamus, I've had four different careers, but I think the thread that brings me through all of those is I'm the oldest in my family and when you're born as the oldest child, I think that carries a certain responsibility. You feel a certain responsibility for those around you. So I started out life as a software developer. I'm a technologist by background. That's the way I think. I'm logical in the way that I think I worked as a software developer for a number of years and then I had the opportunity being based in Tokyo, I had the opportunity to move into the financial market. So I'm actually a recovering stockbroker. I became a broker for years, first of all in Tokyo, and then I moved to the bright lights of London. My goodness me again. You know, moving country it's a challenge. You move to a new environment.
Speaker 2:I remember getting off the plane in London on October 6th year 2000 and literally I knew two people in the entire city of London and I was about to take up a new job with a bank in London. And you have to hit the ground running, you have to decide what am I going to do here? So that was about getting out building a network as quickly as I possibly could. I spent a lot of time in mainland Europe at that time, so I ended up making lots of friends all around Switzerland, geneva, zurich, the Scandinavian countries, italy ended up spending a lot of time in those places.
Speaker 2:And you have to work hard to build relationships and you have to work hard to build trust with people when you've literally walked through the door and they've got no idea who you're from. And, of course, in those days we didn't really have the social media platforms that we have today, so it wasn't even a case of going on linkedin and seeing you know who do we have. That are mutual connections. You were walking in as a blank canvas to people and that's definitely. There's a lot of learning there. There's a lot that you do there, there's a lot of you know getting your head around all of that and you know be useful and helpful to people and and um, making sure that you build that trust really quickly yeah, so moving from that.
Speaker 2:You know, sorry sharing this, I spoke across you there but moving, moving from that then, um, when the babies were born, sort of priorities shifted so I moved back in back to ireland. At that stage thought that with the upbringing that I had, certainly, um, the idea of bringing up children in the city wasn't so appealing to me. So I moved back to the island of Ireland and that really launched a whole new direction of travel for me at that stage.
Speaker 1:What was it like in Tokyo, because that was probably a big culture shock. What was the things that you learned living in Tokyo? What did you have to adapt to in terms of how you lived before? What was the mindset shift that you had to adapt to in terms of how you lived before? What was the mindset shift that you had to have also in living in somewhere like Tokyo?
Speaker 2:going from Meath to Tokyo is a big transition believe it or not, it was a whole lot harder to move back from Tokyo to London than it was to ever move to Tokyo in the first place. You're prepared for it to be different. People speak a different language. They write using a different alphabet. Culturally it's going to be different.
Speaker 2:I was really lucky. I was part of a government program at the time that gave us some cultural awareness training. So, as a young 21 year old who, like you say, really I had grown up on a diet of meat and two vegetables and really hadn't been to a huge number of places, we were given a little bit of an awareness of how to use chopsticks, the sort of food that we might might encounter, the sort of cultural tradition that we might experience, and that was an absolutely massive help because you're not walking in completely green and there were there were so many habits and traditions that were so different to how we behave, you know, in Ireland, and I just embraced all of that, absolutely loved it, and Tokyo remains one of my, for Japan as a country remains one of my places in the world.
Speaker 2:I've been back with my family since and just visiting Japan. It's amazing. I would recommend a trip to japan to anybody. It will open your mind to so many possibilities and you will come back with new habits.
Speaker 1:You will never walk on a carpet with shoes on again I've never been, but, um, I've seen loads of friends go there as well too, and it looks absolutely it looks amazing, so I'll put it on the bucket list. Um, come on, okay. So you come back, um, and you're back in ireland. Um, how did you then start to make the move into kind of doing what you're doing? What was the career moves? What was the shifts that was happening for you? Um, a few things you mentioned there as well too, like when you think about this, was days before social media. Now you're learning those personal skills that you're actually getting to meet people. You have to go out and shake hands and meet people fist to fist. I remember starting as a personal trainer before the social media days as well, too, and it was that same thing. You have to learn those personal skills. So what were the things that you were doing at that time then that was moving you in the direction that you're in now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, when the children were born, I took several years out and I was at home with my young children, and then it came a time when they started school and it was time to start to think about what next, and that was probably what started me on the trajectory towards the coaching work that I do now. I had the opportunity to set up a business with a business partner in the telecoms industry and that was all about enabling a team. We had a team of people around us and we are. We needed to engage with SME businesses and we had a sales force. So working with that sales force, coaching that sales force, learning the value proposition, learning about why a company would use us versus another company, learning a new industry all of that was a very steep learning curve, but it was those coaching skills, I think again, that really started to get me seeing the impact that you can have, so you can go out and you can um sell so much as one person.
Speaker 2:But when you're working with a team and enabling a team and helping that team to get past some of those limiting beliefs that you've gotten, past yourself, all of the challenges and struggles that you've had along the way and most of them are not practical skills because, let's face it, we live in a world where any information that you want to set your fingertips.
Speaker 2:So if you want to learn how to sell telecoms effectively, you will go online and there'll where any information that you want is at your fingertips. So if you want to learn how to sell telecoms effectively, you will go online and there'll be 15 tutorials that you can access for free. That doesn't tend to be the problem. It doesn't tend to be those practical skills. It tends to be the accountability piece. It tends to be the fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of judgment All of those fears that we don't even recognize that we have, that are getting in the way of our own performance, and it was helping people to unblock those things in a in a compassionate and kind way really helps to unlock the potential of the company that, um, I set up at that time. What would you know?
Speaker 1:a good transition then into the work that I do today yeah, brilliant, and it's so true because it's what I teach and it's what I preach as well too that mindset, a lot of the times, is the issue. You know, 80% of the success that you're looking for is mindset. You can have 20% of the strategy, you can have all the things that you need to do, but if you've got something holding you back, you don't believe in yourself enough, you're not going to implement it. So, as a business partner, camilla, what were the challenges that you faced personally? Because you go into business for the first time as a business partner, I'm assuming.
Speaker 1:What were some of the challenges that you faced at that time with your business partner in terms of understanding each other, maybe having a shared vision, maybe conflicting visions, because a lot of people get into business, they set up a partnership. Because a lot of people get into business, they set up a partnership. I've been there before also and then it doesn't maybe go according to plan. So what are the things that you learned at that time as a business partner, camilla?
Speaker 2:I think probably a lot of the things that I see with my work as a coach. I support executives, I support senior leaders, I support people with communicating that vision, helping them to engage their teams, helping them to sustain progress, helping them to skillfully execute all of those strategies that we sit and we do on the away days. That's the work that I do on a daily basis, and when we talk about challenges between partners, that's probably where I see a lot of the cold face. That's where I see some of the things that can happen when things go wrong. People sometimes come to a coach when things are going well. More often than not, they come to a coach when they feel a little bit stuck and supporting people through those difficult communications that they have with a business partner where the vision has become misaligned, where people are falling out of step with one another, where expectations have not been clearly expressed or documented. That is something that literally happens in business every day of the week.
Speaker 2:Speaking personally, I think my belief is that open and honest communication is always the answer to all of those things. I'm trying to pre-empt those things before they happen. I won't say that everything has been perfect. There have been times when I have procrastinated. You know you hold off on having that conversation. It sits circling around in your head for three months, six months.
Speaker 2:It's actually. That's actually a signal to yourself that if there's a conversation that you're putting off, it's actually a signal that it's a really big one. Because listening to that trigger and listening to that voice in your head is probably the most sensible thing that you can do, because when you don't, that's when I've seen the fallout. I've seen business partners where they go to sell and the shareholder agreement suddenly isn't worth anything. What people thought that they were going to be getting out of the business is not what actually happens and that I've seen catastrophic results with that. So, spreading that, those difficult conversations off of the past, no matter how hard they might feel, how uncomfortable they might feel, equipping yourself with the mindset and sometimes the tactics, yeah conversations.
Speaker 2:Feeling in control of those conversations, I think, and it's my belief, is the key to making sure that those problems don't become yeah, 100.
Speaker 1:I think the values piece plays a huge role in that. Um, you can have the business values, but then you've also got your personal values, and if you don't understand each other's personal values, there's an expectation for you to be like them, for them to be like you and value the same things, and then that just doesn't always work out the same way. Um, understanding each other's values can play a huge role in helping that communication for sure. Can you share a time then? That failure? Camilla played a key role in your growth personal growth, business growth, as a coach in doing what you're doing.
Speaker 2:I think failure is always a sign. You can take failure as a sign that you're doing something right, that you've pushed yourself, that you've challenged yourself. I would say that, for the truth of the matter is, for a lot of my career, I perhaps didn't put myself in a position where failure was going to be an option, and that's one of the things that, when I look back, I think. If I was to redo my time, I would probably be more courageous and perhaps would have experienced the sting of failure more frequently than I have.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I would say that most of the failures that I've had are small failures. They're plans that maybe got to 70%, or plans that got to 80%, that didn't quite get over the line, rather than some of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That people have, because failures, when you sit and learn from a failure, you will grow as a person and you will discover depths in yourself that you didn't believe that you had, and that will only propel success in the future. Whether it's in a relationship, whether it's in business, whether it's with a family member or a friend, those failures are how we can really learn and grow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, and I just reframe them. Call them feedback instead of failures. Looking at that, then, camilla, what was that, um fear of? Was it a fear of going all in? Was it a fear of letting go of what you currently have? Was it a fear of like expressing yourself fully, or like having a bigger goal or vision? What would you like what you just told us there? Now, what was the underlying feeling for you if you were to identify that?
Speaker 2:Well, I know the answer to that one. I've done a lot of thinking on that one. It's the fear of judgment.
Speaker 2:It's the fear of you put something out there. You put a goal or an ambition out into the public domain. What if you don't achieve it? What will they say then? And even articulating those words out loud, how ridiculous does that sound? Because the reality of it is they, whoever they are, and there's always a day and when you, when it boils down to it. I'll give you a tiny example, and this is a really small trivial, but it's such a perfect example. But when lockdown hit, all face-to-face networking stopped. We were all trapped at home. We weren't allowed to go out and to grow a business or to continue to be able to feed your children with your business.
Speaker 2:Social media became tremendously important and LinkedIn is a platform that really matters to me.
Speaker 2:I'm a communication coach, I help people to communicate messages and consequently, I stayed away from the idea of LinkedIn video for the longest time, because I thought, when I do LinkedIn video, it's got to be perfect, it's got to be the most amazing video, it's got to be something that everybody's going to absolutely love.
Speaker 2:Now, first of all, that as a goal or an ambition how ridiculous is that? Because your video is never going to appeal to 100% of the people. But secondly, when I actually thought what was holding me back, it was the opinion of three people. It was the opinion of three people out of all of my thousands of followers. When it went down to it and I actually examined why I was procrastinating on the video, it was the opinion of three people who are close friends, who I didn't want to judge me and you know what, once I recognized that was what it was, it was completely ridiculous and I just got on with it and I started to push those LinkedIn videos. So for me, the fear of judgment is absolutely alive and well and it's about listening to that voice. It's about actually recognising when that fear of judgment is holding you back from achieving what it is that you want to achieve, because you know who is even watching you anyway.
Speaker 1:Everybody's just busy getting on with their own lives 100%, yeah, but like what you just said, kamala, is so true for so many people, for so many people in business, so many people in business, for so many people just starting business, for so many coaches. It's that fear of judgment and the comparison trap. What are they going to think? Is my stuff as good as them? We put people on pedestals, we put ourselves in a pit and we think that we don't match up a lot of the times, and then, like you did, we just kind of boil ourselves and then go right well, like who is it that I'm actually afraid of? What is their judgment? And here's the thing you're going to be judged anyway. So why not be judged for being exactly who it is that you want to be? Why not be judged for doing the thing that you actually really want to do? You're always going to get judged I couldn't say it better myself.
Speaker 2:that is is exactly it. And this idea of the perfectionism trap. So many of us fall into it and really, when you think about it, you know it's got to be perfect. Well, for a start, it's never going to be perfect. Practice makes progress. Practice doesn't make perfect. What does perfect even look like Perfect belongs to the days when you did a maths test in school. Perfect was getting 100% in a maths test. That's not the real world. That's not life. You're never going to appeal to all of the people all of the time, so why hold ourselves back trying to try? And so there's, you know, that fear of not measuring up, but probably a deeper emotion and probably the more challenging emotion, and the emotion that we suppress, aligned with that perfectionism is the shame of admitting to ourselves that we didn't measure up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we're setting this impossible standard. You're never going to measure up. So, again, I think it's about connecting with these emotions and recognizing these emotions and, as you say, going out and looking for the evidence that they're true. Yeah, and here's the evidence. By by the way, just back to that linkedin story, to close the circle on that ridiculous linkedin story, those three people, each one of those three people, they're close friends of mine. Every single one of them, at some point over the course of the following months, when we were allowed to meet up, said we really like your linkedin videos videos Typical If that isn't an exercise in changing your what-ifs.
Speaker 2:I don't know what is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wish you'd have told me that three years ago, when I was even thinking about posting them. I would really love your LinkedIn videos if you posted them.
Speaker 2:Well, you'll never find out if you don't try right yeah exactly Okay, love it.
Speaker 1:yeah, exactly okay. So, and um, your role in communications as a leader and a coach, camilla, and it's it's interesting that you're the oldest in the family, so you had that maybe leadership qualities and leadership role um, maybe the whole way through. Um, what do you see with the people that you coach? What are the traits, the things that they do and how they show up that make them good leaders in their lives, in their businesses, in their families, whatever it might be?
Speaker 2:Well, the thing is, leadership is about inspiring the people around you, and you know, there's a quote, isn't there? If you're leading and there's no one following you, you're just going out for a nice walk and to me the key thing for people that I work with is developing that empathy gene.
Speaker 2:So it's about understanding what makes the people around you tick. What is it that they want? What is it that your company or your division or wherever you're sitting, what is it that that can do for the people that work for you? And if you can really get inside the heads of the motivations and drivers of the team that's around you and making sure you know it's almost like you know, I view my own company as a vehicle for helping other people to achieve what they want to achieve. How can I support and help them?
Speaker 2:And once you develop that empathy piece, a lot of things fall into place.
Speaker 2:So helping people to connect and, like you've touched on already, we won't all be aligned, our value systems will not always align but for people to be able to get behind what it is that you stand for, when they understand that there's empathy and sometimes compassion, you know empathy and compassion are two separate things. Out of the two of them, I would say that empathy is probably the more important one, that the compassion is a is a, an emotional skill. Empathy is a cognitive skill and being able to really put yourself in the shoes of the people that work around you and be able to walk a mile in the shoes of the people that work around you and be able to walk a mile in those shoes. And once you understand that sometimes there are things that we have to do, that there are hard things that we have to say and there are hard things that we have to do, but recognising where your team is at in order to help them to get through some of the challenges that they might find in front of them is absolutely key.
Speaker 1:And then, during the good times, having to make sure that what you're doing brings them on a journey. Yeah, I think that's the empathy piece from listening to what you're saying, kamala is having that understanding, just having that level of understanding that every single person is a human being. They have their own set of priorities and values. Person is a human being. They have their own set of priorities and values. They want the best for themselves in their lives and it might not be exactly what you think it should be and they have that level of understanding and communication and empathy, as you say is, is crucial. As a leader, I think vulnerability also plays into that role as well, where most leaders think that they should have their shit together and they know absolutely everything. Do you feel that a level of vulnerability is also something that you see in guys that lead? Well, guys, and I mean men and women yeah, yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker 2:I mean that's that idea that I've got to show them, I've got to perfect. Yeah, when times are tough, people do look to you as a leader and it's important that you are clear on what the direction of travel is and so that people can get behind that. Absolutely there is some strength and there are times when tough decisions need to be made and you know it's not a democracy. There are times when that falls on your shoulders as a leader. For some people it probably goes back to what I just talked about, that perfectionism thing, that idea that I've got to show up and I can't show chinks in the armour and that I've got to always have it together. There's probably a piece there where there are some mental blocks for ourselves and that's perhaps a vision of a leader that we're holding maybe a little bit too close, because you're right to let people in. Is is is how you develop that empathy and help people and make that connection and have people can move forward with you. Yeah, you know you're not perfect either.
Speaker 2:I've witnessed that on occasions where leaders have have made a decision have gone to implement the decision, have recognized that there have been flaws and perhaps the execution of that, have tuned in and listened to their team and gone back and said look, I don't always get it right. I've listened, I've tuned in and this is what we're going to do instead yeah the ability to to understand where people are coming from, hmm, the leadership skill, and that does require vulnerability.
Speaker 1:It does require the admission that you don't always get everything right yeah, 100% it came up in so many ways yeah, and you touched on the perfection thing again. Actually, gary said to me on LinkedIn this morning and we had a conversation and he was talking about perfection, striving for perfection, and he says what of everything you currently have and where you are right now is already perfect, because perfection assumes that there's something missing. What if there was nothing missing? What if you already are where you need to be? I think sometimes it's just that misperception, isn't it? That we have this idea of what perfect looks like when there is no such thing as perfect? But going on, the next question, then, kamala, is what is one belief that you had to shift and change in terms of you showing up, um, speaking and becoming a leader and communications and helping other people become an effective leader and speaker as well?
Speaker 2:I think I talk about this a lot as a coach. The big thing is getting out of my own way and stop worrying about what other people are going to think. I am who I am and getting comfortable with that really at the heart of everything. Some of our struggles through life are that feeling that I am not enough, and it's actually when that voice comes and it does comes to chat in my ear all the time it's recognising when that voice appears and challenging that voice. So there are lots of things that I do and what I've recognised is that mindset is a bit like your mental fitness is your mindset, and it's a bit like your physical fitness, and I go to the gym four times a week to make sure that I keep myself physically fit.
Speaker 2:Mental fitness isn't something that you can just assume you're going to have. You have to work on it on a daily basis, and so there are lots of habits and routines that I've built into my life to help me with that, and some of them take moments. Some of them, you know, invest more time in. So, for example, over the last couple of years I've really invested in developing meditation rituals, because that just helps to quiet the busy voices that go on in my head. And you know, one of the things that I do on a daily basis now is I choose to connect in with a mantra and my mantra changes. It changes all the time, it changes over time, but the current mantra is that I'm doing my best, letting go of the rest, and that helps to get away from that feeling of, oh you know, I could be so much better. I should be doing more things. There's nothing more important than the present moment and leaning into the present moment and making sure that in this moment, you are doing the absolute best that you possibly can be.
Speaker 1:everything else will take care of itself yeah, I love that and bringing yourself back into the present moment. And someone asked me about, um, something around the same where I was doing that talk we talked about before we came on live in cork, and someone asked me to get anxious. I says I don't get anxious as such. I get nerves, of course, but not anxiety.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of the times, anxiety will come when we're trying to present a persona instead of just actually being ourselves, which is showing up and speaking about the things that you love, and showing up and speaking about the things that you have done, achieved and researched and been a part of. Or if I started to come up and try to speak about the things that you know, then I'm going to get even more anxious and I'm going to feel like an imposter. Or if I just be myself and speak from my heart about my journey and the things that I've discovered, then I'm not going to get as anxious. I'm going to get nervous, of course, but anxiety is a different thing which can be crippling for people to go and speak. What advice do you give to speakers, camilla, when they're being faced with self-doubt, when they're trying to present themselves?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of things there. Look, this could be a podcast in its own right. We could spend an hour talking about this. A lot of the things that I've talked about already apply in that situation and I love the fact that you've referenced about already apply in those situations. In that situation and I love the fact that you've referenced a recent talk that you gave I have feedback from a member of your audience came as you had told me that you were going to go to Cork and you were going to deliver that talk and I'd remembered that and I happened to meet a member of your audience recently who thought that you absolutely crushed your talk. He completely connected with what you had to say. It was clear from what he told me that you had spent time thinking about the needs of your audience yeah, and no more than our role as a leader.
Speaker 2:When we stand up as a speaker, that's the first place to start. Yeah, it's about this audience that I've got in front of me. What have I got to say from my lived experience or my expertise or the credentials that I bring to the table? What have I got to say that's going to help them on their journey? What are their challenges? What are their opportunities? What are their headaches? How do I help and support them? How can anything that I've got to say help with those things? And it was clear to me when I listened to that person talk that you had done that. And that first thing that you just mentioned there is do you know what we have to get out of our own way? And, specifically, when we speak about a talk, about a speaking situation, evidence builds confidence. And when it comes to speaking, if you decide that this is something I want to get better at, if you decide that this is something I want to improve at, if you decide that this is a tool that's going to help you on your journey the ability to stand up in front of an audience and speak and hold their attention well, no more than managing your mindset no more than managing your physical fitness. That's something that you need to invest some time in and the mindset piece is probably the most important bit. That evidence building, confidence piece is, if you look at the psychology of peak performance. It's about getting out there, it's about delivering your performance, it's about finding some objective, constructive feedback that you can take on board, that you can reflect on, that you can apply and go out and rinse and repeat, and part of that is about celebrating the wins.
Speaker 2:So many times I talk to speakers, I speak to business leaders in advance of a big talk that they have to give, maybe a deal that they need to close, or maybe a difficult conversation in business maybe you had a business partnership working in and afterwards they come to me and I ask how it went. The first thing that 99% of people tell me is all the things that went wrong. Oh, I forgot my words on slide four. Or you know, when I said this, they went mad, went mad and, you know, really caused the conversation to do well. And you know, once you bring them down from the self-criticism, go well, actually, what went well. They'll tell you oh, do you know what? We came to an agreement. Oh, actually, I managed to close that deal, yeah, yeah, it's all signed, it's all absolutely signed.
Speaker 2:So and I'm like hold on a minute when we go to the impact that you wanted to achieve with that talk you've, absolutely, you've nailed it. You absolutely achieved everything you set out to do. The journey to get there wasn't perfect. There's definitely lessons that we can learn and improve on. So evidence build builds confidence. Celebrate the wins, celebrate the things that you do well, acknowledge them and then absolutely all of us can get better every single time that we do something. So there's always an opportunity for improvement.
Speaker 1:Love that.
Speaker 2:Come on board and absorb it and develop and get better with that. So having that third-party objective feedback is a really good thing to get us out of our own way, to get us out of our own head yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:Evidence is uh. Evidence built in confidence is fantastic. I remember the very first time that I did a talk in front of a group it was a junior chambers in dairy. It was in 2017 and I was on last because I'd won a trophy before and they asked me to come next year and present the trophy and there was a guy that was doing the MC the whole night. He was the guy that was keeping the group entertained, keeping the room entertained. He did a talk and I'm not joking the whole room was completely silent. I mean silent, and you could stand the vision Really really fantastic.
Speaker 1:Talk, talk. I couldn't find a hole anywhere. I couldn't find a door that I could get out of because I had to go on after him and I wanted to get out of it. And I remember saying to Katrina Katrina, just let me present the trophy. You could have told me he was going to do a speech, I guess, and I went up and did the talk and I cut it short, for sure, but but I learned so many different lessons that evening by one, overcoming the fear that I felt there and then, after, this is I'm never going to do the talk again because it was so scary. And then what I did afterwards which you just touched on, camilla was I need to actually learn how to present myself. I need to learn how to actually talk in public, if it's something that I want to grow into. So, leading into that, then, camilla, baseball communications, tell me a bit more about what it is you do, what it is that you offer and how you go in and help other people become effective communicators.
Speaker 2:Well, we believe that great communication is the key to unlocking so many of the challenges that people have at work. I speak to leaders who feel like I'm just stuck. I keep having to say the same thing over and over again. People just aren't listening, and no matter what strategies or plans we put in place, I feel like it's like pushing a rock up a hill, it's you know, it's just so hard to get things moving, and I absolutely empathize with all of that, because we do live in a busy world that's full of distractions and phone notifications and, let's face it, we live in a world, too, where lots of people are grappling with lots of things going on in their own home lives. We've got lots of things going on with children school refusal. We have people working in our teams that have massive caring responsibilities. So anybody that's leading a team is working with a group of people that have so many different demands on their time. So to get their attention is a hard thing. To sustain their attention is an even more challenging thing. So the work that we do, everything that we do, is about behaviour change. So we work with people in three really different ways. The first of all is, first of all. It's about coaching people and supporting people with public speaking. So, just like I worked with you where I supported you with developing your TED talk, we will work with leaders who are delivering keynote speeches and deliver channels to their teams, who need to stand up in front of external partners and get their attention and deliver that killer keynote speech. We do that work every single day of the week. We offer media training. So for people who need to appear on camera, who might need to be grilled in front of our broadcast media on issues political, civic, business we help them to get their message across. Because you don't get much time I've had a fabulous opportunity to chat to you now for quite an extended period of time, but a media interview is three minutes. That's it. By the end of it, you want to feel like you've said what it is that you want to say. And then the third thing and probably this is where we get to know people the best is, we go into companies and we help them to develop those high performing teams by helping people. Most of the time, it's about absolutely giving practical tools and techniques for how to own your space in a meeting or how to share meetings more effectively or how to lead a team effectively. All of those things, all of those skills, we absolutely help people to learn.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing that underpins all of our programs is the idea of a growth mindset the idea that, by pushing ourselves and challenging our inner limiting beliefs, that we can all grow and develop and get better. And that can feel threatening to people who find themselves in maybe more of a fixed mindset where they have made a decision about themselves. They have put a decision about themselves, they have put a label on themselves internally, whether they recognize that they've done that or not. Helping people to get past that. Get past that little box that they've decided that they're going to sit within in order for them to get comfortable with change because our companies are in a constant state of change. Helping them to feel like they've got a voice to share new ideas.
Speaker 2:Very often those ideas for changing our making our products and services better come from the front line and it's about people feeling empowered to share their voice. So helping people to get past some of the limiting beliefs that they have put on themselves, that they don't even recognise are going on, and to move past that fear so that they can step out and be as effective as part of a team as they possibly can be. We've just started to work with an instrument, a psychological instrument, called Strengthscope, which is absolutely amazing because it just aligns with everything that we believe about growth mindset. It's about focusing on those things, those characteristics that we do really well and that we can lean into. When we can focus on those and when we can lean into the evidence that those skills are helping us, the world is our oyster really.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, camilla, and I can speak to how you helped me with my talk back in I think it was 2020, I'd say a talk and that process and how, um, how much I grew I grew from, from that process and learning how to actually speak more effectively, especially for TED talk, which is kind of a wee bit different. So, um, again, thank you for helping me in that process, kamala, and I can speak to what you actually do, um, and how professional that experience was and, again, just the, the stuff that I learned from it. So, camilla, for people that are looking in and want to connect with you and want to find out more about bespoke communications, where is the best place to find you?
Speaker 2:LinkedIn is always a great place to connect. Of course, we have our website, bespokecomsnet. Uh, we have literally just uh, I don't know about 100 years past every every other person in the world have just got ourselves up and running on instagram so you can find us there. We'll start to work out how that works in the next worthwhile and watch this space. It'll be packed with content once I can actually absolutely um instagram linkedin camilla long, not the sunday times journalist, and bespokecommentsnet. It would be fabulous to have the opportunity to open a conversation with anybody that's listening to this podcast highly recommend camilla.
Speaker 1:Uh, fantastic conversation really. Really enjoyed the podcast. Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2:Brilliant to have been here, Seamus. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you.