#@%& Everything You've Heard About Public Speaking
Your most powerful communication tool isn’t perfect command of language. It isn’t a speechwriting template. It isn’t a set of gestures that catch people’s attention.
Your most powerful tool is creativity. It’s what helps you imagine life from your audience’s point of view. To craft compelling stories and help your audience feel your message on an emotional level.
Creativity is what elevates you from robotic and forgettable to unique and inspired. It helps people relate to you. It sets you apart and makes your message stick.
But being creative, for all that it offers freedom and fulfilment, can feel like a burden. For one thing, there’s the stress of feeling like you don’t have enough of it. Lots of us go through our lives thinking, “I’m not creative.” You need to go through the process of finding your creativity, and then recognize it when you do. And that’s the easy part. Because when you find your creativity it’s tender and vulnerable, like a baby bird. Then you have to send that tender, vulnerable thing out into the world, for everyone to see, because that’s the only way that it learns how to fly.
I was in my 30s before I was able to think of myself as a creative person. I’m not a talented musician or visual artist like my brothers. If I compare myself to the authors, designers and comedic geniuses in my social circle, I’m going to come up short. So on the day when somebody said to me “wow, you’re really creative!” my first impulse was to squint at them and go, “No, I’m not!”
Here’s the story I was telling myself: I’m book smart. I’m a hard worker. I can take directions and then implement those directions well, but I’m not an idea person and I’m definitely not creative. If anything, I’m kind of boring.
Here’s the truth that I’ve learned since then: I’m a free spirit who hates being micromanaged and loves problem-solving. I’m a writer who can take complicated ideas and make them simple, elegant and accessible. I can design a workshop that will transform a stressful, scary experience into something fun and exciting. And I can achieve the most difficult task imaginable: changing somebody’s mind. That’s creativity.
When I accepted that reality and changed my story, I changed my life. That’s not because I’m special. It’s because expressing your creativity is part of being fully human.
The thing is, sometimes creativity is hidden in plain sight. It’s your sense of humour or your gift for business strategy or the way you can turn lines of code into something beautiful and useful. When I surveyed the member of the Stage Light Communications Facebook community about creativity, members gave answers like “making things and making ideas,” “finding the not so obvious was to say, do or write things” and “making the impossible, possible.”
So if you’re struggling with the pressure to create, your first question is not “am I creative?” but rather “what kind of creative am I, and how do I want to develop it?
Once you’ve got a pretty good idea, it’s time to put that creativity to work. This means trying things out and seeing what happens. If you really want to grow, it also means sharing your creations with others, getting feedback and trying again.
Sometimes fear of failure will hold you back, or you’ll be limited by the things that you don’t know you don’t know. That’s why it can help to have a mentor, teacher or some other accountability mechanism to inspire you and keep pushing you outside of your comfort zone.
Sometimes your creations will suck.
Let me rephrase that. A lot of times, your creations will suck.
That’s part of the process, and it’s why it can help to create safe spaces for experimentation and honest-but-caring feedback from people you trust.
But here’s something really amazing about this process, and about the relationship between creativity and communication. It’s so amazing, in fact, that I’ve made it the foundation of my work.
Creativity and communication exist in a positive feedback loop. The more you strengthen and nurture your creativity, and become more confident in your ability to create, the more confident and skilled you become as a speaker. And the more you develop your authentic speaking and communication skills, the easier it is to embrace the risk and challenge of living creatively.
So my challenge for you this month isn’t to work on any particular communication skill. It’s to explore and push your creative boundaries, in any way that feels exhilarating to you. And as always, if you need some inspiration, cheerleading or tough love, you can reach out for a free consultation and see where this adventure takes you.
Show us what you’ve got! Join the Stage Light Communications Facebook community where you can ask questions, give advice, and share your creative process with a supportive group of like-minded people.
Photo credit: Alex Holyoake