Artwork for podcast Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking
Onward and Upward: How Do We Use Ongoing Mastery?
Episode 11 • 20th September 2022 • Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking • Kirsten Rourke
00:00:00 00:17:22

Share Episode

Shownotes

In Season 2's first episode, Kirsten and Kellie discuss the role of Ongoing Mastery in their own work. They touch on storytelling, being humble and starting at square 1, and practicing important presentations in your sleep.

Key take-aways:

  • We’re trying new things this season, including video; check out our YouTube channel
  • We’re both pursuing ongoing mastery, even though we’ve been in our fields for a long time
  • Everyone’s journey is different

Join our Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking Skills group on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14104216/


Rourke Training’s webpage: https://www.rourketraining.com/

Ongoing Masgtery: Presenting & Speaking page: https://ongoing-mastery.captivate.fm/


RSS feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/ongoing-mastery/

Read a transcript of this episode: https://share.descript.com/view/jIMOxkWYuag

For the video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/wQm7aKjDTYI

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstenrourke/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kirstenmalenarourke

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kirstenrourke?lang=en

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rourketraining/

Transcripts

Kirsten:

Hello, and welcome to Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking season two.

Kellie:

Wooo

Kirsten:

We're back!

Kellie:

Yay!

Kirsten:

I'm Kirsten Rourke.

Kirsten:

I'm Kellie Donovan-Condron

Kirsten:

and we are your hosts for the adventure that you'll be going on today.

Kirsten:

There will be shuffleboard on the Lido deck later, please bring drinks.

Kirsten:

Season two, so what is not obvious to the folks who are coming to us from

Kirsten:

Apple and Spotify is that we are now doing video and we're recording through

Kirsten:

Riverside to create the podcast, so that we have a YouTube channel

Kirsten:

and we also have our audio podcast.

Kirsten:

So we're trying the new thing.

Kellie:

I can see you.

Kirsten:

I can see you, and it's like, "Hi, I know you."

Kirsten:

So,

Kellie:

Hey!

Kirsten:

This will be fun.

Kirsten:

This season, we're going to be doing some new things and much, much thanks

Kirsten:

to Content 10x and Amy, who met with us and gave us some guidance on

Kirsten:

ways we could repurpose our content.

Kirsten:

Yeah, she gave us a whole bunch of things that we could think

Kirsten:

about, which was fantastic.

Kirsten:

And we're now adding some video.

Kirsten:

We'll be adding in some coaching sessions, and other things, but of course, still

Kirsten:

doing interviews and still doing, talking about the craft of presenting

Kirsten:

and speaking between you and I, and different ways in which people can

Kirsten:

enhance their ongoing mastery journey.

Kirsten:

So,

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

Kellie, what is on your plate that you've been working on for ongoing

Kirsten:

mastery in the last month or so?

Kellie:

Well, I started reading How to Tell a Story 2022 book from The Moth Radio

Kellie:

Hour team, and we had seen a production of The Moth back in the spring, and

Kellie:

it was really exciting and engaging and fun and we both got this book as

Kellie:

a gift when we came through the door.

Kellie:

And I knew when I started it, it was going to be really absorbing, so I had

Kellie:

put off starting it until I had kind of the clear space, which I had this weekend.

Kellie:

And I was right.

Kellie:

I'll be reading the rest of it probably today.

Kellie:

It's really a close look at the craft of storytelling, which

Kellie:

you would expect from The Moth.

Kellie:

But so far, even just the forward and the introduction, I really like the way

Kellie:

they're emphasizing connection and the way in which they say, you, the person

Kellie:

reading this book, you, you have a story.

Kellie:

Your story is important.

Kellie:

No one else can tell your story.

Kellie:

But you have to do the work to tell it.

Kellie:

And I'm really appreciating that aspect of the craft of producing a story.

Kellie:

I think about that a lot with the work that you and I are doing,

Kirsten:

Yep

Kellie:

we do with clients, that I do with my college students, right.

Kellie:

We're starting the research essay cycle, and even though they have to research

Kellie:

a question, that question is going to come from a community that they are

Kellie:

currently involved with, something that's actually meaningful to them, not an

Kellie:

abstract thing out there in the world that they just decided to write about.

Kellie:

And so there's going to be that element of story, right.

Kellie:

From story comes inquiry and curiosity and connection.

Kellie:

So I'm really excited about that.

Kirsten:

Excellent.

Kellie:

And as you know, I took, yeah, yeah.

Kirsten:

Kellie:

As you know, I took Erica Holthausen's

Kirsten:

Yes.

Kellie:

Catchline Communication

Kirsten:

Erica

Kellie:

workshop.

Kirsten:

We love you.

Kellie:

Yes, Erica, on writing for high visibility publications.

Kellie:

And that was a terrific experience for me because I've been writing now for a

Kellie:

couple decades and mostly in an academic context of my scholarly research.

Kellie:

And I'm shifting some of my focus now to be thinking about, speaking about,

Kellie:

presenting about, more public-facing kinds of writing and communication.

Kellie:

And I had to be humble as I started Erica's workshop.

Kellie:

I could have just said, "Oh, I already know how to write.

Kellie:

Just give me the secret and I'll be done."

Kellie:

And that is not how that works and it doesn't matter that I know

Kellie:

how to write for certain contexts because this is a new context.

Kellie:

And maybe I'm not starting exactly at zero, but I'm

Kellie:

definitely starting at square one.

Kellie:

And so for my own ongoing mastery and applying the skills that I know

Kellie:

I have, but need to use differently and put some to the back and

Kellie:

bring some others to the fore.

Kellie:

Erica's workshop was really great to remind me of that and also

Kellie:

get me started in doing that.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

It's, the thing I'm impressed with is that you're able to set aside, I

Kirsten:

mean, you've been writing and you, this is what you do for a living.

Kirsten:

You're a professor of this.

Kirsten:

And that you can set that aside and come to it as a new

Kirsten:

person and come to it fresh.

Kirsten:

That is so hard to do and it's crucial.

Kellie:

I didn't say it was easy.

Kirsten:

Yeah, Yeah.

Kirsten:

But you, but you

Kellie:

my editor voice

Kirsten:

managed to do it without, like your inner, your inner editor

Kirsten:

was critiquing maybe, a little bit?

Kellie:

My inner editor stayed inner, so that was good.

Kirsten:

Yeah, that's usually my issue is keeping my internal voice internal.

Kellie:

Kirsten:

You have less of that problem.

Kirsten:

Yeah, I learned that lesson when I was still in the dance troupe and

Kirsten:

was, doing an event, it was a seminar in New Hampshire, I think, and I was

Kirsten:

standing next to my dance teacher and with the troupe and looking at someone

Kirsten:

who was a very experienced dancer, had been in the field forever, was doing

Kirsten:

something that seemed really simple.

Kirsten:

And I made this snarky comment, because I was all full of myself, to Nancy and

Kirsten:

said, "Oh, well this looks so basic."

Kirsten:

And she turned to me.

Kirsten:

She was having none of my garbage that day, none of it,

Kellie:

Kirsten:

and said, "Excuse me, if you can't get out of your own way

Kirsten:

and learn what she's offering, you have no business being in this room."

Kirsten:

And I was like, "Oh, okay."

Kirsten:

I got serious voice.

Kirsten:

Okay.

Kirsten:

And had to go and just reorient my head and deal with the cranial-rectal

Kirsten:

insertion problem and going, "Okay.

Kirsten:

Be present."

Kirsten:

And once I was present and once I was really not doing the, "Oh, but

Kirsten:

that's so easy," I realized she was offering something that was

Kirsten:

far beyond what I had been doing.

Kirsten:

So while I could do the steps in the right order and shift, weight shift

Kirsten:

or lift my arm, she was actually doing very finite degrees of change to express

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

something different.

Kirsten:

And it was so, it was subtle, it was elegant, and it was hard.

Kirsten:

So once I started trying to do it, it's like, "Oh, you have to really

Kirsten:

relax and shift and oh, I see."

Kirsten:

And it took, it really, I had to get out of my own way.

Kirsten:

I'm working on doing that with my work right now, because I

Kirsten:

started, I've been speaking for a long time, speaking 20 years.

Kellie:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

But I took on a speaking coach once I decided to branch into new areas

Kirsten:

this year and it's been really helpful.

Kirsten:

I work with Tim David, who is a fantastic speech coach, and he has been really

Kirsten:

helpful in helping me organize my content and kind of look at how I'm

Kirsten:

saying things, the way I'm structuring it, what is it that you're actually

Kirsten:

asking of your audience and when.

Kirsten:

And

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

It's been really educational.

Kirsten:

I'm looking forward to adding that in for our listeners and having not

Kirsten:

only storytellers this season, but I'd really like to bring in a comedian.

Kirsten:

Ideally

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

somebody who does either stand up or improv.

Kirsten:

I think that would be great.

Kirsten:

So I know we have some voiceover people on the hook.

Kirsten:

We have some other people coming in, so it'll be really good.

Kellie:

So, you know that my alternate career fantasy, if the

Kellie:

grad school thing didn't work out, was standup comedian, right?

Kellie:

Except I can't get through my own material without laughing, so

Kellie:

it's not a really viable option, but it's still kind of there.

Kirsten:

Yeah, that is not, yeah, when you're halfway through the joke going,

Kirsten:

"You're gonna love this" Yeah, that quite, doesn't quite work.

Kellie:

No, not really.

Kirsten:

So, what I've been doing for my own ongoing mastery is

Kirsten:

working on, there's a masterclass with Neil Gaman about storytelling,

Kirsten:

and I've gotten halfway through it,

Kellie:

Oh, so good.

Kirsten:

And then I stopped, because he had made a point that I just, I wanted

Kirsten:

to sit with and I wanted it to resonate in my work and kind of think about it and

Kirsten:

go, "All right, how can I layer this into what we're doing, not only on the podcast,

Kirsten:

but with our clients and with the work?"

Kirsten:

We're both part of Innovation Women, a speaker group, and there's

Kellie:

Speaker friends!

Kirsten:

Speaker friends, and there's people in that group that I'm doing

Kirsten:

support work with, they're doing support work with me, and I want

Kirsten:

to be able to offer this as, in all of the ways in which we're kind of

Kirsten:

putting ourselves out in the world.

Kirsten:

And so I'm trying to layer it in, the parfait thing of "Nobody

Kirsten:

don't like a little parfait."

Kellie:

Kirsten:

Just layer it in and have it be wonderfully tasty, because there's

Kirsten:

so much that you can do that is beyond just the reading a slide deck at people.

Kirsten:

That's

Kellie:

So boring

Kirsten:

Please don't do that.

Kirsten:

Please, if you're listening, if you're watching, please, no, just don't.

Kirsten:

That's exactly the opposite of what you want from your audience is you, that if

Kirsten:

you want to turn off engagement and turn off connection, that's how to do it.

Kirsten:

But it's hard to go past that, because it, we don't always know what to do.

Kirsten:

And it's interesting because I'm trying to think of different ways to show

Kirsten:

people that you don't have to have a theater background like me or a really

Kirsten:

deep, intense, full, I can analyze stories to the point where they give

Kirsten:

you meaning that you had no concept of, like Kellie, to be able to do this work.

Kirsten:

That's just what we're, that's where we are.

Kirsten:

But anybody can improve in their presenting and speaking because ongoing

Kirsten:

mastery is something everybody's doing.

Kirsten:

Even the folks who are really, really masterful at it, making a

Kirsten:

living at it full time out there.

Kirsten:

I mean, even our amazing and wonderful folks in Innovation Women who are kicking

Kirsten:

ass and taking names, like Precious.

Kellie:

Yeah, oh, exactly.

Kirsten:

Precious is amazing.

Kirsten:

Pegine is amazing.

Kirsten:

These are people who are just out there, just, you look at

Kirsten:

them and go, "Wow, look at that.

Kirsten:

Look at what you're doing in the world."

Kirsten:

So, everybody has an ongoing mastery journey.

Kellie:

And that's just it, right?

Kellie:

Ongoing mastery when you've really, truly mastered your content, it looks simple.

Kellie:

It looks effortless, but it isn't, right?

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kellie:

That delivery is the end of all of the work, but that

Kellie:

doesn't mean the work isn't there.

Kellie:

It just means you're not seeing it.

Kirsten:

Yep.

Kirsten:

And just like my speech coach tells me, you're never done working on your keynote.

Kellie:

Yep.

Kirsten:

That the point that you're done working on your keynote, then it's dead.

Kirsten:

You've killed it.

Kirsten:

You're never, you're never finished.

Kirsten:

And I learned that back in the troupe with a dance because we had, we had a man

Kirsten:

who was working with us, Tony, who is an engineer by day and was a Middle Eastern

Kirsten:

dancer by night, and he was magnificent.

Kirsten:

He does Egyptian folk dance beautifully and was working on this one stick dance,

Kirsten:

and had, we, he'd gotten some work with an Egyptian choreographer and really

Kirsten:

been refining the craft and getting it, and he'd been working on this dance and

Kirsten:

he'd performed this dance so many times.

Kirsten:

We were in a show, I don't even remember where, and he went out

Kirsten:

and did it, and he came off and we're like, "Oh, that was amazing!

Kirsten:

That was fantastic!

Kirsten:

Good job!"

Kirsten:

He said, "Yeah, I think I'm gonna retire that."

Kirsten:

And we all went, "No, you just finally got it.

Kirsten:

Like, no, you just reached a different plateau.

Kirsten:

You can't stop."

Kirsten:

And he was looking at us like, "What?"

Kirsten:

Because he'd reached this new tier and it was, because he'd always been able to do

Kirsten:

the moves, but there was something in the the way he was delivering it, that was

Kirsten:

just absolutely chef's kiss perfection.

Kirsten:

And we were like, "That, that right there, do more of that."

Kirsten:

And he kind of was a little like, "I wanted to stop doing this dance."

Kirsten:

"No, no, dude, you can't.

Kirsten:

Sorry."

Kellie:

Kirsten:

So, poor Tony.

Kirsten:

But you know, we had, we had some adventures in our 25 years together.

Kellie:

That's awesome.

Kirsten:

We had some adventures.

Kirsten:

We danced at bus stops.

Kirsten:

We danced at the Guard.

Kirsten:

We were everywhere.

Kirsten:

It was ridiculous.

Kirsten:

But I learned a lot from that experience that I bring into what we're doing.

Kirsten:

And it's really nice to kind of be able to approach some of the work I'm doing now

Kirsten:

and go, "Oh wow, there's so much to learn.

Kirsten:

There's so much

Kellie:

Yeah

Kirsten:

to grow into," and have that not be, "Oh, I'm awful because I'm new."

Kirsten:

Instead, it's, "Oh, this is

Kellie:

Right

Kirsten:

wonderful" so.

Kellie:

And I appreciate about your dance experience, that bodied connection, right?

Kellie:

That public speaking, presenting isn't just about the words coming

Kellie:

out of your mouth, but it, if you're not connected to your body as you

Kellie:

do it, it is a different thing.

Kirsten:

It's a physical art.

Kellie:

So I love that.

Kellie:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kellie:

I love that aspect.

Kirsten:

It's a physical and verbal art.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

I, the thing I'm working on now with Tim is the little 10 minute bit that

Kirsten:

I'm doing for my TEDx recording coming up and I have very specific movements

Kirsten:

that I'm doing during it, and I have been overthinking it to the point of

Kirsten:

insanity, of just "If my hands are here, what if I tilt them this way?"

Kirsten:

I'm like going

Kellie:

Kirsten:

completely off my nut about this, so I'm going to be grateful that it's a

Kirsten:

week and a half now until the recording.

Kirsten:

And I'm going to be

Kellie:

Yay

Kirsten:

so grateful when it's done because then I can stop dreaming it and

Kirsten:

waking up in the middle of the night and find that I'm doing it in my sleep.

Kirsten:

It's

Kellie:

Kirsten:

It's been a little crazy.

Kirsten:

David is actually laughing because he'll come into the bedroom and I'm

Kirsten:

just laying there with earbuds on listening to a book, but my hands are

Kirsten:

doing this thing and my shoulders are doing this thing and he knows that I'm

Kirsten:

actually doing my speech in my head.

Kirsten:

And

Kellie:

Kirsten:

he's just like, "Yep.

Kirsten:

That's my wife."

Kellie:

Yep.

Kirsten:

So, don't

Kellie:

That's awesome.

Kirsten:

Worry though, if you are listening, if you are watching, we

Kirsten:

don't expect you to be like this.

Kirsten:

It's okay.

Kirsten:

You will not end up like this.

Kirsten:

Ongoing mastery is your own personal journey.

Kirsten:

You do not actually have to go to Crazy Town, but if you

Kirsten:

do, the drinks are fantastic.

Kirsten:

Just so

Kellie:

Oh, they're very tasty.

Kirsten:

Yes.

Kirsten:

And on that note, I think, I think we're good.

Kirsten:

I think,

Kellie:

I think that's a good place.

Kirsten:

I think this is an introduction to what people will get in season two

Kirsten:

and we will have you guys join us.

Kirsten:

I'm working on that, have everyone join us.

Kirsten:

Trying to take the "guys" out of my language.

Kirsten:

I'm listening to Kellie, working on removing some of

Kirsten:

the gender out of my language.

Kirsten:

So have everyone, have all y'all?

Kellie:

All y'all.

Kirsten:

Yeah.

Kirsten:

No, no.

Kirsten:

I'm from Connecticut.

Kirsten:

That's not going to work.

Kirsten:

Have everyone

Kellie:

I'm from Boston

Kirsten:

come join us, and please come to LinkedIn, the Ongoing Mastery community.

Kirsten:

Find us on all the socials and let us know what it is that you want to

Kirsten:

hear, the people that you want to see, because we're going to be booking more

Kirsten:

interviews and creating more content.

Kirsten:

And it's going to be a lot of fun.

Kellie:

Yeah, looking forward to it.

Kirsten:

We'll see you next time.

Links