May 2022 - Public Speaking
How I used to feel every time in primary/high school…
Hi friends,
Welcome to my 5th monthly email, in this segment called “Michael’s Monthly Musings”. If you missed my earlier monthly newsletters, please refer here.
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Can't believe another month has already past! Again I wanted to share about something this month that has been on my mind...
🧑🏫 Do you enjoy public speaking?
I've noticed that is a question quite a lot of friends have asked me over the years, much during the length of my full time work for now 3+ years. As I type this on my desk whilst recovering from my sore throat (waiting for my PCR test…), this month's newsletter will be more of a "story time" ramble to answer the above Q.
For the longest time, I had trouble getting up in front of the class and talking or presenting something (i.e. all different ways to describe "public speaking" but you get the point). Originally, I thought I was just worried about what others thought of me. What if I say something wrong? What if I sound stupid? What if I don't like the sound of my voice? These were the kinds of questions I would run circles around in my head all the time, and it made it painful and fear-inducing to speak in front of people. But in deeper reflection, I think the deeper problem was more the lack in confidence in myself.
🗣 You cannot control how others react towards you, but you can control your own reactions.
I think for most people in high school, you also don't really get much opportunity to "perform" in front of an audience unless you're playing music or doing a sport. I was never really gifted in either of the 2 areas, so I basically always got used to adopting the identity of a shy nerd at school and nothing more. I genuinely think schools should provide students more opportunities to "talk" publicly apart from just the usual 3 minute English speech assessments that we mechanically had to do every year. As a shameless plug with the club that I mentor, I think North Sydney Boys Business Society is a step in the right direction (which did not exist back in my time in 2014!). I never felt like schools gave you much of an avenue to practice honing confidence in speaking publicly unless you were already naturally gifted with it. Myself, and I imagine many others like me, struggled with that in high school.
It was only in university, did I start to reflect on my public speaking weakness more and think more proactively about how I wanted to fix it. How do you do that then?
I don't think I planned it out as elegantly at that point in time, but in hindsight, a lot of the steps I took along the way made a lot of sense and in hindsight seem more logical than first meets the eye. There is some method to the madness.
🧠 Go small before you go big.
My original high school group of friends had like 15-20 guys, and as you can imagine, you'd be closer to some, and further away from others. So what I decided to do at the time to "push" myself a little out of my comfort zone, was reach out to some of the guys in my group with whom I didn't really know as well. It also helped at that time, that I was somewhat of a "foodie", so my excuse was always I needed a "friend" to join me in that quest to explore a new food place. Having 1 on 1 meetups with people that are still "acquaintances" is an easy first step I would think. That gave me a lot of practice later on to reaching out to fund managers directly on Linkedin when I was looking for graduate jobs in my final year at university. But this newsletter is about public speaking right? Yes, so I will save how I personally learnt "conversing" (which I think is an underrated skill) and the different frameworks I use to talk to strangers for another time...
So from 1 on 1 with acquaintances for like 1-2 years, I started doing 1 on 1s with people at my own church, Macquarie Baptist Church. There were always a few new faces in our church service, who were virtually strangers. At least however, you could say there was the context in the church. I witnessed some really good aunties and uncles at church who were really good at welcoming people and I tried applying that myself, learning to talk to strangers. I learned by signing up to serve in the church’s “welcoming team” at the front of the door, handing out leaflets to everybody who came through the front door, learning their names and holding conversations with different types of people (our church welcomes all ethnicities, so that was very good practice). I most certainly wasn't perfect, but I realised this was my first step in being comfortable talking with people I did not necessarily know, which is what you do when you're public speaking.
Those 2 earlier steps, prepared me well, especially for when I had to start working as an analyst in Deloitte Private for the audit team for ~3 years. I recall being sent to many different clients in many different locations across Sydney, and across many different sectors. I was forced to interact with accounting teams in technology companies, industrial companies, charities, etc. Whilst I didn't appreciate it at the time, I think work is one of the best ways to build confidence faster, especially if you're working in a team, to help prepare you for public speaking later on. Of course that depends on the kind of job you're doing ultimately, as in my case, I was constantly travelling every week to different clients and being forced to make requests and speak to many different people as part of my audit...
Having spent a lot of time practising speaking to friends, acquaintances and outright strangers for work 1 on 1, I think all that practice collectively was what helped me prepare for the next stage. Which was speaking in a small classroom of students. Being involved at UNSW Investing 4 Charity (teaching a class of 10-20 on charity and equity analysis) and the UNSW PASS program (teaching Accounting 1B to 10-20 students per class), both were opportunities I took up because they were subjects I was passionate talking about, and it was a regular commitment to speak in front of a class.
Like any muscle, with consistent practice you get better at it, becoming more refined, and start seeing patterns in how to respond to specific questions. Doing that, gave me the confidence to then seize opportunities to speak in student guest panels at university in my final year of study, and I recall one teachers' forum at UNSW where there were like ~200 lecturers in the audience listening to 1 of the guest panels I got speak on. I remember that one vividly because it was my last day officially of UNSW for me. I mentioned it here in one of my old blog posts in fact (see here)!
In my full time job now as an investment analyst at a hedge fund, we don't really get many opportunities to speak in public in front of large audiences. My work now mostly involves communicating my research (whether in excel or doc form) to a group of colleagues that I am generally quite comfortable with and speak to on a daily basis. It's just not the same. So how do I continue exercising this muscle of public speaking?
💪 A muscle like any other...
It occurred to me, that university clubs are always in search of people in the industry who are willing to give up their time to share their learnings and help future generations of students. So continually donating and being involved with UNSW Investing 4 Charity, for example, has allowed me to continue finding opportunities to speak to groups of students. Whether that be providing an introductory talk to the new trainee analysts for the semester, or judging the final stock pitches by the trainees, in a lot of ways I seek out these speaking opportunities quite actively, because (1) I enjoy it now vs I used to dread these kinds of things when I was younger, but (2) I continually seem room to improve my public speaking, and maintain exercising that muscle.
And in some feedback loop type of way, when you're passionate about a subject that you're speaking about to many people, the impact can go far and wide, and may even lead to other opportunities to speak and practice the muscle! If you told me I would be speaking at high schools or churches or even other universities to my year 12 self, I wouldn't have believed you for a second. But now, times have changed, and I've changed too.
Again, this was more of a storytime ramble to share my experiences of how over the years, I learnt to stop fearing public speaking, but rather embrace it. Again, some people are born naturals at it. I for one was certainly NOT a natural, but I think some people mistake that about me because they've only seen the outcome of the dirty work I went through over the last 5-10 years. I just want to encourage those who may be thinking of this area as a weakness and wanting to get better at it, that it most certainly can be worked on...
👌 What are some other ways that I could practice public speaking?
I've known of a few friends who went to Toastmasters (see here) to practice more formally in a safe space. There's usually a club in every key region of NSW. I've personally never been but test it out at your own risk.
People who know me well, know in my final years of UNSW, I used to attend the "Sydney Value Investors" club (see here) which I found online and used to go to, as a safe space to learn to pitch stocks to strangers, and I felt I got more feedback there than I ever would have from just doing a basic university course taught generally by academics who didn't actually invest in stocks themselves. Meetup.com is actually a powerful way to find a hobby group (outside the university) to meet strangers and learn to get comfortable speaking.
Of course, finding your own university clubs which you resonate with can also be a good avenue to pursue. Find opportunities within to lead meetings/discussions in your clubs.
Try online. Back in the early days of the pandemic, I was doing private FB video calls with a group of family/friends to talk about general thoughts I had on the stock market and how prices were behaving vs reality. Of course, you probably need to have some "expertise" or "knowledge" in the specific subject matter you want to "public speak" about first, but the point is, you can be quite creative with how you go about practising this muscle!
Do any of you guys struggle with public speaking? Lemme know via email or comment in my newsletter post below. Would love to hear how you overcame those struggles or whether you're still working through them now!
👍 To conclude for now…
Thanks for reading my ramble if you got this far for my May 2022 thoughts. Please do hit <reply> to this email if you have anything to add / any questions. I quite enjoy replying to comments/emails as a source of procrastination. Please share this email with others if you found it value-adding.
Have a great next month!
Michael
🚀 Some of my favourite memories from May 2022
Had a fun time with friend exploring Breakfast Point and Cabarita Park for the first time! We joked about how a lot of the houses had funny names and all looked quite homogenous.
Finding out that "Circle" is somebody's real name 😅
Led my church bible study group through Isaiah 43-44, and explored different themes like grace and belonging. I've learnt so much from this group of adults who I've been with now for >4 years, and I want to give a shout out to my leaders, Uncle Robin and Aunty Annette for continually watching and guiding me
Got invited to give the opening talk at my old high school, with ~40 students in the North Sydney Boys Business Society. Been really inspired by the dedication of the execs to foster the students of all years interested in business in a safe environment. See more details here.
In talks with Epping Library to revive Homework Help Club, in partnership with my friend Anthony (Co-founder of Atlas Academia)
Had a lot of fun at a friend's house, playing "Just Dance" and catching up with many other City Bible Forum friends
Watched a friend play violin in an orchestra! I gave it a 9/10, and it was my first time at Glebe Town Hall. 🙌
Spent time over tea with a friend (who is leaving to Singapore soon 😥) watching Bling Empire on Netflix (I swear we did not choose it, but it was Netflix's algo recommendation)
P.S. I am still thinking of including a "prayer points (for my Christian readers)" section to share honestly (where I can of course) about my thoughts. Lemme know what you guys think! For the non-christian readers, don't worry, this is not a bible bash section on you, but I figured it may still be interesting to know what I'm thinking. I'm always open to feedback and things I should include/exclude in this personal monthly newsletter.
