Linda Ugelow is a speaking confidence and vocal coach and author of the book, Delight in the Limelight.
In this episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast, Linda shares tips on how to get over your fear of public speaking, handling mistakes with poise, overcoming imposter syndrome, and healing – rather than quieting – the inner critical voice.
LEADERSHIP QUOTE
Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.
— Brené Brown
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ABOUT LINDA
Linda Ugelow (YOU-guh-lo) is a speaking confidence and vocal coach and author of the book, Delight in the Limelight. Formerly stricken with public speaking fear herself, she now helps entrepreneurs and professionals transform their experience of speaking from dread to delight whether online or on stage, in the media, or in the meeting room.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Linda Ugelow 0:00
Hey, my name is Linda Ugelow, and today’s leadership quote comes from Brene Brown, who says authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.
Podcast Intro 0:19
The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, Game Changing leader assistants.
Jeremy Burrows 0:32
Hey friends, welcome to The Leader Assistant Podcast. It’s your host, Jeremy Burrows, and this is episode 334 thanks for tuning in. You can check out the show notes for this conversation in this episode at leaderassistant.com/334, and today I have the privilege of speaking with Linda Ugelow. welcome to the show.
Linda Ugelow 1:01
Great to be here Jeremy
Jeremy Burrows 1:03
and tell us what part of the world you are in and what your favorite thing to do when you’re not working.
Linda Ugelow 1:12
Well, I live part time or most of the time outside Boston, Massachusetts, and part of the time in Budapest, and my favorite thing to do and I’m not working, is dancing,
Jeremy Burrows 1:24
what kind of dancing? All kinds of dancing, or specific
Linda Ugelow 1:27
I do like all kinds of dancing, but my favorite is anything I can do that’s improvisational. So I don’t like I have learned many, many dances from around the world, because that was part of my work as a performer. But I just love something called ecstatic dance, where they have a playlist of music and you just intuitively move how you want, or at a wedding, that kind of you know, where you’re just doing your own thing and dancing with others. Yep,
Jeremy Burrows 1:54
love it. Well, what, uh, what is your career journey and what does it look like? What would you do for your career? What are you doing now?
Linda Ugelow 2:07
Well, I mentioned dance. Dance was all I wanted to do when I was growing up, and I came across a dance therapy program at the age of 18, and that kind of steered me into the idea of dance as personal development and professional growth, and I tried that out as a business, but I had no idea what I was doing as a business person. And I left that back in the 90s. Kind of was in a career desert for a while, but at the same time, I was a performer with a Women’s World Music Group for 40 years. So we performed all over the world. I was a singer, dancer, percussionist and bassist, and then I somehow made a sideways step into organic farming, where I was growing specialty vegetables for local restaurants, and while I was sitting in the field listening to a podcast on starting the right business about 12 years ago, it occurred to me I was in the wrong business, that I had always wanted to make a big impact, and here I was hiding behind the kale. So I decided I was going to figure out what that was, because if I didn’t figure out what that impact was supposed to be, and I didn’t know if it was in dance or something else, I would get to the end of the my life feeling a sense of regret that I didn’t try to, like go for something. So I took a coaching program, went online to come an online coach before it was a cool thing to do, and I needed to build my following, and that led me to getting on Periscope, which I don’t know if you remember Periscope, it was the first live stream application before any other platform had it had the Technology, and I was in my doing it every day, terrified and managing my fear of speaking. I got to a point where I got tired of managing the fear and decided to get rid of it. And by hook or by crook, I devised a a method, unbeknownst to me, of getting over my fear of speaking, and it was gone in five days. That led to a lot of people saying, Oh, can you do that for me? And not knowing the answer, I said, Well, let’s try. And one thing led to the other. It turned out that I had devised a something that nobody else was talking about and all of my searching online on Google to find how to get over the my fear of speaking, I learned a lot of management techniques, but I never learned how to get rid of it until I figured out what the root cause was, and once I landed on that, the rest is kind of history. I. I I’ve now have a book, delight in the limelight. I have my podcast, delight in the limelight. My program, the delight in the limelight accelerator. Because my feeling now my recognition, is that speaking is our human design, and we are all born love, loving to speak. But somewhere along the line, we lose that, because we learn that it’s not safe in some fashion or another. So that’s what I’m doing now. I’m helping people to transform their dread of speaking into delight. Because I don’t want people to just get over the fear, but I want them to enjoy the speaking there they do. Because I believe that when we are doing the things we love, and we’re speaking all the time. We deserve to love the speaking we do, we’re also most effective.
Jeremy Burrows 5:48
Wow, that’s great. So lots to dig into. What maybe talk about, you know, obviously, the show is for executive assistants. So we’ll get into, you know, Assistant specifically. But you know, how do you how did you determine that root cause of your speaking anxiety, and how can you help those listening do the same?
Linda Ugelow 6:07
Yeah, so the first thing I did was, as I mentioned, I wanted to get rid of it, and I I looked at my background, with the master’s degree in expressive arts therapy, and I wrote down all these modalities that I knew how to do, and it looked promising that I would something would work. But what came to me very first was, well before I get rid of it, what is it? And I decided to close my eyes and connect with the fear. And asked if the fear could talk, what would it say? And what came back was, you’re going to be attacked. And when I thought, have I ever been attacked? All these memories came back of being a kid with my sisters chasing me, calling me stupid, telling me to shut up, and kicking me or torture, tickling me on the floor anytime mom put me in the center of attention and said, Why can’t you girls be more like Linda, she’s the good one in the family. Of course, they hated that. And then it was one of these duh moments. Of course, I don’t feel comfortable speaking on camera or speaking from the stage with my singing group, because I learned it was dangerous to be in the center of attention. So once I realized this memory, I I opened up my the my mind to the possibility that the fear of speaking really has less to do with what is going on in the current moment and more to do with how we were made to feel about speaking up in the past. That led me to discovering or remembering Oh yeah, that time in seventh grade when all the girls said no one talked to Linda or Oh yeah, that time where my teacher embarrassed me in front of the whole class, when I didn’t know the answer to, you know where Romania was on the map. Or now I do, because I go over there all the time, but at the time, I didn’t. And even though these experiences are long gone, they still have a hold on us, if they haven’t, or if they hadn’t been resolved in a way that we felt like we were intact and whole after the experience, like if I if my mother had a bone of self reflection in her or some emotional Intelligence, she would have pulled me aside and say, Don’t worry, Linda, they’re just jealous of you, and they and I will handle it, you know, like there would have been some resolution, but she didn’t know how to do it. My sisters didn’t know how to handle it, I didn’t know how to handle it, and so it hung on me, even though my sister and I are best buddies. Now, my other one is gone, but we were we had a nice relationship. So what I recommend is several fold. There are three ways that I work with my clients and students to and I recommend to others to figure out what is it that made you afraid? Number one is to look at your relationships at home and in school. Did you feel supported? Did you feel Did you have a mean teacher or a parent who didn’t get you, who didn’t let you have a word in edgewise, maybe you felt ignored, maybe you felt pressured to perform, to be perfect, and that you weren’t accepted for who you were. Perhaps you moved around a lot, and you always felt on the outside in chapter four of my book, I have many instances detailed and exampled of what could possibly be in in that history. Another way you can look at it is. Is think about when you’re about to speak, and what you’re worried about, what comes to mind. Are you worried about being judged? Are you worried about what other people think? Are you worried about looking foolish? And then follow the thread back, when had that happened before in the past? So that’s number the second way. The third way is, I like to I do this a lot in my in my group program. I like to give prompts to people where we we recall back into our lives, and we think about a time that we wanted to speak up, but we felt like we couldn’t, or we did speak up, and it didn’t turn out so well. So these kinds of reflections are all meant to uncover or reveal what needs to be healed.
Jeremy Burrows 10:50
And speaking of healing, I know you mentioned when we connected to be on the show, this idea of, instead of quieting the inner critical voice, like actually trying to heal that voice, not just, not just pushing it aside and quieting it. So tell us a little bit more about that
Linda Ugelow 11:11
Yeah, I’ve discovered that the inner critic, and I’m not the first person to say this, that the inner critic really wants the same things from us that other voices in ourselves want. It just has a real lousy way of expressing itself, and it probably developed that partly from the experiences we had. So if somebody told us you’re such a loser, you might carry that on in your head yourself, even though that original person is is long gone, or maybe they’re not, maybe they’re still around, and so it’s even more more present. So what we’re looking for is to see how we can develop, mature, grow and transform that voice. And this is why we all want to be seen and heard. We all want to be respected and encouraged. But no one can do it for us 100% of the time. However, you’re there 100% of the time, so you have that opportunity. We accept the idea that, of course, we can grow in our communication skills with others. Of course, we can also grow in communication skills with ourselves. So we don’t want to just ignore that voice. We want to just like with the fear. We want to bring it out so we can heal it with an inner critical voice. We let’s bring it out so we can look at what is it that it’s saying? Why might it be saying it, and how might it be said in another way? One, one way I love to do this with with my clients, is I have them watch a video of themselves. Because, well, you can just imagine, when you watch a video, it’s very easy to criticize yourself. You know all the things you don’t like, what you see, what you don’t you don’t like what you hear. And this is a beautiful thing, as I said, because once it comes out into the light, then you can do it, something with it. So I have my students write down every little thing that they dislike about what they see and hear, and then we take that and we put it into buckets. What are some of the things that we can’t do anything about, you know, like our features, or, you know, the shape of our bodies and things like that that we really need to come to not just accept but to appreciate and honor, because these are the bodies we were given, and they are what allow us to live our lives. So it’s there are ways for us to shift into that place of appreciation, and then for the things that can be changed. Well, they can be changed. So why be angry about it? Why be mean about it. Let’s just see what we can do. And this is what I like to do, is I ask the inner critic, which I encourage people to rename, as soon as it feels applicable to like your inner wise one, or your inner ally, your inner coach, and you say, Okay, if you don’t like how I lift up my chin all the time when I’m speaking. What would you have me do? And then you listen for the ideas that come. And you dialog with this voice, and you elicit their their wisdom. You elicit their ideas. And so rather than it being a punitive voice or a berating voice, it becomes a helpful voice.
Jeremy Burrows 14:48
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know when I go up to speak on stage, I actually have a speaking gig here in a couple days. And you know, there’s always that you. The anxiety and those nerves, and, you know, you’re kind of like the adrenaline’s going and all these, all these different feelings. And my kids, who are 11 and 13, they have similar feelings when they are about to kick a penalty shot in soccer, or, you know, go up to bat in the last inning in baseball. Or my younger son hates free throws because he’s like, everybody’s watching me. Like, it’s like you’re standing there. It should be a fairly easy basket, but all the attention is on you. But anyway, yeah, like, I just started to over time, and I kind of want to ask you about this as well. For me, over time, it was like, the more that I got on those stages, the more that I got in front of people and and spoke, the more I would use those feelings and that anxiety and that adrenaline to kind of pump me up, if you will, get me excited about the opportunity and and channel that versus when it was early on, it really would, like paralyze me and make my voice flutter and, you know, cause me to look down at my notes more, you know, all those things. So I wanted to kind of hear your just practically, what do you feel? What do you do when you are about to whether it’s getting up in front of, you know, conference room with a bunch of executives, or getting on stage in front of 500 people? What are your practical, you know, routines to kind of channel all that emotion and energy.
Linda Ugelow 16:44
Yeah, it’s, it’s important for us to always prepare ourselves for speaking, especially if it’s a big speaking event. And more than just about what we want to say, we want to warm up our bodies physically. So you’re talking about pumping yourself up, yeah, you want to. I mean, when I was on Periscope, trying to manage my fear, I would do jumping jacks and kicks and punches to get all, you know, give the jitters some place to go, yeah? And then I would, like, center myself, and I’d go into some deep breathing and meditation so I would be focused. And then I would do affirmations. And all these things are great, and I recommend them for when you speak, warm up your body. Warm up your voice. Make some sounds, because your voice is your actual instrument. When you speak, you don’t want the first time you say something out loud to be on the stage. And no no performer would ever go on stage, no athlete would ever go out onto the field without doing some kind of prep for their body, you know, and their you know, agility, and just get themselves into that right mindset. What I so those are things that I do recommend. I think there is something else that’s really important that you mentioned, though, is your relationship to being seen. You mentioned that with your children and yourself and we do need to shift our relationship to the audience, because we want to feel that we’re connected with the audience. Do we want to feel afraid of the audience? Do we want to feel angry at the audience? Resistant? No, we want to feel like we’re here together. So we need to practice connecting with the audience in a way that is open hearted, that is generous, that is of service, so that when we get on stage, we are happy to be there. We’re delighted to be there. And this is as much a skill and a discipline as any other part of speaking is learning what is my relationship to the lens, if you’re on camera, to the audience, if you’re you’re in person. So the other little item that I do want to highlight for people, because I think that there is an idea out there. I see it every once in a while, surface, pretend your fear is excitement. And I remember 10 years ago, when I first saw that, I thought I love that. That’s so cool. And then I then I thought to myself, excuse me. Then I thought to myself, except I know the difference between how fear feels and how excitement feels. And when I was writing my book, I was tossing this around in my head, and my conclusion, and it looks that like it’s backed up by by science, is that it all is in the dose. So a little bit of cortisol can sharpen your mind too much cuts off access to your brain, and so likely at the beginning of your speaking, you had a dosage of adrenaline and cortisol that was perhaps closing you up. Mm. But the more experience you got, it gave you evidence that this is an okay space, and I can do this, and I definitely can get through it, because I’ve done it many times before, that the levels lowered such that they felt like you could reframe it, you could change it around, to look at it in a different way. Yeah, and yet, I know still, if you did take the time, you could get out on stage and feel as as you do after you do five minutes in or 15 minutes in, when you’re on a roll. You can feel that from the very beginning. You don’t have to have that anxiety. Even getting out on stage, you can be in a place of, I love doing this. I feel excited that I get to do this.
Jeremy Burrows 20:48
Yeah, totally, that’s great. So what, you know, assistance listening. They, you know, they may not speak on big stages, or they may not. They may be thinking to themselves, like I used to as an introvert, particularly, like, Oh, I’m never going to, you know, speak in public, like, I’m just going to kind of say what I need to in a meeting and move on. And then they get asked to update the board on on a project that they’re working on, or they get asked, kind of spontaneously in a leadership meeting to stand up and give a summary of what’s going on here in the business. What? Let’s talk a little bit about imposter syndrome. It’s a big, big deal with assistance, with everyone but assistants, specifically that I coach, talk about this a lot. You know, I, what am I doing here? I’m not the right person for this, all those things. What are, what are your tips for overcoming imposter syndrome? And, you know, in general, but specifically as maybe it relates to, hey, you know what? Why am I the person like, what makes these people think that I would be the person to give this update in this meeting? Right? Like, talk through that a little bit?
Linda Ugelow 22:14
Well, I think that if it’s part of your job description, that’s answer enough. You know, if they you’ve been asked to you belong in the room. You belong up there in front. And I think as an assistant, it is part of your job description to represent both you know, your your boss, to represent the company, to be able to speak about it, to be able to network, and to do it with a sense of presence and enthusiasm and confidence and not doing it quickly to get you know, say your thing and get it over with. Because if it’s worth being heard, you want every word to be heard. Yeah, if there, if you’re asked to give an update, if you’re asked to share something you want your listeners to be able to take it in and with the value that it’s given. In terms of imposter syndrome, I see that as a subset of fear, and it’s all related. I mean, maybe it’s not a good maybe the job is not a good fit. Okay, that’s let’s put that to the side, though, but let’s say no, you do want this, this position, but you feel like, Who am I that comes from past experiences and messages received. It’s not random. It could be that you were never good enough for somebody, and so you always felt like, no matter how many accolades, how many awards, how many grades you got, dad didn’t accept you, or you couldn’t please Him or your mom, or it could be that you had a special privilege at some point, and someone Who was mean said, Oh, you’re only here because you, you know, had this affirmative action step up. Or you’re only here because your, your mother knew somebody in, you know, and you got a special thing. So those are, are some of the the experiences. Oh, there’s one other that I did mention earlier, being on the outside, if you felt like you were one of the people on the outside in middle school and everybody else was cool, that can also give you the feeling of, oh, well, who am I? I’m not one of the inner circle. Those people are better than me, or that person’s better than me. So these are the things that lead to that sense of we’re a fraud. Of course, we can be new at something, but a beginner’s mind or being new at something is different than feeling like, even with all of your credentials, that you’re not good enough. Mm. Yeah,
Jeremy Burrows 25:01
yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for Thanks for sharing. And I think that the point about the job description, and if they ask you, like, you know it’s, it’s because you’re doing your job, and they know that you have something to offer. So that’s great, great way to start that. Okay, so the last thing I wanted to kind of dig into, actually two quick things. So first thing is, what if you are presenting in front of a group, whether it’s a stage or a boardroom, and you make a mistake, how do you handle mistakes with poise? And obviously this could probably be applied to life in general, but maybe specifically as you’re communicating with people or a group or speaking, how do you how do you handle mistakes?
Linda Ugelow 25:48
I like to prepare for them. I like to think about, well, what’s likely to happen? Well, the tech doesn’t work, you know, the slides, you know, don’t work. The lights, little electricity goes out. You for you get distracted and you lose where you are. You might skip over something that you had meant to say, or maybe you stumble over your words. You know, for some people, for me, it’s like, I don’t care about that, but some people might care about that. What would you like to do? What would you how would you like to present yourself as you do that. Now let’s say you get distracted, because that’s probably one of the most common things that happens, and you lose track of where you are. Well, my favorite thing is to say I just lost track of what I was saying. Where was I and what I like about that is, number one, it engages the audience, a little audience interaction, whether that’s, you know, 510, people, or it’s 100 people. People like to shout things out. They like to be able to help you. And the other thing I like about it is that it demonstrates that I’m okay with having made a mistake when we’re comfortable with the mistakes we make, it allows other people to feel comfortable. They’re only going to feel really uncomfortable if we show that we’re uncomfortable with them. So let’s say there’s, there was something else that we meant to cover and we didn’t remember at that time when we had planned to, you know, say it. First ask yourself, very quickly, is it necessary? Because nobody knows what you have planned to say, and if they don’t know, and if it’s really not essential, then don’t say anything at all. Just move on. And if it is essential, you can always send an email saying, hey, one other thing I wanted to mention is this, and that’s a great excuse, in fact, for getting back in touch. Another thing you can do is, if you feel like, Oh, I can’t go on without saying this, you can just say, let’s stop here. Because I realize before we move on, this is something I want you to understand.
Jeremy Burrows 28:03
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. The one thing that my, one of my prior executives, did, he would do a lot of speaking, and he go, either go off on a tangent or forget something. And it was, is always, I was always took this as an interesting way to deal with it, and I think I’ve done it a couple times in my speaking career now, but he essentially would pause and say, Okay, where are we again? And he would say, Kansas City, you know, Hilton Hotel. Like he would say it out loud, though, like he would say, like, Kansas City, Hilton Hotel, this conference, and everybody would just start kind of laughing, you know, like, okay, and then get back on track. So, like you said, it was emitting like, you’re okay with mistakes. You’re being human, and you’re kind of processing it with the crowd. So anyway,
Linda Ugelow 28:58
it makes you so relatable, because there is not a person on earth that can’t relate to that, and what you’re doing is modeling it for them, that, Oh, I can do that too. And also this person, yeah, is confident, confident enough to show that they’re okay with the mistakes they make. Yeah,
Jeremy Burrows 29:22
awesome. Linda, well, the last thing I wanted to kind of just get your two cents on is intros. So you know you’re, you know, we’re talking a lot about getting getting past the fear and overcoming imposter syndrome and all that, but maybe practically, how do you like to begin your presentations? How do you like to begin your speaking gigs? What is the what are your tips, and what’s worked well for you? As far as, what do you start with?
Linda Ugelow 29:49
So I’ve worked with a number of script writing coaches and programs, so I can’t say that this is my I have any personal i. Expertise in this area, and what I’ve always been advised to do, if, let’s say it’s a keynote kind of a situation, is to go right into a story, go right into but do it in such a way, perhaps, that it feels like it’s in the moment, like as I was getting ready for this talk, I was thinking about the time I was in a bathroom in the Midwest at a restaurant, and, you know, and I will go on from there. In fact, that is how I start my talk on imposter syndrome, overcoming imposter syndrome, and I talk about this time that someone recognized me, and how I felt like a fraud. But anyway, it’s, it’s a little bit of a funny story. I like starting if there is a possibility of humor. But you know, that’s just one way of starting. Other ways of starting are referring to something that came before, that you want to, that is related to your your talk, or just giving compliment to something or someone who came before you that you want to highlight in order to transition to what you’re going to be saying. So I think that gratitude is always a nice thing, you know, in certain situations, say thank you so much that really, you know, got us all blah, blah blah, got us all revved up and ready for this next thing, and now we’re going to be turning this way. And that’s something that perhaps a an emcee would do if there was someone who is organized, you know, in that role. But you can also do it in lieu of an MC for your yourself to make a transition.
Jeremy Burrows 31:44
Gotcha love it. Super helpful. And thanks again for being on the show. And I know I enjoy public speaking. I’m nervous about public speaking, and I’ve even done trainings with assistants in our leader assistant membership community just on how to to get better at public speaking. Because, as we talked about earlier, it doesn’t matter if you’re speaking in front of 600 people on stage at a conference for a keynote, or you’re speaking in front of five executives in a conference room, it’s, it’s a good, valuable skill to to to develop, especially in the age of AI, with AI taking a lot of mundane, repetitive, painful tasks off your plate, something like being a good public speaker and being a good verbal communicator can really set you apart. So thanks again, Linda for the work you’re doing. And where’s the best place? Of course, I’ll put all the links in the show notes, but where? Where’s the top place, the best place for people to reach out and connect if they want to say hi and learn more.
Linda Ugelow 32:50
I spoke earlier about how to prepare yourself before you speak. And I do have a speaker preparation checklist that people can download with seven different things to remember to do, which I hope you do, and you can get that at lindaugelow.com. That’s U, G, E, L, O, w dot com, forward slash rituals. But if you just go to the website, you’ll find it. You’ll also find my book, where you can get download a free chapter or start a conversation with me. I’d love to help you out. So reach out.
Jeremy Burrows 33:23
Perfect. Thanks again, Linda. And for those listening, can get all of Linda’s links and resources at leaderassistant.com/334, to check out the show notes. And Linda, thanks so much. And I hope you have a great rest of your day, and thanks again for being on the show and talking with me for the assistants listening.
Linda Ugelow 33:45
Been a pleasure, Jeremy, thank you.
