by Caroline Leach | Nov 25, 2016 | Corporate Communications, Learning, Social Media
Podcasts are a powerful way to share your story.
But what exactly is a podcast?
It’s “a digital audio or video file or recording, usually part of a themed series, that can be downloaded from a website to a media player or computer,” says Dictionary.com.
Podcasts are taking off. From 2015 to 2016, podcast listening was up by 23%, Jay Baer reported from Edison Research‘s work.
What’s driving the growth? People enjoy greater mobility with smartphones and tablets, Baer says, rather than being tethered to a laptop. Podcasts are easy to listen to on the go.
This is why podcasts have become part of my own personal learning plan and drive-time strategy. Although I’m lucky by Los Angeles traffic standards, I spend more than 60 minutes commuting each day.
That’s a perfect chunk of time for learning. And with lifelong learning being both a pleasure and an imperative, what better time to listen to a podcast?
Data analytics and social media are at the top of my learning agenda. I’ve been enjoying FiveThirtyEight, Freakonomics and Social Pros.
It’s easy to get started. Just search topics of interest on iTunes, download your favorites and start listening.
My work colleague Doug Magditch first got me thinking about podcasts. He invited me to be in his Life at AT&T series, one of his Corporate Communications initiatives.
(This is where I note that opinions expressed here are my own.)
Doug’s conversations with colleagues show how employees are delivering on the company’s mission to connect people with their world – everywhere they live, work and play.
With a degree in mass media, Doug began his career as a reporter and multimedia journalist. His creative skills as a storyteller, his editing skills weaving together a narrative and his on-air presence make Life at AT&T a hit.
He invited Eliska Paratore, Joan Marsh and me to share what it’s like to be a woman in a leadership role at the company. Timing it with election season, he framed it as hearing about leadership “from the veeps.”
This was my first experience with a podcast, and I learned a lot in the process. Here are 10 tips for a perfect podcast.
BEFORE
What’s the best way to prepare for a podcast? Become familiar with the format and give yourself plenty of interesting material to work. This helps with responding naturally and spontaneously during the recording session.
- Listen to previous podcasts in the series. Understand how the format works. Identify what worked well and what you’d like to emulate.
- Talk with others who’ve been featured. See what previous participants recommend for preparation. This is a step I wish I’d taken.
- Think about the subject and what you want to say about it. Brainstorm and jot down ideas. Then narrow the focus to 3 key messages.
- Gather ideas, anecdotes and data. Chose those that support your key messages. Look for ones that add interest and provide credibility.
DURING
Many of these tips came from listening to myself after the podcast came out and thinking about what I could do better next time.
- Relax and have fun. Conversations are fun and sharing expertise is fun. Recording a podcast should be the same.
- Stand up. The advice for standing up during a phone call to give your voice more energy translates well to a podcast recording. People sound more confident when they stand.
- Use short sentences. This will help your listeners get your key points, not to mention making the editing process much easier.
AFTER
- Promote your podcast. Tell your social communities about it and why they’d be interested in hearing it. In my case, that meant sharing the podcast in LinkedIn and Twitter, including retweeting Doug.
This was easy, thanks to our company’s Social Circle. It provides great content about our brand, ready for sharing by interested employees in their personal social networks.
Inside the company, employees commented on the podcast in an internal social space. When the podcast was released, I visited the page a few times a day to read comments, like and respond to some, and bring additional colleagues into the conversation.
If you’ve recorded a podcast, what worked for you? And what podcasts do you recommend?
by Caroline Leach | Mar 12, 2016 | Change, Learning
When Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel who knew he was learning something new?
All I remember of seeing it in person for the first time was how awe-inspiring it was.
But Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor, first and foremost. So when Pope Julius requested his work as a painter, Michelangelo initially resisted.
This sets the stage perfectly in a new book by Erika Andersen called Be Bad First. It’s about “getting good at things fast to stay ready for the future.”
And who among us doesn’t need to do that?
If Michelangelo could overcome his hesitancy to learn something new, so can I. So can you.
But how?
Start by reading an overview of the book in this month’s issue of Harvard Business Review called Learning How to Learn. Then read the book to be truly inspired.
The most important thing I learned? How to change the way you talk to yourself.
Here are a few of Andersen’s examples, which align with her “ANEW” framework for learning.
While I’ve posted about these ideas before, the book came out this week, and I was able to delve deeper into specific tactics and actions.
Aspiration. Instead of “I don’t need to learn this,” say “What would my future look like if I did?”
Neutral self-awareness. Rather than “I’m already fine at this,” ask “Am I really? How do I compare with my peers?”
Endless curiosity. Move from “This is boring,” to “I wonder why others find it interesting?”
Willingness to be bad first. Shift from “I’m terrible at this” to “I’m making beginner mistakes but I’ll get better.”
As I read Andersen’s book in a single evening this week (it was hard to put down), I realized how the things I say to myself can either accelerate my learning or stop it in its tracks.
Her suggested questions are things we’d say to a beloved child, a best friend or a valued colleague. Why wouldn’t we encourage ourselves in the same way?
Because the stakes are high in our rapidly changing world. Learning how to learn throughout our lives is the most important thing each of us can do.
Michelangelo said it best in the quote Andersen selected to close her book:
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
by Caroline Leach | Jan 31, 2016 | Careers, Change, Learning
When you’re learning something new, there’s often an expectation that you’ll pick it up easily. That it will be smooth sailing. That you won’t skip a beat.
After all, the world moves faster every day. The competitive landscape is more intense than ever. Time is in short supply. It’s one sprint after another to learn what you need to know. Learning curves can feel like vertical climbs.
But when in your life have you learned something new and performed it perfectly right from the start?
As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the book Outliers: The Story of Success, it takes about 10,000 hours to master a skill.
The hard part is the feeling of incompetence that comes along with learning. Two things happened this week that made me think more about being bad at something new.
First was reading the work of Erika Andersen in an HBR post, which was the subject of my blog post yesterday. She wrote about how to identify the next skills you should learn.
In that was an angle on having to be bad at something before you can be good. The important thing, Andersen says, is to continue on through the bad phase so you can get to the good.
In fact, it’s the subject of her new book coming out this winter called Be Bad First: Get Good at Things Fast to Stay Ready for the Future. Sign me up. The pre-ordered book will download on my Kindle app on March 8.
In a Forbes post that may have inspired the book, she gives great strategies for How to Get Good at Things By Being Bad First. One of them is managing your self talk and being deliberately encouraging in how you speak to yourself.
That brings me to the second thing that happened this week. I’ve been trying different yoga classes, looking for 2 to do consistently each week. In addition to the serenity, stretching and balance benefits, I’m training to do paddle board yoga in the spring and summer.
And I’m moving through being bad into being good. One of my yoga instructors gave me a little smile this week when I at last managed to transition into Warrior II with the correct arm in front.
And my first experience with stand up paddle boarding last fall left me with a patch of broken skin on my thumb from holding the paddle the wrong way. The skin healed, and I figured out a better way to paddle.
Something the teacher in yesterday’s yoga class said made a big impression on me. He advised us not to condemn, judge or demand. If we let go of these mindsets and expectations, we will be calmer and happier.
These could apply to others. They could also apply to ourselves. By letting go of judging ourselves and demanding perfection, we are more free to experiment and learn.
That’s what Andersen is saying too. Most everyone will be bad at something when they first start. But by having faith in your ability to persevere and learn what you need to know, you can get good.
Another great book, What To Do When You’re New by Keith Rollag gives strategies for you to perform new things in front of people who aren’t familiar to you. Focusing on learning and getting better, rather than being good right away, is a great tip.
And his HBR article on being new gives good guidance on asking questions: consider what you want and why, determine whom to ask and if the time is right, ask short to-the-point questions and express thanks.
It’s humbling to recognize what you don’t know and what you need to learn. To try to ask the right questions, even when you don’t know what you don’t know. To take a crack at doing the new task. To learn from and recover from the inevitable mistakes. To start building competence.
This is what I’m doing in my new career role in marketing. This is how I navigate new community leadership roles. And this is how I approach my exercise classes. It’s not easy, but I keep moving forward.
As I learned from my yoga teacher, don’t judge yourself or demand perfection. Be kind to yourself and let yourself experiment. You’ll achieve much more, much faster and much better than you ever thought you could.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 30, 2016 | Change, Learning, Work/Life
With the torrential pace of change in our world, how will you decide what you need to learn this year?
Even if you’re not tackling a new job as I am, every field is changing rapidly. This makes lifelong learning an imperative for all of us.
Richard Bolles had an early inkling of this. While he’s better known as the bestselling author of the annually updated What Color is Your Parachute?, he also wrote The Three Boxes of Life.
In it he argued that we should not think about our lives in a linear fashion of education followed by work followed by retirement.
Instead, he advocated that all 3 boxes of life should be woven through every stage of our lives. This has never been more true than today, nearly four decades after the book was published.
Our education has to continue in parallel with our careers. For those who loved formal schooling, as I did, this is welcome news.
And for those who didn’t, there are many new ways of learning – by online courses, by doing and by observing, to name a few – that can make it more fun and intuitive.
And weaving in elements of retirement with its passion projects, travel and leisure refreshes and inspires us. This is why what we do on weekends is so important.
Thinking about all the things I need to learn in my new role, a Harvard Business Review post by Erika Andersen caught my eye this week.
How to Decide What Skill to Work On Next gives a great framework to focus your learning efforts. Andersen links the framework of Jim Collins‘ hedgehog concept from Good to Great with learning.
Collins found that great organizations have 3 areas of focus:
- What drives their economic engine
- What they can be the best in the world at, and
- What they’re most passionate about.
Linking that with learning, Andersen advocates asking yourself these questions:
- How can you learn and grow in a way that will help your company succeed? What will drive the bottom line?
- Of those areas, which ones could you become excellent at? If you’re good at similar things, those are ideal starting points.
- How passionate are you about those areas? And she shows that passion can be learned by looking at the benefits to learning and how it will create a better future for you.
This is not only a manageable and efficient way of making a personal learning plan, but it’s also inspiring and exciting.
It’s helping me narrow my focus and pick the highest-impact areas in my learning project. And it’s reassuring to know that I don’t have to learn everything, right away.
Like so many things in life, it’s about identifying the highest priority areas, taking initial actions, assessing progress and course correcting. It’s taking steps forward, day after day.
by Caroline Leach | Nov 21, 2015 | Careers, Change, Learning, Marketing & Analytics, Work/Life
What activity captivates you? Completely absorbs you? Compels you to do it no matter what?
For me, it’s writing. And reflecting on the first year of this blog, it’s about learning.
And I have a lot of learning to do. Don’t we all?
I started this blog to explore corporate communications – leading the function, the field and the future.
Now I find myself with the amazing opportunity of pivoting into marketing.
Of course, corporate communications and marketing have many parallels.
In communications, the focus is on the benefits of any given topic, initiative or program. Its purpose is to influence beliefs and actions. It’s about leading change and transformation. And it’s about business performance.
Those attributes also apply in marketing. Yet at the same time, I’m learning a new function, a new language and a new culture.
The usual cliches apply. Drinking from multiple firehoses. Feeling like part of Lucy’s famous chocolate scene.
There must be a better way – to identify what to learn, how to learn and how to do it fast.
Beyond that, I’m grappling anew with the big question from college – what do I want to do with the rest of my life?
It’s an eery deja vu feeling, as a parent of two teens. What will they need to know as they become adults?
At the current pace of change, an HBR blog post projected that “you have to recover one-quarter of your college education every 5 years.”
The authors gently suggested devoting 3 hours a week to learning and preparing for the future. While the math worked out to 6 hours a week, 3 seemed more realistic.
As I invest time in learning, I’ll write about it in this blog. It’s my learning project over the next year.
A blog is supposed to have a laser-like focus on a single topic. But as technology makes our lives more transparent and interconnected, I’ll address multiple learning topics.
Each month I’ll focus on an area of marketing and an area about life. That’s my approach to work/life, because they’re one in the same and not two separate spheres. One influences the other, and vice versa.
With thanks to Nina Amir, I did a mind-mapping exercise (pictured) this weekend with sticky notes on a poster board.
On this learning journey I’m also inspired by Gretchen Rubin. Her year-long happiness project was part of my last post, To Feel Good, Do Good.
And although I don’t (yet) have a detailed roadmap or a perfect plan, I’m taking to to heart the wise words in Just Start.
I’m taking a step forward and learning as I go.
Recent Comments