Last week, I had the absolute honor to participate in the Siemens GSW Brasil leadership event. It was a blast. There are so many aspects we’ve discussed that are still echoing in my mind that I simply need to write down some thoughts based on a tiny and quick interaction I had.
The Event
Let me set the stage: it was my first time going to Siemens Headquarters in Jundiaí, so I had that tourist mindset, where everything is new, you notice all mundane details from air humidity to how the parking lot is organised. My spidey sense was often tingling.
Once the event per-se started, I had a conflict feeling: from one side, I felt it was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity, from the other one, looking around at the different management levels I was thinking to myself “Have they picked the wrong Lucas? I know a handful of them.”
At some point, we were asked to introduce ourselves in 1 minute. By chance, the first ones to do so were in the opposite side of the room, so I had the chance to prepare a bit. I thought about all the opportunities in which I introduced me, what I wanted to keep or change. Halfway through the presentations (I’d be the one of the last ones), I decided not to be so formal in the “I’ve been at Siemens for 4 years, worked on …”-kind-of-fashion, mainly because, despite knowing some of the leaders, I did not have much contact with the most part. Walter, our host/trainer, had been pointing out some remarks between one presentation and the other. Eventually, the stage was mine.
I felt a bit nervous, which I found normal, considering the audience. Once finished, I felt I’ve done a good job, but left some seconds in the table, but no big deal. Then, to my surprise, Walter said:
Your body speaks so loud that I can’t hear you
He followed-up with the reasoning: you brought a pen with you so that your hands had something to hold, but you clicked it so many times that we, the audience, couldn’t focus on anything else. While you clicked periodically, we just waited the next click and, when you stopped, we wondered when you’d restart.
How can such a power phrase not echo on your mind, right? I had 2 immediate thoughts:
- “I knew about hand-placement, I read more than a dozen articles on that. How could I make such a rookie mistake?“. After some deep breathes, it became: “the stakes were higher than usual; I’m not playing in my home field; I was not as prepared as I thought I was, be gentle to yourself, there is still a lot to go”
- What a beautiful feedback. How can 10 words be so powerful and educational at the same time? That’s one case where a short sentence beats an image or video in explaining a concept.
We went on to talk about speech/communication and how meaningless the words you speak can be compared to the body language and voice tone used. I was the perfect guinea pig.
Rewinding 10 years…
Coming back home, I talked about the episode to lots of close friends and relatives. The more days went by, the more that phrase resonated inside. It seemed to get cleaner somehow. Today, 8 days after the event, I tried to reconstruct my emotions and trend of thought, mainly focusing on what I could do differently if I had another shot.
Some of my thoughts you read in the previous section, but the reason I’m writing this is due to a realization that occurred to me. Not only had I read about body language and hand placement while talking, I’ve actually attended a class specific about that 10 years ago.
In November 2012, I was still a freshman in the university. We had to attend a class where every week we had to present a topic. It started with casual 30 seconds presentations and went until ~10 minutes ones in a seminar-like presentation. Our wise professor advised us: “Record yourself. It is specially useful for those who are not used to speak for a crowd”
The video below is one of those presentations. We had 1 minute to showcase an object that was meaningful to us. I remember preparing the speech, rehearsing and timing it. I’m not particularly proud of the result, neither 10 years ago nor today, but it brought tears to my eyes re-watching it.
The careful reader might have recognized a pattern, specially if you don’t speak Portuguese, since you can focus more in the body language and sound cues. I’ll help you out: my left hand is out of control throughout the video. It tries to find a shelter in my left pocket for a while (funny enough from the same pants I’m wearing right now). Halfway through, my left hand decides to hit my left pocket (which contains my keys) 15 times ‘til the end of the video, making a disturbing sound.
In hindsight, I think I made a decent progress in 10 years. Hopefully I can keep grinding to improve even further. For those of us who are introverts, that’s certainly something to be worked on constantly.
Did you notice that in both episodes, my body produced weird sounds with what it had available (pen clicking and home keys)? Maybe I should’ve pursued a career in music… Ugh, it is getting too far, isn’t it? I won’t abuse your patience any longer, see you next time!