“My Speech at work!”

03 Nov “My Speech at work!”

In early October, I was invited and privileged to be able to give an internal TEDx talk at work on one of my favorite subjects in the whole, wide world: MOOCs! [Massively Open Online Courses: you can take university courses online for free and learn about virtually anything]

For those who don’t know what TED talks are, they stand for “Technology, Entertainment & Design” and are given worldwide by leaders & experts in their fields. They are all about “Ideas Worth Sharing”. You can google TED talks and find a wide variety of them on nearly any subject.

Thanks to Transformation I was able to:

1. Not freak out about the opportunity because there were going to be 200+ people and an additional 100 ppl watching over live video. I saw that this was a golden opportunity for me and that it was a gift.
2. Create a terrific speech by writing it out (and not editing at the same time), take people’s feedback and instead of offending myself with it, incorporating it. I wanted to take care of the audience and make the content accessible and engaging: a communication style that was foreign to me before learning Ariel & Shya Kanes’ approach of Instantaneous Transformation [In the past I had preferred to use jargon and to try & sound sophisticated].
3. Get tips on speaking from the Kanes and many others in the community of people who attend their seminars and to practice until I got the words to roll right out.
4. Work on my speech when I was working on it and leave it alone when I had other things to do. There would be times when I would just forget that I had that on my plate. No fretting necessary!

After the speech, people shared their own interest in MOOCs and also in finding out how to learn more about them.

My manager told me in our bi-weekly one-on-one meeting afterwards that he was so proud that I did the talk and that he and the rest of the group had a lot of pride that someone in their group was one of the speakers. I was really touched by him and am proud myself that he is my manager. We make a great Project Management duo! He has since found a MOOC of interest and is taking one himself!

I’m now spearheading a few initiatives to run MOOC sessions during lunchtime where colleagues can get together to watch and discuss what they learn! which brings me to add Point #5 to the list above:

5. Transformation and the Kanes’ seminars have shown me what it means to be a community leader and to step up and take care of the people around you. Also, even a little thing like sharing a link with someone can be HUGE.

Thanks to the Kanes and all of you in the community for being an inspiration and providing the environment where unanticipated, delightful things like this are possible! I am also signed up for the Speak Up! Course being held here in NYC in November 2014 and am excited to discover what other possibilities there are in my life. (It was during the Speak Up class last year [in 2013] that I interviewed for my current role and nailed my interviews!)

And here’s the link to the actual speech!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koRMLGgzYKQ

Enjoy!

Love,
Madhu