What are you doing to #breakthebias and Inspire your employees during women's month?💪

What are you doing to #breakthebias and Inspire your employees during womens month? 💪

I have a suggestion.

Why not organise a few online keynotes and fireside chats from inspirational female leaders?

Done well, they have powerful and positive impacts.

Take this upcoming example with Youth Employment Service (YES) South Africa founder Tashmia Ismail .

I'm certain of two things...

Firstly, everyone that watches will be inspired by her story.

And secondly, a reasonable percentage will be so inspired, they will take some sort of positive action after the call.

I know this from feedback and analysis of the thought-leadership sessions I run for my clients.

Take, for example, the Inspire Series

Now, the link I've provided will take you to the landing page for the public webinars I ran for them.

But before we went public I also ran a series of interviews just for their 8,000 staff.

Each webinar was set for 60 minutes and I ran one every month for half a year or so.

What did I learn from analysing the data?

Well, firstly, we regularly had a turnout of around 10% of the workforce.

In absolute terms, this meant we usually had between 500 and 1,000 people regularly dialling in because they wanted to, not because the big boss had told them to.

To consistently have that number of people voluntarily take one hour out of their day was a great result.

The second observation was that drop-off rates were typically less than 20% for viewers who stayed on the call for at least a few minutes. That meant that 70% to 80% of people felt the calls were worthwhile enough to invest up to an hour of their time listening and engaging.

"It broadened my horizons, influenced my thinking and yes, entertained me as well. Please don't stop."

The most important observation though, was the level of impact.

It's obviously nice when I see high numbers of attendees and high engagement levels.

But what really gets me excited is when I learn a session has been a catalyst for postive change.

"I had already started with new ideas and thinking, but this provided me with more motivation and sometimes also inspiration. Thanks!!"

Most of the time, the feedback is anecdotal.

So when I got the opportunity to poll 1,500 people who had watched the inspire series over a period of months, I was super nervous.

My biggest fear was that the positive feedback I'd received was from an outspoken few, and it would be swamped by the silent majority who'd found little to no value and certainly were not making decisions based on the sessions.

😬

So we asked everyone who'd ever attended a session, "are you doing anything differently at work due to this series"?

80% of respondents replied that they have indeed changed how they work or are planning to.

Wow! What a result.

What Drove That Level Of Impact?

It's difficult to say with precision why these sessions are so impactful.

Making sure you have quality topics, guests, hosts and webinar software (i.e. Zoom not teams) is very important.

But those are the table stakes.

My sense is that if you want to have real impact you need to add the following four ingredients, being...

• Frequency
• Relevance
• Welcomeness
• Curiosness

Frequency

I ran that poll after having hosted monthly interviews with thought leaders for at least half a year.

There is no way a single event will catalyse change to the same degree as a series.

Why?

Because a series provides constant reminders over time, eventually giving people the confidence to act.

Consistent nudges are critical in every sphere of our lives.

It doesn't matter if we want to lose weight or build a sales pipeline for a company. Regular reminders will, over time, change behaviour more effectively than one-off interventions.

Relevance

This one is obvious. In the Inspire Series, I focused on interviewing inspiring business leaders.

For Sybrin's Game Changers, an externally focused event, I will interview an incredible lady called Tashmia Ismail on the first day of women's month.

The primary topic will be innovation and how countries, companies and organisations can innovate at scale.

But as it is women's month too, Tashmia's journey will have particular relevance, and I expect many to be inspired to act on the back of the discussion.

Be As Welcoming As Possible

I still have more to do here, but I try hard to make the events incredibly welcoming.

I find many firesides and panel discussions are far too formal. Some are actually intimidating.

They create a sense that the interviewers and panellists are somehow different to the viewers.

You'll have better results when you make everyone on the call feel equally important.

If you can make everyone feel safe and welcome, your engagement levels during and after the call will increase significantly.

I try to do this by...

• Making the invites as informal and conversational as possible.
• Regular pre-session reminders encourage attendees to pose questions throughout the calls.
• Welcoming as many people as possible into the call by name.
• Inviting attendees to ask questions and doing my best to ensure their questions get airtime.
• Using self-deprecation to ensure that the host and guest(s) are perceived as approachable.
• Having fun and smiling and laughing as much as possible

Curiousness

How do you interview someone engagingly?

That perhaps is a question for another time because we'd need to delve into the prep, research, practises, body language, technology, etc.

But there is one thing I think all the best hosts and interviewers have in abundance.

Curiosity.

It's much easier to curate an engaging conversation if you are inherently curious about your guest and the topic you are exploring.

I know from experience that when I'm interested in what a guest is talking about, several things happen...

1. My performance improves
2. The guest's performance improves
3. The audience interacts more

But of these points, point 2. is the most important.

Being curious automatically makes your guests feel special. And that's what will make even the most wooden, measured guests really open up.

The point I'm trying to get across here is that you can't do a great interview by thinking too much about how to do a great interview!

You are 10x more likely to naturally do a great interview if you simply focus on being curious about your guest and asking the questions that interest you most!

Finally

I hope that was helpful.

If you want help orchestrating events that can inspire your staff, build your brand or develop new connections, just shout.

And if you are in South Africa, August is a great month to inspire everyone in your network to #breakthebias.

Whether you want to inspire teams, create leads or deepen relationships, thought-leadership sessions, when done well, are powerful catalysts.

Good luck, and remember, whatever you are trying to do, have fun doing it!

Col

p.s. if you want to join my next event with Tashmia but don't have the time, sign up anyway, so you can be notified when the recordings become available.