Objective
To improve my leadership skills through delivering a conference speech on a subject where I had some considerable expertise: preparation for retailers running their eCommerce presence through Black Friday.Approach
Skills
Speaking in front of a group was not something I was comfortable doing. My job didn't lend itself to any real public speaking opportunities... the largest audience I would speak to would be a handful of people in a meeting where I would be presenting a slide deck to senior stakeholders (e.g. a weekly or monthly service report, or project status). So, in order to develop my public speaking skills outside of my work environment I joined Toastmasters International at the end of 2016. This gave me the opportunities to practise public speaking, plus the structured learning plan to improve my skills.Materials
The source materials had been accumulating in my work experience since supporting Argos through their Christmas peaks from 2005 onwards. This was before Cyber Monday was invented, and before Black Friday came to UK consciousness. I then also helped Sainsbury's and Selfridges with their peak preparations and operations – so when John Beechen became Head of Managed Services at Salmon, and decided to establish Salmon’s Peak Operations service ready for Black Friday 2015, he asked me to be his partner in setting it all up, communicating it to our 20+ clients, and running it. It was a great success, and I got to work with many more retailers through Black Fridays until I left Salmon to join House of Fraser in time for Black Friday 2017.
Opportunity
In December 2017 I was approached by Lori Hawthorne, and invited to speak at the eTail Europe conference she was organising in June 2018. I offered her the idea of presenting my Black Friday insights, and she was kind enough to accept. I prepared my presentation, based on my experiences at House of Fraser for Black Friday 2017, plus previous experiences with Ted Baker and other clients from my days at Salmon. In parallel, I was developing my presentation skills at Toastmasters, presenting a portion of the presentation at my Toastmasters club in May 2018.
By the time the conference came round, I was able to deliver the entire 25-minute presentation from memory, and I delivered the presentation at eTail Europe on June 19th 2018 to an audience of around 200 people (photo above). This was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I got lots of very positive feedback from my audience.
In fact, it went so well, I decided I wanted to deliver the presentation again, restructuring it to make it even more effective. I discovered that there was another conference, Ecommerce Expo, in September, so I approached them with the idea and they accepted me. I reworked the presentation, and then delivered it to another audience of around 200 people on September 27th at Ecommerce Expo (photo below).
And finally, I took my speech script and reworked it into a blog post, which I posted on LinkedIn here:
Results
In fact, it went so well, I decided I wanted to deliver the presentation again, restructuring it to make it even more effective. I discovered that there was another conference, Ecommerce Expo, in September, so I approached them with the idea and they accepted me. I reworked the presentation, and then delivered it to another audience of around 200 people on September 27th at Ecommerce Expo (photo below).
Outcomes + Knowledge Gained
I certainly achieved my objective, having taken myself from someone uncomfortable of speaking in front of a small audience, to someone who actually relishes the opportunity to speak at conferences. I've gained a lot of skills along the way, using stronger storytelling, less detail on my slides, and learned how to deliver my message with impact. I also got to meet a lot of great people who saw me speak, and some of whom have become friends.
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