Practice Makes Perfect

 DBG & Faking it Until You Make it

I've heard these phrases many a time over the years and reign truer and truer. In the scope of recent post, The concepts of "practice makes perfect" and "fake it till you make it" actually are rooted in habit building. 

If your goal is to be able to give a Ted talk, but you're an introvert, the chances of success realistically might not seem high, without taking steps to ensure it. These steps would be getting comfortable speaking with people, then comfortable meaningfully speaking at people. Eventually these building blocks of habit forming grow to the point where even if you don't like speaking in front of people, you're good at it. A lot of time the fastest way to do that is to pretend, act even, like you're good at it before you are. Eventually, it will be true as you've built the habit. 

I study business, but I've never thought of myself as the corporate type, and as a result I typically do not look forward to interviews; I get nervous knowing that my interviewer's idea of professionalism might be different from mine in terms of lingo especially. I don't have all of the perfect corporate vocab to describe every situation in their language! But practice makes perfect. 

I spent my day in 4 hours of interviews with 5 different people, and I'm pretty sure I blacked out for the first two, I was anxious, rambling, and honestly not focusing on the principles of interview skills that I have practiced before and am well aware of. The STAR method wasn't even close to my mind, regrettably. Luckily, I had a half-hour break before my final two interviews, and I got to refocus. I polished up a few of the key points I wanted to talk about and ensure my interviewers took away from our conversation, and just faked the speaking style. That type of professional, formal, presentation style speaking is not my go-to but by the final interview it felt natural. I was applying the style to the content I wanted to ensure I got across with ease, and it made it easier (I think) for my interviewer to understand the points I was trying to make as I was speaking in a style he was so used to. 

Not the biggest thing in the world, but DBG! Regardless of outcome, I've gained useful experiential learning that I can apply to future conversations, interviews, presentations, etc. 

Another key point I'd like to make: If you act like you know what you're talking about, usually people think you do. This wasn't at play today, but when it comes to presentations it's such a good trick. A lot of times people are not listening as intently as they should, or even appear to. If you get lost in what you are trying to say or don't know the exact answer to a question, just sound sure in what you're saying, and usually that satisfies more than seeming like you don't know what you're doing. It is always a good idea to follow up after this to ensure you do have the correct information or answer though. 

Confidence is a key to all of this, fake it till you make it ladies and gentlemen; you will make it!

That's all I have for today, until next time, find your factor!