They say the mark of a true leader not only lies in their vision but in their ability to convey that vision with unwavering conviction. This is the very essence we unravel in our latest episode, where the art of public speaking becomes a beacon for personal and professional triumph. Join me, Tim Newman, alongside the insightful Dr. Chris Hobbs, as we share anecdotes and strategies from our journeys in mastering the spoken word. From the meticulous preparations of Steve Jobs to the seamless adaptability required in diverse professional landscapes, this session is a treasure trove for anyone eager to command the room and leave a lasting impact.
How does a leader foster a culture that reveres transparency and forgiveness? We tackle this with a candid look at the communication strategies that not only inspire but cultivate growth within a team. Dr. Hobbs, with his rich background, offers a unique perspective on the intersection of communication skills and leadership, especially when guiding teams spread across different locations. This episode isn’t just about speaking with confidence; it’s about the transformative power of being other-centered and the courageous mentorship that propels emerging professionals into realms of unexpected greatness.
As our conversation progresses, we pay homage to the indomitable spirit of Coach Mike Show, whose legacy of persistence resonates through the lives he touched. Our discussion transcends the mechanics of public speaking to embrace the holistic development of leaders. Whether it’s embracing the evolution of personal priorities or meticulously preparing to captivate an audience, this episode is a testament to the profound influence of effective communication in leadership and life. So, if you’re ready to refine your oratorical skills and lead with an impact, let this episode be the catalyst for your journey to speaking with confidence.
Transcript
Tim Newman:
Welcome to Speaking with Confidence, a podcast that’s here to help you unlock the power of effective public speaking. I’m your host, tim Newman, and I’m excited to take you on a journey to become a better public speaker. If you are like most people, just the thought of speaking in front of a crowd or talking during an important meeting can trigger all kinds of anxiety. Trust me, I know what that’s like. I gave my first speech as a senior in college. I was so nervous that as soon as I got to the front of the room and opened my mouth to speak, I threw up. I have learned a lot since then and have helped hundreds of students overcome their fear of messing up or sounding stupid. So if you are tired of feeling nervous and anxious every time you must speak in public, or if you want to captivate your audience, whether it’s a room full of people or just a small gathering of friends, or even make a sale, you’ve come to the right place.
Tim Newman:
In each episode of the podcast, we’ll discuss the art and science of public speaking and cover techniques to enhance your communication skills. Before we dive into the details, let’s take a moment to reflect on the importance of effective communication in our lives, whether you’re a student presenting in front of your classmates, a professional giving a presentation to your colleagues, or simply someone who wants to speak up with conviction and impact, mastering the art of speaking with confidence can be a game changer. Keep in mind that the more confident we are as individuals, the more likely we are to have a positive mindset, higher levels of motivation and less stress. Having confidence in your speaking abilities significantly impacts our personal and professional lives. Effective communication not only allows us to express our ideas clearly, but also helps us connect with others, inspire change and build strong relationships. By mastering the art of speaking with confidence, you can conquer job interviews and pressure superiors, ace presentations and deliver captivating speeches that leave a lasting impact. Please understand that becoming a confident and authoritative speaker takes work and practice. Steve Jobs, you know the guy who started Apple Computers, developed the iPod and transformed how we communicate with the iPhone, practiced his keynotes for months prior to rolling out newer, updated products. Knowing this, each episode has something for everyone, including interviews with experts, real life success stories and practical tips that you can immediately apply in your own life. We’ll provide you with actionable steps and exercises to practice your speaking skills and build confidence. You’ll learn how to structure your speeches, use body language effectively and even handle unexpected situations with grace and poise. Here’s the best part We’ll do it all with a touch of humor and a lot of heart.
Tim Newman:
Public speaking doesn’t have to be daunting. It can be an exciting and enjoyable journey, whether you’re tuning in from your car, your office, your living room or even if you just finished throwing up. Get ready to embark on a transformative journey in the Speaking with Confidence podcast. Together, we’ll unlock your full potential as a public speaker. So make sure you subscribe, like and download our podcast today. Visit the Speaking with Confidence website and join our growing community. Sign up for special updates regarding the June 1st launch of the Format for Public Speaking.
Tim Newman:
So, with that being said, let’s welcome in our first guest, dr Chris Hobbs. He’s a 20-year veteran in the field of education, holding positions of teacher coach, student minister, principal, athletic administrator and executive director. He’s worked in suburbs of DC, new York City, west Palm Beach and currently in Houston. In his current role as the director of institutional advancement at Second Baptist School in Houston, texas, he provides global leadership to admissions, advancement, communications and marketing for six campuses, two education models and there were 2,000 students. As an athletic director. He was named a Top 40 Under 40 Sports Leader by Coach in AD Magazine and the National High School AD of the Year by BSN Barcy Brands.
Tim Newman:
Hobbs writes a blog and hosts a podcast called Bite Down and Don’t Let Go, which we’re going to talk about later. He is also a keynote speaker whose insights on leadership are regularly featured in the educational, nonprofit and corporate spaces. He holds four degrees, including a master’s degree in sports coaching and a doctorate of education in educational leadership. Later this spring, Dr Hobbs will transition into his new role as superintendent of any Iraq’s Christian school in Largo, florida. On top of all this, chris has been married for 23 years to his wife, jen, and they have three children ages 22, 19, and 17. Chris, I don’t know how you do it, but I was told once that if you want something done, find somebody who’s passionate and busy, and that’s obviously you.
Chris Hobbs:
Well, Tim, it is an honor to be with you. My father once said that introductions are like cologne you can smell them, just don’t swallow. So that’s a little bit how I feel here and all of that, but it’s great to meet you, man. It’s great to be on this podcast with you.
Tim Newman:
Well, it’s good to talk to you as well. We talked offline a little bit and the whole idea of the power of communication and how you come across as a speaker is really important and how young professionals today really struggle with their identity because they don’t know where to start. They don’t know how to actually get that going. Yeah, Absolutely.
Chris Hobbs:
Dr Al Mohler, who’s been the leader of probably one of the premier seminaries in the country for over three decades now, says leadership hasn’t happened until communication has happened, and so the communication component for a leader is a huge deal, and really, in today’s information age and the knowledge economy, the ability to communicate has never been more valuable than it is our current times. Yeah, exactly.
Tim Newman:
So let’s go on a little career journey and talk about your journey as, not only as a professional in the education space, but also your journey as a communicator. We all know that when we’re younger we think we communicate well, but a lot of times we get into our first job and the first thing that our supervisor says is need to learn how to communicate better, because we’re talking with and we’re dealing with people that are not our peers we’re dealing with in your case it’s parents, administrators and that sort of thing. It could be a supervisor, it could be a teammate, it really could be anything. So, like I said, let’s go on a little career journey with you. Your first job right out of college was as a physical education teacher and, again, I don’t know anybody who wasn’t excited to get their first job. But what were your concerns and what did you have? What were your concerns about your ability to actually step into that position?
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah.
Chris Hobbs:
So I think one of the advantages I had coming out of college is I was jumping right into the industry in which I had been raised.
Chris Hobbs:
Not only are we all raised as students in the educational space, but both my parents were educators and we had lots of educators and pastors in my kind of my family background, and so I was always in scenarios that felt like I was always in scenarios where there was someone communicating, there was like a lead voice at all times, and so I just kind of felt like it was the natural progression for me to step into, let’s say, a classroom setting and be the lead voice in the room.
Chris Hobbs:
And so I don’t know if I had a lot of concerns, which is I had a ton of excitement to be that voice, to be the one that sets the tone for the atmosphere that my students would be hopefully thriving and learning in, and so it felt very natural. I found out very fast that it’s not natural, it’s something that has to be worked on, but you can get away with a lot. Just be enthusiastic for a little while until you figure out some of the skills that are necessary to do it at a high level, and so I probably got away with enthusiasm and passion for a little while and a comfort level with the atmosphere, because I was raised in it before the skill of doing it actually came along, and so I would probably cringe if any of that was on video anywhere back in the year 2000.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, I understand and resemble that remark very much, but, being an educator and you’re probably still dealing with some of this each year or each semester when you get a different set of students, there’s still some of that excitement and trying to figure out the personalities of the students and as we get older and as we get better at figuring these things out, we learn, I would say, a lot quicker on how to deal with the personality of a class.
Chris Hobbs:
Yep, yeah, absolutely. I think a huge deal to be an effective communicator is social-emotional intelligence, awareness, situational awareness, understanding your audience. Howard Peterson has a lot of great insights on how, when you are speaking from a platform, it’s most effectively done when it has a conversational aspect, even if that conversational aspect is just the lead voice reading the room, paying attention to body language and facial expressions and gauging that as kind of a compass to how your communication should be unfolding. And so a classroom setting is very similar to that. Speaking to a room full of parents is similar to that Speaking to a room full of leaders and staff members. It’s all very, very similar, and so I would say a big part of being a lead voice in a setting, being a public speaker, is being fully aware that this should be a conversation in which I am reading the room and how they’re responding to what I’m sharing and making little adjustments along the way according to what I’m reading in that room, and so it’s a very empathetic, socially-emotionally aware thing.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, exactly, and you probably go into this, probably much like I did. You know you’re going to be dealing communicating with students, you’re going to be communicating with parents of students and you’re going to be communicating with administration. Were there any other groups that you came across, especially early in your career, that you said, wow, I didn’t think about this group of people or I didn’t think about these positions of people that I needed to interact with?
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, I would say probably almost every time I spoke, and maybe even to this day when I speak in different settings, I gain a new awareness of my audience.
Chris Hobbs:
After the speaking, you know, hopefully the awareness is less and less egregious and it’s a little bit more and more savvy. But just being aware who’s in the room, how they’ll receive comments, and so, whether it’s the demographics that you just listed there, tim, or it’s just understanding kind of, if you will, the sub-demographics, you know, not only are you in a room full of parents who have very strong feelings for their children, but each and every one of those parents is coming at that from a different angle, with a different concern, a different, you know, a different, let’s say, trigger point, you know. And so you know, every time I speak to an audience, I become more and more aware of how diverse every single audience is, how diverse their needs are, how diversely they will respond to what’s being shared and, as a result, if you’re open to that and you’re humble about it, you’ll get better and better and better at meeting the individual needs of everyone in your audience when you speak.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, that’s a that’s a really good point. You know what one of the things that I think is is more important than anything else when we’re communicating is no one who that audience is and Be and being receptive to, to who they are and what their message is. As you’re communicating with them, they’re also communicating back to you, and you have to be receptive to that to be able to give them the information that they need to be given and or the interaction that needs to happen with it within whatever communication that that’s actually going on.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, yeah, that’s absolutely right.
Tim Newman:
So then your second job. You stayed the same school but you moved it into the role as an athletic director. Again, you’re still a young professional, you’re still really excited. I mean you’re always really excited. I mean I, I understand that. But you know, I look at it from from you know, from the young professional, you know point of view. I’m so young man, I’m moving up the ladder, I’m doing everything I need to do, but you’re also a rookie. Again, you know what anxieties did you have, you know from from that perspective and and what new groups of people did you have to interact with?
Chris Hobbs:
Hmm, yeah, I probably, you know, had a drastic increase in Interacting adult to adult as opposed to adult to student.
Chris Hobbs:
In that transition I was interacting with not only the people I was directly responsible for which would be all the coaches, staff, the athletic department but I was interacting with the parents, the, the customer, if you will. That was on the receiving end of that experience. And now I’m, you know, directly responsible for other adults, in a way that points up towards the leadership above me, you know. And so, like all those dynamics, anyone that’s made a transition, you know, let’s just say, up a level, scott, everyone’s got a great book called the next level, and it’s really about how to Position yourself and adjust to the changes that happen when you move up another level. And so that certainly all of those things were, were really really true, the best advice I got. So I actually took over for the athletic director in the building who, unexpectedly to everyone, took the building principal role, and Behind the scenes I didn’t know this until many years later, behind the scenes He’d really advocated for the school board to give me a shot To be the athletic director, and so that’s a really nice way saying I was way too young and stupid to get that role, but he really wanted me to have a shot at it and saw forever, grateful for him. And but One of the things that he said to me on the very first day, that is still a hundred percent true. He said you know, I know you’re gonna try and like you’re not gonna know what to do, how to organize your first day, you know, as a full-time athletic director. He said what I want you to do is get in the office. He said I just want you to sit in the office quietly and wait. He said the phone will ring and It’ll never stop ringing for as long as you that was. It was a hundred percent true. I’ve really tried. I’ve tried to be the person that when I’m given advice, you know, I tried to really think about how to apply it, and so I did. I can remember sitting there quietly, you know, let’s say, the school day started at 8, you know, and you know 8, 25 or so, the phone rang, man, and that day disappeared like that. And really I’m 23, 24 years in education and all 23 24 years have disappeared like that, you know. And so that was great. And the other thing he told me is Chris went in doubt confirm, confirm, confirm. And that not only is great logistical advice if you’re a manager or leader that’s responsible for logistical details, but it’s great communication advice.
Chris Hobbs:
Um, just just communicate, communicate, communicate, communicate. It is amazing the problems that you will solve before they ever become problems. If you are in a really an aggressive communication posture and you want to think about communication directional, you want to communicate in all directions. You want to communicate down to the people that you’re responsible to lead. You want to communicate up to the people that you’re responsible to report to. You want to communicate side to side to your colleagues that may be on the same management level as you, and you want to communicate out To the people that are experiencing, whatever your, your leadership efforts are.
Chris Hobbs:
You know Some industries that would be the customer in the educational industry, that would be the parents, you know. And so you want to be an all direction communicator. And if you, if that’s your posture, to do that and to do it aggressively, it is amazing the things that you will resolve before they ever become problems. It’s amazing the lanes that you’ll develop to cast vision and to move people in a particular direction. Um, but it goes back to that doctrine, older quote Until communication has happened, leadership has not happened right. And so those were two great pieces of advice on my first day as a full-time athletic director Wait till the phone rings, and when it does and you pick it up, it’ll never stop. And when in doubt, confirm, confirm, confirm. There’s a two great pieces of advice I think apply to a lot of different industries.
Tim Newman:
Well, well, first and foremost, it’s gotta be a good feeling that somebody who Really had the reputation that your athletic director had went to bat for for you, a young professional. I was got you. You’ve got to feel really good about, about that and in that relationship.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, I’ve had this really unique experience in in a couple of the stops. I’m working at my fourth school in 23, 24 years and all four places have been tremendous to me. But in a couple of those stops I had the. The. I guess the luxury probably some would be a little leery of it, but it ended up being a luxury for me of working in the building and on the campus when the patriarch who I had taken over for still resided and worked, and those individuals were so very, very good to me.
Chris Hobbs:
They gave me space to lead, they gave me space to make mistakes. The guidance they gave me was always so Just, well presented, and so I, quickly, you know I’m not the smartest, not the smartest person in the room, but I was smart enough to know, hey, listen, I really need to pay attention to these individuals, um, and I can probably expedite my leadership effectiveness by simply learning the hard earned lessons that they have, you know. And so, um, that it did feel great and, honestly, as the years went on, I reflected on it and it felt better and better, um, as my respect grew for those individuals and really the the chance that they, they, took on me, and so that’s been a unique part of my story is is patriarchs letting me step into their roles and guiding me from a distance. That’s been a real blessing.
Tim Newman:
That’s great. And then you know, with, with your description of of communicating down, up, left and right and out, that also gives you know, you a little bit of freedom if the, if there are mistakes that happen, you get, you get a little, a little bit more forgiveness because you know you’re, you’re, you’re communicating, you’re, you’re not, doesn’t seem like you’re hiding everything. You’re making sure that All the information that’s available is out and that that does come back around and allows for you know, a little bit more forgiveness of Of you.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, an aggressive communication posture. One of the byproducts of it is that it really will Will reveal your intentions, and I would say there’s very few at least professionals I’ve ever worked with that were aggressive communicators, that their intentions weren’t very altruistic and their intentions were not very much for the benefit of others. Um, I I do think there’s a correlation to, uh, being an aggressive communicator and being an other centered leader, and I I would say the reverse, at least in my experience, is true, where if you’re working with someone who’s a pretty poor communicator, they’re probably not a very good other centered influencer either. And so what happens is, if you communicate aggressively, your intentions Are inadvertently exposed, but that’s almost always a good thing and that leads to believing the best.
Chris Hobbs:
Um, or what will gander in his book, unreasonable hospitality would become the charitable belief you know. And so, as a leader, you always want to have a charitable belief in others. You want to believe the best in others, and when you’re aggressively communicating, you expose your intentions and, almost by osmosis, other people begin to pick up a charitable belief about you. And actually, when a problem arises or you’ve Accidentally made a big mess, it’s amazing how willing people will be to enter into it with you to help solve it, link arms with you to help you resolve it. It’s just really, really, in my opinion, good for culture To be an all directions communicator. Really good for your culture, because one of the reasons would be the revealing of intentions, and that’s almost always a good thing if you’re an aggressive communicator.
Tim Newman:
And and and to go along with that. To be able to have that aggressive posture, I mean you also have to to be confident in yourself that that what you’re doing is is is the right thing, and and being confident with being being free to make mistakes as well.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, yeah, I’m, one of the best ways you can communicate is just to ask a lot of questions, right, you know? Um, there’s tons of books, you know, that really emphasize the importance of leaders to ask great questions. In fact, some would say the most effective leaders were the best question askers. And so if you’re not sure what to communicate, ask a bunch of questions. You know, a question asking is definitely a form of communication and in some would say it’s, it’s, it’s a most effective form of communication. So, if you’re not confident, just ask a bunch of questions.
Tim Newman:
Well, I also tell you know my students and young professionals all the time. I’m okay with being the dumbest guy in the room and and asking questions, because all that’s going to do is is, you know, clear things up, help me think better about whatever situation it is and help me make the plan to to fix whatever problem. That is, if, if I have more information, then I can do that. Do those other things.
Chris Hobbs:
That’s right.
Tim Newman:
That’s right. So let’s fast forward to your current position. You know, I had no idea that, that you had so many campuses and so many students out there. How does your communication style, how is the change to go from you know the small schools up to you know the school you’re at now, that that’s, that’s large and is separated? Yeah, so to say, how does, how does that? Um, how does your communication style changed or has your process changed?
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, uh, I would say back to question asking, um, asking a ton of questions, uh, when you’re, um, as as spread out as we are geographically across all these campuses and all these leaders, uh, then you need to really ask a ton of questions, because at first blush it’s very hard to understand the matters that you’re responsible to coordinate, lead problems that you’re Responsible resolve, and so you’ve got to ask a lot of questions. In fact, my, my, my boss here, our head of school, dr Don Davis, often says you know, ask the next question, right. And so it’s almost not even the first question, it’s going to be the next question, it’s going to really help you to understand and discern how you can influence a situation, uh, towards improvement and to our better status. And so I would say, you know, I am, I have learned and I’m learning the importance of not only just asking a question but asking the next question, like, really seek to understand things. And then I would say, um, that for any leader in any position, creating a Rhythmic communication style so that people can expect when they will hear, with hear from you, is a really, really big deal. And so, you know, I would encourage any leader that’s listening to this.
Chris Hobbs:
Consider what is your rhythm of communication, you know, is it an email to your staff Every Tuesday morning at 9 am? You know, if that’s your rhythm, I would never miss that. Right, like, like, right. That’s one of the most important things that you will do, for a couple reasons. Um, it’s, it puts your staff, the people you’re responsible for. It puts them in a really, really confidence Consolved state. They know exactly what to expect, and when people know exactly what to expect, they can stop worrying about it and focus on what they’re responsible for. You know, and so that rhythm is often a.
Chris Hobbs:
Rhythm of communication is some of the most important things, and it’s small, it’s not a. You know, sometimes you’re thinking, man, I send the same email every single week. Is this a big deal? I promise you, once you create that rhythm, it is a huge deal to keep that rhythm in place, and so that’s something that’s you know, I’ve figured out here.
Chris Hobbs:
Sometimes the communication would be like hey, like I’m just going to send a simple group text To my folks. You know, just a word of encouragement. You know, everyone’s every Monday morning at 6 am. You know, it’s just a word of encouragement. Let them know I’m thinking about them, let them know. I’m thinking about the week upcoming, um. It is amazing how that becomes a reciprocal and all of a sudden lines of communication open up wide Because they say oh, chris, man, I’m glad you’ve reached out. You know, I wasn’t actually even reaching out to get any response, but their response usually something’s important to them that I can help them, you know, solve or guide or direct it. So Rhythm, so asking questions to understand, has been huge for by communication here in this setting and then rhythms of communication, I have also been really, really critical to keep the lines of communication wider.
Tim Newman:
You know, I really like that analogy. You know, you know, reach out at the same time you know, and keeping that schedule, because you never really know when that, like you said, when that message is is going to resonate with somebody and and and pick them up or jog they’re, they’re thinking to say, oh, you know what I meant to ask chris about this, or I meant I meant to do this. You know, thanks for that reminder, but but really you never know what’s going to help pick, pick somebody up and where they are mentally and getting them ready to go and let them know that other people are actually thinking about them when we’re at your basis.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, yeah, I think for leaders that are thinking about their communication Patrick Lancioni, you know who’s a tremendous thought leader in the world of business, leadership calls leader CRO’s chief reminding officers, and so one of the one of the great Um fallacies of leadership is that you have to have all the ideas Now. Sometimes you just have to remind folks. Len Cioti would use the term CRO to apply to like reminding folks about the mission of the institution, of the organization, which I think is is huge and critical. Um, I would also say CRO can apply to much more daily pragmatic things as well, and rhythms of communication create rhythms of reminding Um, and, as you just described there, tim um, so often a rhythm of communication prompts something in one of your Direct reports, minds that they wanted to talk to you about anyway, and so those rhythms are just really, really critical, and I would say that the the larger the entity that you’re leading or influencing, the more those rhythms are are critical Um to solving um problems that have, you know, massive ripple effect.
Chris Hobbs:
Um, you know it’s uh, if you’re on a jet ski right and you make a wrong turn, you know, and you get thrown off the jet ski. Uh, no big deal, right, you know, just swim back to the jet ski and get on. If you’re on an ocean lighter and you make a wrong turn, you know there’s millions of dollars and thousands of lives that stay. You know, and so I would say the larger the entity, the more you wanna create those rhythms so that you can really manage it well.
Tim Newman:
Right, and that’s a perfect segue into the next thing. You’re getting ready to start a new chapter where you’re going to be the leader of the school. So you’ve gone from you know, the leader in the classroom to a department. You know maybe some other reports as a principal or whatever, but now you’re going to be the leader of the school. What challenges do you foresee ahead and how do you pursue yourself attacking and dealing with those challenges?
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, yeah, I would say I very much admit I don’t know what I don’t know, and so we’ve got to move. We’ve got to get there, and then one of the frameworks so much of what will happen for an effective leader when they arrive at a new place will be discovered at the place, right? I think one of the mistakes a leader can make is thinking they’re gonna bring all the answers with them, you know, or they’re gonna bring the framework by which they’re gonna put the institutional organization inside of, and I would say that that is in many ways a fallacy. You’ve got to get there and you’ve got to discover what’s there. You’ve got to discover the culture, the community, what’s important, what’s not important, what’s taboo, what are the sacred cows. You’ve got to discover so much there that will have an impact on whatever framework you think you’re bringing, whatever vision you’re bringing.
Chris Hobbs:
Once again, my dear friend and who’s my boss here, dr Nondavis, talks about how core values are so critical to understand your core values. And if you bring core values from the outside, they’re not core to the institution. Core means deep down inside, you know, think about the core of the earth, right? And so when a leader gets an institution, we’re gonna dive into the community and uncover the core values, and so I would say that’s very much my posture in this exciting new opportunity that we have to lead in this community.
Chris Hobbs:
And when I get there, one of the things that I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna create a listening and learning tour where I’m just gonna I’m literally gonna create a schedule of meetings where I’m just gonna listen and learn from the people, and you can break that down in all sorts of demographics. You know whether it’s the existing campus leaders, or it’s the faculty and staff, or it’s the parents, or it’s the students, it’s my direct supervisor or the people I’m direct. I have just gotta listen and learn in that first season there and then, whatever I think the vision can be for that place will actually be far better attuned to that place because I’ll have just a greater understanding of it. I think it’s my father used to say as a leader, you can’t change them until they think you’re one of them. And so my goal is to really become one of the members of the community there in my early season’s leadership, and that’s gonna be them communicating a lot to me and me listening to what they’re saying.
Tim Newman:
I’ve always thought you know, when you go to a new place, don’t change anything for a year, and that’s probably the hardest year at any institution because you have to do so much learning. You have to make sure that you’re in touch with, like I said, all of the different constituents, all the different layers, and get to know what’s going on in, you know, maybe, the science department, but what’s going on in biology as opposed to what’s going on in chemistry? They could be two very different things. That one have very different needs with very different directions and you can’t just say, well, this is the science department. You can say the same thing for athletics.
Tim Newman:
But I think, even on a deeper level, you talk about core values. You know who you are and that has developed over the course of your life, and what you think and what you believe. How do we get young professionals to figure out who they are and what their core values are? Because it seems to me they don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it and developing that. As a young professional, the first question you’re gonna get to ask in an interview is tell me about yourself. They don’t tell about themselves. They say, well, this is what I do. They wanna know about you, right? So how do we teach young professionals to dig deep and figure out who they are as individuals?
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, I think we probably share our story, and I think, as a leader, we run institutions that have great clarity on who they are and what they’re about, and then it’s amazing how formative that can be on young professionals. Probably one of the biggest blind spots of any generation is to bemoan the next generation when we in fact, are the ones that raised that next generation, and so often that’s it lacks self-awareness when we do that. My kids are moving down the path of life, starting to graduate, college and get careers and all this stuff. It’s a tone deaf of me to complain about who my children are. I’m the one that raised them. Like, who’s fault is that? And so I would say that we should take a almost a parental posture with young professionals, because they are still very much in a formative stage of their career, and I do think that they, whether they’re consciously speaking to it or not, they will be shaped by their professional experiences. I can’t remember who it says it, but the participation equals formation, and you really wanna think about the things you’re participating in, because they are forming you. And so what thing do we participate in more as adults than our jobs? And so our careers, our jobs, the organizations we work at, our coworkers. These are things that we are deeply participating in and so, as a result, they are forming us, and so I think, as leaders and as communicators, we need to take that seriously and be intentional about how we are forming the next generation of professionals and these new professionals.
Chris Hobbs:
In fact, on one of my teams this summer, we just hired our first person born in the 2000s, and I didn’t even realize it. I was looking at the individual’s file a couple of months later for something random and I randomly came across the birth date and it was 2001. And I feel like I aged five years when I read that date. Like my goodness. But we are working in the most, from a generational standpoint, the most diverse era that the world has ever seen.
Chris Hobbs:
Dr Tim Milmore has a book he released in 2022 called A New Kind of Diversity, and it’s his study and results on this incredible collaboration of generations now in the workplace, and so I was actually just listening to an interview with him about that book, and so we need to take the opportunity to form, to guide, to mentor, to coach, to learn from this next generation of professionals very, very seriously, and I think, one of the formative effects that we can have on them. To your question, tim to help them understand who they are is to run organizations that are super clear about what they’re about, and then that, by osmosis, that participation will create formation and it sets professionals up to get really clear about what they’re all about in their career.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, and again, that’s a really good point because we do have some control over that right. Yep, it’s kind of funny. You said that you just hired somebody who was born in the 2000s. I had a conversation in class just the other day that I told the class I didn’t realize I was old until about five years ago and they said well, what brought you that conclusion? I said well, because one of the things that I asked my students is what do you like you know, what have you been doing after an essay? And they essay invariably starts.
Tim Newman:
I’ve been involved in sports my entire life and they’re 18 years old. I’m thinking I’ve been teaching longer than you’ve been alive. It kind of makes me chuckle. So you’ve been involved in sports for 14 years, right, and so that’s what I realized that I was old and that maybe how I was relating to the students probably should change a little bit and I should maybe again take a different posture. And just when we had this conversation class on Monday, they all kind of laughed at us. If you think about it from that perspective, you’ve been involved in sports for your entire life of 14 years. I’ve been teaching longer than you’ve been alive. So your perspective on, your entire life is going to change.
Tim Newman:
And the conversation was kind of led into the value that they put on sport. You know professional sport and being a fan. I said you know, nobody loves sport more than me, so I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. That’s kind of how this conversation started and I said you said, first of all, I missed in forever, but I was traveling because I had to do something that was more important than watching the Super Bowl. And I said you know your values and what’s important to you is going to change throughout your life and you’re going to find at some point that your fandom value of a given team that’s going to come down and you’re going to have more important things in your life that you put that effort into.
Tim Newman:
And they kept shaking their heads no, no, no. I said okay, that’s fine, but just remember, write it down, remember the doc Newman told you this, you know, in February of 2024. So that is what it is and I know some resonated with some of the students because you know you could see in how they respond. And I said, well, yeah, because I don’t feel the same. You know, going to practice for the club team that I was on today, as I did three years ago. Okay, so you’re starting to see that there are more important things in life than your fandom. So you know when you had to give a presentation, you know what’s your process, from the time that you agree to the presentation and tell the time that you step, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a stage, but it can be in front of the room what have you?
Chris Hobbs:
Yep? So I would say that there’s some things that should always be humming in the background. If you are in a position where you will, it’s possible you would be called upon to make a presentation. There’s a great quote out there that at some point every leader is handed a microphone and they better be ready to say something, and so I think there should always be some things humming in the background if you are gonna maximize any opportunity to speak publicly. One of those things that should be humming in the background is you should always be learning, and sure, there’s a difference between consuming information, which we do at unprecedented rates in modern times. There’s a difference in consuming information and intentionally learning, and so I would put in the bucket of intentionally learning book reading, writing, earning degrees, earning certifications, attending seminars those are the things, and so those things should always be humming in the background, because you’re only gonna output as good as your inputs, and so I would even say a system of documentation of what you’re experiencing at work, where you’re just filing notes from meetings, well, and you’re just PowerPoint presentations that you have been shared with you you’re filing well. You just wanna have all that stuff humming in the background, create a posh. That’s just kinda how I live my life. It’s got a lot of benefits. One of them is it will prime the pump for whatever opportunity might come your way to speak publicly. And so I would say that that is very much true for me. Just a real aggressive reading, note-taking and writing habits. And then when I find out that there’s an expectation that I’ll deliver a speech somewhere or communication, or I know an event’s coming up where I’ll speak publicly, I really usually, utilizing all that stuff that’s humming in the background, I’ll just script down some notes, some thoughts, some gut reactions on the topic and I’ll just let that percolate over a couple days. Alongside of that humming, or with that humming, once you write something down, it intensely puts your mind on it, even in a subconscious way, and now you’re kinda almost like consuming information, reading, writing, through the lens of that, let’s say, speaking engagement that’s coming up and those notes that you’ve jotted down. And so I would say, have a posture of learning and humming in the background Once you understand what you’re gonna speak about, or just write some gut reactions down and let that percolate for a couple days, and then I would say probably step three, right?
Chris Hobbs:
So those would be three steps. Step three of maybe a four or five step process would be you’re gonna have to carve out some time and really just go ahead and build your presentation on the basis of the notes that you wrote and how that’s been percolating on your mind, supported by the humming in the background of your general posture of learning. You’re sit down and literally just put something down right, like really just build it out. You know, don’t get overly anxious about is this, just just build the thing out, build a presentation out, do it days in advance, maybe even a week in advance, so that you can build it out. Say, okay, if I had to speak today, I’m ready, but I don’t have to speak today. Give yourself another 48 hours you know 36 hours, 72 hours, whatever it is and then go back to it with fresh eyes for, like, a final refining. If you’ve got some people you know that you can trust to share the information with during that two to three day window, that’s super beneficial and helpful to put extra eyes on it and really refine it. You know anywhere from two to three days after you thought you finalized it, and so refining actually happens after finalizing and then that refined product there. Once you you know if worked it through and distilled it, edited it made some changes.
Chris Hobbs:
One of the key components of refining is getting more concise. You know Albert Einstein, who’s a pretty smart dude, I think I used to say if you can explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough. You know, and I, in today’s day and age we’re just constantly barraged with information. Man, you wanna make your public speaking engagement as concise and as direct as you possibly can. So refine, refine, refine, refine, and so part of the refining process is to whittle it down. I can remember going through my doctoral journey, you know, for a good part of it, you know it was write more, write more, write more, write more, write more. And then all of a sudden, when it’s time to actually do your dissertation and write your research, they want you to write less. You know, like too much, get it down, cut it down. Cut it down too much, because they had poured so much into you and forced you to, like, engage with so much information for all those years. They now want you to take an Einstein posture of if you can’t explain this simply, you must not understand it well enough. You know, and so I would say the same thing, in a smaller scale, for a public presentation or speaking engagement. You know you wanna like immerse yourself in it. You know, understand it so well that you can explain it very, very simply on the back end at the point of the presentation. And so another little piece of advice that kind of goes along with a posture of this hum in the background.
Chris Hobbs:
Someone told me once never turn down an opportunity to speak publicly. And so you know I’ve tried to been able to, within reason, embrace that. And so you know I regularly go to church, grew up go to church, I still go to church. I teach a Bible study. When people ask me to teach an additional Bible study, I almost always say yes because it’s going to mostly help me learn something new.
Chris Hobbs:
Right, if you’re getting prepared for a speaking engagement and you haven’t learned more than everyone else that’s gonna listen to you, you probably haven’t prepared very well, because to teach is to truly learn. And so I would say you know, if you wanna create your own posture, your own process for getting ready to speak publicly, you’re gonna wanna embrace any and all opportunities to present, which is that’s a lot for people to consider, because I think, you know, after the fear of dying, the fear of public speaking is the number two great fear in the world, you know, and so it’s a lot to ask, I think, for people to embrace. Like any opportunity I get I’m gonna dive into because of how it’s gonna impact me, that’s a big ask, I understand that, but I have found it to be really good advice.
Tim Newman:
Well, it’s funny you say that you know, because I talk to young professionals all the time about this and they say that their fear of speaking public primarily comes from they don’t wanna sound stupid and they don’t wanna mess up. And you and I come from a very similar background, you know from sports backgrounds, so I’m sure you understand this the more you practice, the better you’re gonna be, which is essentially what you just said, right? So a great deal of confidence comes from the practice, because you’re getting better, because you’re practicing. You know. The analogy that I give them a lot of times is you know, if you’re on a team, you don’t just go to the game, you practice. You’ve got a game plan as input. You practice the game plan and then you go and you compete. Public speaking is really no different, but what would you tell someone who says that they don’t wanna sound stupid or mess up?
Chris Hobbs:
I would say that they’d be surprised how preparation will set them up. I would say that when you’re an audience-centric speaker, you always leave them wanting a little bit more, so they should never be afraid to speak short. Speaking short is almost always a pleasant surprise. Speaking long is almost always not a good thing, you know. And so don’t put pressure on yourself to speak long and don’t put pressure on yourself to share anything that you have not previously learned, either through your experience or through your preparation for it. I think if they do that, if they remove those pressures from themselves, they will also remove that pressure that they might feel stupid in what they’re sharing.
Chris Hobbs:
So my wife, who’s also an educator, has an advanced degree, is a director of a department. She really, really does not like public speaking to colleagues. You know, for a large part of her career she was a classroom teacher. You know elementary classroom teacher, and so being up in front of little ones, no problem, but getting in front of colleagues was a real source of stress for her. And then she took a director’s role and now she had to do it quite often and her preparation set her up. I can remember the first presentation that I saw her do. I was just blown away. I was blown away by what she knew, how she communicated it and it’s really because she did not burn herself with a long presentation. You know kept the presentation very reasonable time and she was obsessive about getting ready for it. And when she got through that experience got on the back end and got so much positive feedback on it. You know, I tried to help her connect the positive feedback to the preparation Like, and the reason that’s such a big deal is because you’re in control of preparation.
Chris Hobbs:
You know there’s lots of things you might not be in control of whether or not the microphone goes dead, whether or not you’ve got a sinus infection that day. So you say those are things you can’t control. And this is great parenting advice, great coaching advice. When you went, children went, student athletes or really anyone that you’re responsible for, experiences success. Point their attention to what they did to create this success. Don’t point their attention to maybe a natural gifting, you know. Don’t point their attention maybe to something they’re not in control of. Point their attention to the things that they’re in control of.
Chris Hobbs:
My daughter, my youngest, who’s a junior high school, just finally achieved a new level and the sports science class that she takes. That has a heavy physical performance component to it and she was just fighting like mad to get to a particular level and she missed it a couple of times. Well, she finally achieved it the other day. You know, and I pointed her attention to her just her determination, right. Her relentlessness to get there, not the new talent that she had acquired or not, that it was just a perfect day for her. Or, you know, I pointed her attention to the thing that she controlled that led directly to that achievement.
Chris Hobbs:
And so you know, there’s two pieces of advice in there. If you want to relieve yourself of some of the anxiety of getting ready to speak prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare, over-prepared. You know, I think someone once said you’re either over-prepared or under-prepared. There is no just prepared, right, you know. So choose your over-prepared and you’ll be surprised at how well you’ll present the people. And then, when you do, remember what led to that positive outcome, the things that you control is what led to that positive outcome.
Tim Newman:
And I’m sure you know, just using your daughter as an example here when you were having that conversation with her and you pointed that out, I’m sure you can see a brightness come over her, whether it was in her face or attitude whatever, and that she realized that what she did was noticed and that’s going to be, you know that, positive feedback for the next time, for the next time, for the next time, and write them down the line.
Chris Hobbs:
That’s right. That’s right as a leader of Ray Concept is just recognize what you want repeated you know, and so when you recognize something, be intentional about what you’re recognizing, because it will be what’s repeated you know, and so recognize things that people can control Right.
Tim Newman:
You know and on the other side of that, you know a lot of people don’t know that you know Steve Jobs. You know, obviously, before he died, the intense preparation that he went through for all of his keynotes. I mean he would practice these things for months ahead of time. They would give him, you know, pieces of information and he would practice, he would practice and he would practice and he would practice. He would actually go into the auditorium and practice and his steps were coordinated, his turns, I mean if you’ve ever seen any of his keynotes, I mean they come off lawless and that doesn’t just happen, that’s right.
Chris Hobbs:
And you know that’s a great just life posture. When you see something amazing, amazing happen, you really want to think about like hey, like what intentionality went into that happening? You know you see an amazing achievement, or you see even the intense preparation for, like the Super Bowl halftime performances. You know, unless you’re just performing, it’s like the unbelievable work. I mean, not only are the unbelievable talented people, but they’re unbelievably prepared for the moment, and so that’s something I think sometimes we too quickly gloss over. When we see something amazing, we underestimate the preparation that was required to produce that amazing result.
Tim Newman:
Now, on the flip side, even when we prepare, we still mess up. What’s your most embarrassing moment? You know when you’ve been presented and how did you recover from that, because that’s the other piece. We can’t just be embarrassed and quit and walk away. We have to recover and pick up and move forward.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, yeah. So Dwight Eisenhower had this great reflection after World War II where he said I find in war that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. And so I would say one of the ways to survive, whatever might come your way, is to be overprepared. It’s amazing how nimble you can be when you’re overprepared, and so, whether it’s microphones blanking out or slide decks not working, I would say that the embarrassing scenarios that I’ve had to navigate when up in front of people were always fueled by a pretty obsessive preparation. I really can’t think of a time when I got up in front of people where I hadn’t put really significant thought into it, and that includes a little bit like, hey, I kind of know what I’m going to do if this all goes wrong. And so I’ve had microphones go out and, thanks to all my coaching days, I know how to speak from my gut, really project my voice, and so I’ve had those things happen. I’ve had slide decks go blank. I’ve had physical visuals that just maybe I forgot the visual and so, thankfully, the preparation. I almost always prepare two analogies for something in case one goes wrong, and so I forgot the visual that I was going to use, and so, because I had a second, let’s say analogy prepared. I just pivot right into that. And so I would say overpreparation sets you up to survive any specific complications or embarrassments that come up.
Chris Hobbs:
I can remember this isn’t embarrassing, but I can remember for a while, as a dean of students at a Christian school, where that’s I was in DC, part of my responsibilities was to weekly chapel and making sure that I had a chapel speaker in place to come speak to the high school students, all that kind of stuff. And I can remember just I had never gotten a confirmation email back. Remember, confirm, confirm, confirm. I’d never gotten a confirmation email back from my guest speaker. I’m sitting in the back of chapel while the opening announcements and worship songs are happening and my speaker has not shown up. My speaker has not shown up, and so we’re like T minus three minutes.
Chris Hobbs:
And so I opened my Bible real quick and made three quick little circles and put together a quick little three point chapel encouragement to the kids, thought of a story to open it up that would catch their attention, thought of a quote at the end that would really kind of wrap things up. And I walked up there and here’s the thing I never made any mention whatsoever that the guest speaker didn’t show up. Because you’re setting yourself up for a really uphill battle if they know that chaos has unfolded and you weren’t even supposed to be standing there. Right, don’t even draw your attention to it. Get up there, act the part and fake it till you make it.
Chris Hobbs:
So that’s probably one of my more fond memories, and so even today, when I’m walking into a situation where I’m going to be sitting in an audience that’s relative to my job or my institution, I’m always, even in the back of my mind, preparing hey, what would I say if somehow I had to stand up with the microphone, like what would I say right now? I literally said that to my wife driving to church on Sunday getting go. We were just attending Bible study and I said is it weird that I prepare a mini Bible study in my brain while we’re driving a church, in case this teacher doesn’t show up and they need someone to teach? She said you really need to stop sharing things like that. That’s awesome.
Tim Newman:
She’d probably say, yes, it is weird, but I don’t expect anything less. So when the flip side what’s the best presentation you’ve ever had and why did you feel that way?
Chris Hobbs:
I don’t know. If it’s hard to gauge best, I would say the ones that I valued the most. So, during the pandemic, we all just together, collectively, as a world, experience such a surreal thing, but what did emerge was all of these virtual connections, and so I got to present on multiple platforms how to lead through crisis, which was really relevant because we were all dealing with crisis, and so that was really really valuable for me because it forced me to constantly reflect on, not the presentation, but what was my lived reality. Was I actually being the type of leader and colleague, husband, father, coworker? Was I being the type of person that was helping others navigate crisis? Because shame on me to be talking about it and not living it? So I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk about it because it helped me reflect on where was I doing this? Well, where was it? So that was super valuable, and then I’ve done a series of presentations on how to struggle in the right direction. We live in a day and age when everything we see online is so perfectly curated or it’s so celebratory, we forget the struggles that usually the mountain of struggles that lead to the mountaintop experience, and so I think, helping people to really put their minds around how to leverage struggle so it moves you in the right direction was really relevant. It’s really really valuable to me.
Chris Hobbs:
One of the thoughts that came out of that presentation are no matter what the problem is, doing your best work will always be part of the solution, and so often we get stuck in a struggle, a tough season of life, things aren’t going well, things are falling apart, and we just throw our hands up.
Chris Hobbs:
We think what’s the point when actually that’s probably the most important time to dive in even harder on something, and so part of the solution will always be your best work, and so that would be one of the thoughts that came out of that. One of the other thoughts that came out of that is aspire to be the type of person people want around when it’s all falling apart. And what does it take to be that type of person when everything’s a dumpster fire and they’ve got to pick people to get into the dumpster fire with us? What does it take to be the type of person that they would want to be with them while it’s all going bad, and so struggling in the right direction. Those presentations were really really meaningful because I think they matter to so many people.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, and especially at the time it really did, because nobody really had any direction at all. We’re all stuck in our houses, afraid to go to the grocery store. You weren’t even allowed to go to church. You’re stuck inside your house, you don’t know what’s going on, you can’t go anywhere, and a lot of mental health issues happen because of that as well with no direction. And we really did and do need leaders to start driving people away from that. So that’s perfect. So is there a speaker that has had the most impact on you, or somebody that you really kind of look to to emulate yourself after, or tomorrow, or yourself after?
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, I would say it’s probably a compound effect. So my grandfather was a Baptist pastor, and so we visited his church once a month growing up, and so that was a very close patriarchal family member that I just always saw up in front of people speaking, and so I think that had a real subconscious effect on me. My father to this day, 48 years leading in small faith-based private schools, and so I grew up in my father’s schools and so I grew up watching him speak to all sorts of groups. I grew up at a church that had a very dynamic pastor, and so I mean you just can’t even underestimate the impact of hearing individuals like this my grandfather, my father, our local pastor speak literally multiple times a week. Probably a week didn’t go by that. I didn’t hear the three of them speak anywhere from three to five times a week throughout my entire childhood.
Chris Hobbs:
And so my college basketball coach I played small college basketball. It meant the world to me. He might as well have been playing at Kentucky. You know, I was just so ecstatic to be playing college basketball and I had a coach that definitely lived out the mantra of make where you are the big time, so he dumped his entire heart and soul into our program and had a huge impact on generations of young men. Three of them I work with here currently. Do you really I have to school at Houston? My boss, our head of school, dr Don Davis, was my college teammate. Our athletic director, mike Walker, was my college teammate. And our high school principal, john Consmon, was not my college teammate, but he played in the same program for the same man. Just a little bit a couple years after us, both my brothers played for him.
Chris Hobbs:
And so Mike Shaw at Clark Summit University in Scranton, pennsylvania, has had untold impact on generations of male leaders. And so coach, you know, was in front of us all the time and there was no such thing as a toned down version of Mike Shaw, you know. Every version of Mike Shaw is volume up, you know, and so just understanding day-to-day passion and how it’s communicated. And then I would say most recently Dr Jimmy Scroggins, who’s a lead pastor at a network of churches in South Florida, just really one of the most authentic communicators that I have seen. So all of my models, if you will, would be people I know personally, because I, just you, just part of God’s plan for my life is I’ve always been around public speakers, the industries that I’ve been in, both both church and school, and so they, those names there have had a real big collective impact on my, my public speaker and my communication.
Tim Newman:
There’s a great example. You know, I really like the idea that you know you’re working with your college teammates, because that whole idea of like minds build great things right To have that, not only that friendship, but that working relationship for as long as you have. That’s a really good story, really is. Again, it points back to to to your coach, coach Xiao.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah.
Tim Newman:
Yeah, it points back to to him and and his vision, and you know that that he’s got to feel good about that that he’s accomplished or or touched so many lives, and he sees you all out doing the things that you are doing.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, it’s super fun. The athletic director at the largest it might be the largest private school in Ohio now Cuyoga Valley Christian Academy is a guy named Dr John Young. John played for Mike Shaw. My brothers were teammates with John. Don Davis, her head of school, was teammates with him. So David Robinson, who’s the head of school at Washington Christian Academy, just outside of Baltimore, played for Coach Shaw, and the list just goes on and on and on.
Chris Hobbs:
Forgive me, danny, my teammates that I’m forgetting right now. Taylor Jackson’s a lead pastor up in Rochester, new York. He played for Mike Shaw. The list can just go on and on and on of all of these guys, and they’re out there impacting their communities and they would all point back to Mike Shaw as having a really, really formative impact on their lives, and so it’s a special part of our story, that’s for sure.
Tim Newman:
It’s amazing and maybe something that we can revisit and do something on that as well. Because, again, you said you went to a small school, but we always hear about the big schools that have these trees right and these coaches that have these trees, but what I tell people for the most part is there are only there’s 100-some Division I programs. How many Division III programs are there? That’s where a lot of things happen that nobody really knows about that. You have all these great stories about people going out and impacting lives on a much wider basis. I’ve talked before that we can only affect our circle. We can’t worry about what’s happening to counties over. If we impact our circle around us, then hopefully those people will impact their circle around them. It’s like that ripple effect and that’s really to me what Division III and those smaller schools are. You have a much bigger opportunity to impact a greater number of people.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, absolutely 100%. I agree with you. I’m a product of it.
Tim Newman:
So let’s change gears a little bit. We mentioned that you’ve got a podcast and a blog. It’s called Bite Down and Don’t Let Go and, by the way, I really enjoyed the one that you posted from July 7th of 2023. The Big Fish 5 Reality checks. We all need. That really resonated with me. But where did the name Bite Down and Don’t Let Go come from? I mean, I know I listened to it and I actually got a little fired up, but I want you to tell the stories so that our listeners can hear from you.
Chris Hobbs:
So I coached Varsity Basketball for 16, 17 years. It was great. Some of my fondest memories, some of my closest relationships are now with my players, who have long since graduated and going on to become men and lead their families and all that. And so shout out to all the coaches out there that are trying to impact lives, trying to use sport to impact lives. It’s an unbelievable tool, but it requires unbelievable sacrifice. So shout out to all these coaches. And so, throughout a lot of the themes that I would have for my seasons with my teams, we’d always have a theme. They were always related around just relentless persistence, and so I want to package them, but almost every single one. As I look back on it and I didn’t realize this until I kind of got maybe 12, 13 years in my coaching career I looked back down the course of my career and saw all these themes. My father had this great definition of determination, said determination is biting off more than you can chew and chewing it, and so one of the analogies I used with my team one year was bite down, and it was around this idea of determination is biting off more than you can chew and chewing it.
Chris Hobbs:
And there’s this great story that I think is true, coming out of World War II with Winston Churchill, and Churchill used to bring his bulldog to parliament meetings. Churchill was a really, really eccentric guy and people were at times a little scared to engage with him, but at some point one of the members of parliament finally mustered up the courage to ask Churchill you know, prime Minister, why do you bring a bulldog to parliamentary meetings? Because, honestly, it’s wildly inappropriate. It’s basically what he was applying, and Churchill kind of roughly replied because he can breathe without letting go. You know, and if you think about dogs, most of them have these long snouts and if they want to really dig their face in to bite down on something, it blocks the end of their nose, you know, and dogs really don’t breathe through their mouths. Dogs mostly breathe through their nose, and so to block that, not those nostrils on the end of that long snout, is like they just they have to let go to breathe at some point. Not bulldogs, though. They’ve got these smashed in snub noses and so they can get something way back in the back of their jowls, clench down on it, and they can. They can breathe without letting go, you know, and Churchill was such a so dogmatic about persistence, determination.
Chris Hobbs:
You know he’s the one that famously told a graduating class at an all boys school, while London is under intact, intense bombing from the Nazis, he told that group of a graduating class we will never give in, never, never, never, never. And I think he said never 11 times in two sentences. You know this was Churchill. He just refused to give in on things, and so that bulldog was a regular reminder to everyone in Parliament. We will not give in, we will bite down and we will not let go.
Chris Hobbs:
I share this story with a room full of teenage boys playing varsity basketball. I think it was like maybe 2018 or 19. And one of the kids, who’s a great, great friend of mine, says pant coach, like, like you should write about that, you know. And so I decided to name the blog bite down and don’t let go, the relentless pursuit of leading yourself and others. And so you know that’s kind of the posture on everything that I share on that blog. And then I went ahead and did a kind of an audible version, an audio version of it called the bite down, don’t let go podcast. You know, and so it all comes from that Churchill quote that bulldogs can breathe without letting go.
Tim Newman:
That’s awesome and again I get, I get fired up listening to it. I mean, you know it wasn’t Churchill, one of the greatest leaders in the history of the world. You know, without him we don’t know where the world would actually be.
Chris Hobbs:
So I’m sure.
Tim Newman:
And I did not know the story about the bulldog, but I had heard the story about him. You know, talking in the school about the never, never, never, yeah, and that’s what we have to do sometimes for us to get to where we really want to be. You know, follow that right path and don’t, and don’t quit, don’t let up, no matter what, no matter what the obstacle lay in front of us.
Chris Hobbs:
That’s right, that’s right. The great poem, the. The author? Oh, it’s Calvin Coolidge. President, calvin Coolidge, you know, has that great poem about persistence where he closes out the poem where he says persistence alone is omnipotent. You know, j Johnson is a tremendous thought leader in the world of distance running, you know, and he talks about how consistency is the only superpower, you know. And so, you know, I pass that along to as many folks as I often can, because they probably underestimate what they can get done if they just keep doing it, you know. And so all of that, you know, just the idea of persisting through hard things to break through has always been a fascinating topic for me. Yeah, it’s awesome.
Tim Newman:
So working people find you at.
Chris Hobbs:
Yeah, so I do. I do share a lot, not because I think I know a lot, but because I’m constantly learning, and so one of the ways that I learned is I kind of just share it out there. And so please understand that’s my passion on everything. But pretty active on Twitter at dr underscore Chris Hobbs, I’ve got a sub stack that is called learning and leading. If you’re, if you’re into sub stacked, you know the blog and the podcast can be found on all your typical platforms if you just go ahead and just search it out there LinkedIn as well and so I really have valued my networks out there and getting to know people and seeing what everyone else is talking about sharing and learning, and so love to connect with anyone out there.
Tim Newman:
Thanks. I’ll put all those links in the show notes for you know, for listeners, so that they have it. Chris, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Yeah, I really appreciate it. You know. I hope that your story, can you know, resonates with our listeners. You know I get a lot out of out of this. You know we’ve talked, you know here we’ve also talked offline and you’ve had a big impact on me and some of the directions that I want to start taking some things as well. Again, I really do appreciate it.
Chris Hobbs:
Tim, the pleasure is all mine. Really grateful that you invited me to join on. So thank you, but take care.
Tim Newman:
Let’s take a few minutes to reflect on a conversation with Chris. He shares thoughts on the importance of both communication and leadership, how closely they are tied together and the evolving nature of his views over time. Chris generously talked about his personal insecurities at various stages of his professional journey and the things that helped him grow and succeed along the way. We’ve provided specific tips to develop public speaking skills and play. In presentations. Chris included personal stories, lessons from his own role, models, sources of inspiration and specific resources, and thank him enough for taking the time to talk with us and for being so helpful to the speaking with confidence community. As promised at the beginning, each episode addresses the art and science of public speaking and covers techniques to enhance your communication skills. Chris talked about the need to understand your audience. He discussed the significance of not only knowing the general demographics of who is in the room, but also identifying their sub-demographic. Fully agree with him on the importance of firmly establishing expectations Before you can speak with confidence in public. Before you can speak with confidence in public, you need to be confident you can speak to what the audience wants and needs. Chris referenced this as the diversity of the audience and gave examples of how parents attending the same meeting have different perspectives, questions and concerns based on the specific needs of their child. He went on to say there may be different trigger points for each participant. As a result, effective speakers must learn to read the room, adjust in the moment, reflect afterward and apply what was learned to subsequent speaking engagements.
Tim Newman:
In terms of practical tips to apply in your own life, chris pointed to his own experience and the mentors he has had at various points in his career. He recounted times he was able to learn from the people before him in both his personal life and professional life. As an actionable item, chris emphasized the need to ask questions as a routine part of communicating with others. He recommended the practice of asking questions to understand, which includes questions to gain new information as well as questions to clarify previous communications. Chris spoke about the overall value of asking questions as part of promoting positive leadership styles and growth opportunities, both individuals and organization. He mentioned Patrick Glencioni’s use of chief reminding officers as an example of how questions can be used to communicate clarity. Once again, I fully agree with Chris and include a variety of questioning techniques as part of my ACEs formula for public speaking One of my favorite parts of the conversation with Chris revolved around the process he used to prepare for any type of public speaking and role preparation plays.
Tim Newman:
His philosophy of always learning and being intentional resonated with me. I wholeheartedly agree with the practice of over-preparing as a methodical approach to relieving the anxiety associated with public speaking. His reliance on working hard, aspiring to be the type of person that people want to be around in a time of crisis, and emphasis on preparation all speak to the things that I know consistently help build confident speakers. The Directional Communication Strategies that Chris explained during the interview, combined with strategic planning and preparation, write a strong foundation for speaking with confidence. Visit the Speaking with Confidence website and join our growing community. Sign up for special updates regarding the June 1st launch of the formula for public speaking. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any episodes. Next episode drops on March 18th. Please download, like and share the podcast with friends. Always remember that your voice has the power to change the world. Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.