Finding Your Voice Before You Feel Ready: Lessons in Confidence and Self-Efficacy

Tim Newman [00:00:09]:
Imagine being a teenage girl trying to make it in the professional bass fishing world, then later becoming a college executive, and then walking away from it all at 40 to rebuild your career from scratch. Today's conversation is about finding your voice before you feel ready. And why confidence might actually be the wrong word. Welcome back to Speaking with Confidence, the podcast that helps you build the soft skills that lead to real results— communication, storytelling, public speaking, and showing up with confidence in every conversation that counts. I'm Tim Newman, a recovering college professor turned communication coach, and I'm thrilled to guide you on a journey to becoming a powerful communicator. Today's guest is Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins. Miki is a leadership facilitator and speaker who helps organizations turn human skills like communication, empathy, and resilience into practical everyday impact.

Tim Newman [00:01:05]:
With a background spanning higher education, edtech, and corporate learning, she brings both research and real-world experience to the conversation. Miki's messages are clear: public speaking is about storytelling, And storytelling is about relationships. Mickey, welcome to Speaking with Confidence.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:01:25]:
Thank you so much for having me, Tim. I'm so excited to be here today.

Tim Newman [00:01:29]:
Oh, this is going to be fun. One of the things I tell people is stop trying to be interesting and start being interested. The issue is you are very interesting. You have one of the most interesting stories. And let's, let's start with bass fishing. I think you were 12 years old when you got into professional bass fishing.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:01:50]:
14, yeah.

Tim Newman [00:01:51]:
14, 15.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:01:51]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Still very young.

Tim Newman [00:01:53]:
Walk us through that. Walk us through that. How did that happen?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:01:57]:
Yeah, so it's, it is a very interesting story, um, because, uh, none of it was intentional. Um, I grew up in the, uh, suburbs of Chicago, um, not an area that you would think, oh yeah, bass fishing for sure, right? Because most of the time people think bass fishing, they think like Texas or Alabama, Florida, you know, South Carolina, whatever it is, right? Nice warm areas. year-long growing seasons for fish. Nope. I grew up in the Chicago area, and I have always loved fishing. In fact, my parents— I grew up, I had a small little farm pond, like a water retention pond sort of thing that was behind our house. And my parents jokingly said, as soon as you were old enough that we could figure that you weren't going to fall in and drown, we allowed you to go back to that pond. And you were back there all the time, right? And we had— I mean, it was just I don't know, probably a half-acre pond.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:02:47]:
But, um, you know, neighbors, uh, put, uh, you know, a little catfish in there and, you know, bluegills and whatnot. And so I was fishing from, you know, the time of being kind of a, a toddler and really got into fishing stuff and, and started to, uh, you know, I would go to all those expo shows, you know, during the winter months. Fishermen, you know, open water fishermen need something to do during the winter months, and that's when we have all those expo shows.

Tim Newman [00:03:12]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:03:12]:
Go buy your new boats and all this sort of stuff. And, you know, I got connected with some folks there that kind of started recognizing, hey, this kid, you know, she really likes fishing and she's— yeah, let's have her do these little seminars for getting other kids involved in fishing, right? Because that's always, you know, we always need to get more kids involved. We always need to get more girls involved. And so that was the start of it, was I was doing stuff with like local parks and rec departments and—

Tim Newman [00:03:36]:
Wow.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:03:36]:
And I got the attention of some regional newspapers. One of which being the Chicago News Tribune, which is not obviously regional. That has a pretty big footprint.

Tim Newman [00:03:47]:
Kind of big.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:03:47]:
And some articles, yeah, some articles were written about me as this kind of teenage fishing phenom. And I got approached by several companies that said, hey, you know, do you wanna do this a little bit more seriously? And, you know, I was a teenager, so of course everything had to go through my parents 'cause I was under 18. I said, yeah, I do wanna do this. And at the height of what I was doing, Tim, I was on the pro staff of over 30, almost 40 companies. Um, national brands. I was getting, you know, new boats, new motor every single year. I was doing TV shows. This was before the, the world of podcasting came around.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:04:22]:
I was doing live radio shows, you know, 5, 6 in the morning sort of things, um, syndicated magazine articles. And I was speaking a ton. I was going out and giving seminars all the time at those expo shows. I would go and do pre-fishing at some of like the large, uh, fishing kind of, you know, competition, um, trails. I would do pre-fishing with some of the bigger name pros and then do some like speaking sort of stuff. It was a very, very different sort of gig than the rest of my peers at, you know, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old were doing because I was traveling a lot as a teenager in high school, you know. But it was absolutely formative. Of course, I didn't know it then, but it was absolutely formative.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:05:02]:
That was 30 years ago to the things that I'm doing right now in my career.

Tim Newman [00:05:06]:
So how did that actually shape you into being a speaker? I mean, I look at kids today, or even kids when I was growing up, being 14, 15, 16 years old, just being barely enough to hold a conversation with an adult. And you're out there speaking. And how did that shape you into the speaker that you are today?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:05:30]:
Yeah, I think part of it was I watched— a lot of kids watch Saturday morning cartoons. And what I was watching on Saturday morning were the fishing shows that were on the different channels. and stuff. And I was watching these folks doing these recorded short segments and kind of how do you teach people how to fish and techniques and all this sort of stuff. And honestly, as I was sitting back there, I mean, this is even as kind of a young adolescent back there, you know, in that pond, I was just kind of talking through like how you would catch fish. And this is where I'm— I was kind of talking to myself, which is kind of silly and everything, but it got to the place where I started building a way for communicating how do you understand fish, how do you read a body of water and all this sort of stuff. And when I was presented with this opportunity, it started out first with these small kind of, you know, kids fishing clinics and stuff, you know. So I would have 10 kids that basically we were on a pier and, you know, I was putting worms on their hooks and kind of pulling the bluegills off the hooks that they caught and everything.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:06:31]:
Nothing technical at all. But one of my very first speaking experiences, and this is what I mean, I can recall this memory like it was yesterday, one of my very first speaking gigs was at one of these expo shows, and it was at a high school, and it was in their auditorium, and it was kind of one of those like half-moon style stadium seating sort of things that I didn't realize the venue that I was going to be in. But I walked into this room and there were several hundred people in this auditorium that were coming in to, you know, my, my session there. And that was my moment. I just had to just go, okay, this is not what I thought it was going to be. But here I am as this 15-year-old kid. I have my slide carousel, right? Because this is, again, this is pre-PowerPoint and all this stuff.

Tim Newman [00:07:17]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:07:17]:
I have my slide carousel and my little clicker and everything, and a lavalier microphone on. And I just started talking about the stuff that I'm passionate about. And I started storytelling about fishing and, you know, these different techniques as I was going through my carousel. And before I knew it, right, somebody's kind of off to the side, kind of like, okay, time to be done, right? You know, realized that an hour, an hour and a half or whatever it was had gone by. And it was at that time in my life, probably the most exhilarating experience that I had had yet in life.

Tim Newman [00:07:48]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:07:49]:
And I am one of those, I fully own it. I am one of those, like the 1% of humans that loves public speaking. I'm one of those people. But that was my first experience, was looking out into this audience of mostly men, easily 3, 4, 5 times my age, right? Who are out there looking at this teenage kid, you know, this young girl, what is she gonna do to teach me how to fish, but they loved it. It was great, right? And, and it was, you know, absolutely formative to my public speaking career.

Tim Newman [00:08:20]:
Was there ever a time, you know, either when you were young or as you got older and started to kind of move into your professional life, that you realize that if, if you didn't learn to speak up with— speak up confidently, that you're going to disappear in rooms?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:08:37]:
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And, and the fishing world, even to this day, even in 2026, is still a very male Very Southern male dominated. There's, there's definitely a profile, as there is with any kind of, you know, professional sport, so to speak. And I realized that if I was going to— I was standing out because of demographically who I was, a teenage girl. Right?

Tim Newman [00:09:02]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:09:03]:
But I needed to have words and strength and influence and substance behind that. And so I cultivated that. I practiced and practiced and practiced. Right. Standing in front of a mirror, talking to myself in my bedroom, going through those carousels, like all that sort of stuff, because I knew if I want to be taken seriously, I need to know my practice. Like, I need to know what I'm talking about and not just be the— this cute kid that like, oh yeah, that was great, but she had no idea what she was talking about. I needed to know what I was talking about.

Tim Newman [00:09:33]:
Yeah, that cute kid only comes around, you know, we'll go see her once. It's great. Exactly. But, you know, if you— like you said, if you're going to build a following, if you're going to build Um, you know, the presence you have to have, you have to have that substance. You have to— there's got to be something more than just the gimmick of the cute kid.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:09:53]:
Yeah. I mean, nobody was, was using the terms personal brand, you know, in the mid to late '90s, but that's what it was, right? Is I was developing the earliest rendition of what my personal brand is. And, you know, I mean, I had a nickname moniker that I used and You know, all this sort of stuff. And it worked because it became this persona that I developed and I cultivated. And, but yeah, absolutely, there was a style piece to it, but there was a definite substance piece to it.

Tim Newman [00:10:25]:
What was the nickname?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:10:27]:
Fishstix with an X. F-I-S-H-S-T-I-X. Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:10:32]:
That's awesome.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:10:34]:
Yeah, painted on the side of my boats. And I mean, I still have my last boat. So, I finished the professional fishing stuff in, 2000, 2001, because it was not very congruent with me being a college student. I needed to be much more present for that. And so, I got to keep my very last boat, which I still have to this day. You know, 26-year-old boat has Fish Sticks painted on the side. And, I will tell you, I live in far northern Wisconsin and that stands out on the lakes when I'm out here.

Tim Newman [00:11:05]:
Sure.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:11:06]:
What's Fish Sticks? What is that about? And, I'm like, oh, let me tell you a story.

Tim Newman [00:11:09]:
That's awesome. You know, when I was teaching, actually when I was teaching at York College, I had a student, a non-traditional student that was a professional bass fisherman. And it's kind of in a different world than I operated in, but I understood a lot of it, but it's fascinating to me. And then when I went to Georgia State University, they actually had a bass fishing club.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:11:36]:
Right.

Tim Newman [00:11:37]:
They had a couple of boats. It just, it's just fascinating to me that that's, you know, that, that segment of the industry is so big that nobody really, nobody really knows about it at all. Yeah, there's, it's all over the place.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:11:54]:
Yeah. Yeah, it's huge. I mean, I wish, you know, I kind of came before all of that, like right before all of that. And I wish That in fact, I mean, the college that I went to has a bass fishing, you know, team now, and they do those tournaments and all this sort of stuff. But that stuff didn't exist at all. I mean, even—

Tim Newman [00:12:13]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:12:14]:
When I was doing that, they just had, it was maybe 10 years into a ladies bass anglers, you know, kind of group, which was very much kind of blonde bombshell sort of nonsense and whatnot. But, You know, these days, yeah. And I mean, you can turn on ESPN and you'll see tournaments. And I mean, anybody who lives around a lake of any size, like you have bass fishing tournaments that are happening on your lakes and they're big dollar things.

Tim Newman [00:12:43]:
Yes.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:12:43]:
I mean, not just the purse that people win, but the sponsorships and the companies that are associated. And you know, it hasn't fully, I mean, the industry hasn't fully moved away from this. I wish it would because of the volume of kids that are involved, but it used to be very much, I mean, the main sponsors used to be alcohol companies and chew companies, right? And they're still, they're still a big part of things, unfortunately. I wish, I wish that the industry would move away from that altogether. But it's considered a performance sport now, an elite performance sport, um, just as you would consider, you know, you know, basketball or football or something like that.

Tim Newman [00:13:21]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:13:21]:
And so it's, it's interesting to kind of watch how it's transformed over the last 30 Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:13:28]:
It's, again, fascinating to me. And we'll get into the story a little bit later, but having something that you can lean back on to open the door to be able to relate to people with and tell that story is so important. And we talked in the read-in that maybe confidence isn't the Right word. And you talk about self-efficacy being different than confidence. And a lot of people, we use that word interchangeably. What's the difference?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:14:04]:
Yeah, so self-efficacy, yeah, and this is a big jam of mine, so much so that when I went forward and pursued my PhD, I actually, my dissertation research was on self-efficacy, but it was about managers and all this sort of stuff in the work environment. But Self-efficacy, in the easiest way to understand it, is our individual belief in our ability to get the job or the task done, right? So like, can I be— and this is where people oftentimes you hear the word efficacious, like, can I be efficacious at fill in the blank? Do I actually believe that I can get this physical task done, this work task done, this project I need to do, you know, this, this home, you know, improvement, repair, whatever that might be? Right? That's about self-efficacy. It's my internal belief. Confidence has both internal and external markers, but it's mostly an external marker. It's how we look at somebody and how we measure their capacity and their capability. And we call that confidence. Right?

Tim Newman [00:15:05]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:15:06]:
And, you know, I mean, even the name of your podcast, Speaking with Confidence, right? When we can look at somebody and we can say, oh, that person's really confident. Well, what is it that we're actually talking about? We're talking about things like poise. We're talking about things like their ability to use vocal variation and their, and their body and eye contact. It's how knowledgeable and capable and, and trustworthy are they. It's all this other stuff that kind of forms a bit of a solar system around the internal belief, which is, can I actually do the thing? Right?

Tim Newman [00:15:39]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:15:39]:
So when I think about Whether it's speaking, whether it's bass fishing, right? It's my belief, you know, can I go— we'll say, we'll take fishing as an example. Can I— I have a very high level of self-efficacy about fishing. I think I could catch a fish out of a puddle, right? I mean, like, I feel very, very good about that. I feel like I can approach most every single body of water and I can catch a fish because I have all of these skills and knowledge and science and, you know, blah, blah, blah. Am I confident? Am I more confident in certain situations than others? Absolutely, right? And some of that comes from external stuff. Some of that comes from internal, right, of like the type of lure that I might use or something like that, or the type of— if it's nice and warm versus a cold, windy day or whatever. But they're 2 different markers. And oftentimes, especially in the business context, we use confidence as a substitute basically for capability, right? If I think, oh wow, Tim, you're so confident and you're so put together, I naturally think you have a high level of capability to do your job.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:16:45]:
Now, we hope that those 2 things operate hand in hand. Sometimes they don't, though. Depends on the day. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Tim Newman [00:16:53]:
Was there ever a season in your life where your external success looked really strong, but internally your self-efficacy was actually collapsing, where you felt Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:17:06]:
Yeah. I mean, I think if, if, if we're all being honest, right, I mean, like self-efficacy and confidence are not these 100% things, right?

Tim Newman [00:17:13]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:17:14]:
And yeah, I mean, these— I think about every time I've started a new job, you know, you think about interpersonal things like new relationships, new friendships, moving, you know, getting new established in a new geographic area. I think right now, a lot of people in the work world, right, are struggling with AI and our AI efficacy, right? My self— do I actually think that I can use this, right? And what does this mean, right? So, I mean, for me, absolutely. I mean, I've made many a job shift. I've made career shifts. I tell people all the time, I'm in my second career now. It's really my third if you count the bass fishing stuff, but I was I was a kid, so I don't count that. And you can have these moments. The thing about confidence is confidence is something that, again, has these external markers.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:18:08]:
It's, again, how I use my voice, how I use my body, even right now, right? How eloquent am I or aren't I? I could come in here and say, oh yeah, Tim, I've been pretty good at some things and things have worked out well. Well, that doesn't sound very confident. But the moment I start changing my voice and I start telling stories and all this, oh my gosh, Mickey, she sounds so confident, so put together. Well, the same self-efficacy beliefs could be playing in the background, right? I could still think, well, I don't know if I'm really going to be successful in this conversation on this podcast with Tim, but I can actually show up in 2 different sort of ways.

Tim Newman [00:18:45]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:18:45]:
Right. So, so do you kind of see the difference between that?

Tim Newman [00:18:48]:
Oh, absolutely.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:18:49]:
It's some internal and some external. Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:18:51]:
Yeah. And that's so important to understand because as well, if we have the negative talk or if we don't feel good about ourselves, or if we— let's put it this way. If we haven't done the work, right? If we haven't done the preparation, like you talked about when you were a kid and talking in front of these groups, if you didn't know what you were talking about, it's going to come across. And that's part of that internal that internal feeling, that internal peace that gives us the ability to go out and do those external things: the changing of the voice, the smiling, the body language, the hand gestures, those other things that make, that people think that we are so confident for.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:19:43]:
Yeah. Confidence, you know, Confidence will definitely get you places, and it makes, in our work worlds and our relationships, it makes a huge difference, of course, right? But behind confidence, people are looking at your character, they're looking at your values, they're looking at how do you follow through with what you said or what you committed to. There's all these markers, and that's the stuff That's what sustains you over time, right? Confidence is, it's an important thing to get you in the door with people and to make the initial, to set the initial pace for what the relationship or what the engagement looks like, or the meeting, or whatever that might be. But after that initial, like, okay, yeah, I like how this is going, right? People are going to start looking, again, you use the word substance, They're going to start looking and saying, OK, does, does this person actually know what they're talking about? Give me some details. Tell me why this is important or whatever that might be.

Tim Newman [00:20:47]:
Exactly. I look at it, confidence gets you in the room, doesn't keep you in the room.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:20:51]:
Exactly, exactly.

Tim Newman [00:20:53]:
And that's, that's, that's so important for people to understand. To be good at what you do, there, you've It's work, you know, even as— I'm sure even as a teenager, because we haven't even talked about your career in academia, which is, which is really good. Not that your bass fishing wasn't really good, but even as a bass fisherman and as a kid, it was work. I mean, oh yeah. It's not— you didn't just wake up, you know, 3 days a week and No, there was, there was things that you had to do to get better. There was. So there's, that's what people have to understand. Things don't just happen.

Tim Newman [00:21:38]:
It takes work. It takes practice. It takes, takes, I use the word grit a lot to be able to, to be able to get to that level.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:21:47]:
Well, and I think of it, I think of competence and confidence as the left hand and the right hand, right? Is that I can be confident, but again, people are going to see through that to some extent and say, how competent are you?

Tim Newman [00:22:03]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:22:03]:
The more competence that you build naturally, the more confident you're going to be perceived and also feel, the more self-efficacy you're going to have. Right. And those 2 things are mutually reinforcing things. Right. The more confident I am, the more competent I am desiring to be, the more competent I become, the more confident I become. Right. And, you know, that, that's— it's the dynamic duo, whether it's public speaking or just our work relationships. That's the stuff that helps.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:22:31]:
I mean, I think about influence altogether. Everything that I did in fishing was about influence. I was teaching, right? But I was also selling because I was on the pro staffs of all these companies. Right. And so I was in the position of convincing people that if you use this product, that you will increase your catches of fish, right? If you do this thing a certain way, that's going to be a difference maker. And the same thing. I mean, I've been doing that for 30 years. I've never been in a sales role in my life, except for the fact that every role is a sales role.

Tim Newman [00:23:06]:
Sure.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:23:06]:
It doesn't matter what organization and what work you're in, right? Is that everything is an opportunity for us to influence. And we can't influence if we're not knowledgeable. And knowledgeable is being competent. And we have to also present that with confidence.

Tim Newman [00:23:20]:
Right. And again, I love what you said because it reminds me, because I tell people all the time, I'm not a salesman. Because as soon as you start talking about sales, for me, I get tense and I get tight. Right? Because it has that, at least with me, it has a negative connotation. But if we don't look at it like that and we just are confident in our competence, We're not selling it. We, it doesn't feel salesy. We're not selling any people. We're providing information.

Tim Newman [00:23:50]:
We're providing, we're giving people the information that they need to make a purchase decision.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:23:57]:
Right, right. You're serving as a partner to somebody rather than trying to sell. Yeah, because, you know, nobody wants to, we want to feel like we're coming to sales voluntarily as humans, especially these days, right? I mean, we all have our personal, you know, emails and our work emails and all this stuff. And everybody's trying to hawk something at us all the time, Right? I want to feel like I get to make that decision, but inevitably, that decision is made because somebody influenced me.

Tim Newman [00:24:24]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:24:25]:
And the influence might be a 2-dimensional email that's in my inbox, but I want to feel like I made that decision myself, right? I want to feel like I had the competence to be able to do that. I had the confidence in my ability. Oh, this product or this service is really going to serve me, right? And not have somebody feel like, oh, this person sold this to you. Right? I mean, this is what's so hard, I think, when we get in situations where somebody says, oh, well, like, who's the salesperson that helped you? And it's like, well, nobody helped me. I did this all by myself. And it's like, well, but you didn't, actually. You know, I mean, you can't even buy a pair of jeans without being influenced by somebody else right now, you know?

Tim Newman [00:24:59]:
Yeah, I used to kind of use that, that example, you know, with my background in sport marketing and public relations, I would tell people that, you know, We buy what we buy because we're told what to buy and we like it because we're told what to like. Right?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:25:13]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:25:14]:
And I would always get the pushback and I would give them examples like Nike shoes or even a shirt, a plain shirt that has the Nike logo on it. Would you have bought that shirt without the Nike logo? No. Why not? Well, because I want a Nike shirt. Well, okay.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:25:35]:
What does that mean?

Tim Newman [00:25:37]:
What does that mean?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:25:37]:
Right.

Tim Newman [00:25:38]:
And that's where it would go. And once you start to open people's minds up like that and they start looking at things differently, teaching them how to be, number one, how to be a better consumer and also how to be a better marketer, to think about how people think, how do people make those purchase decisions? I know that's getting down deep into the weeds, but that's just like anything else, right? If you can understand how to get people to— again, I'm not talking about manipulation, but how to get people to listen to what you're saying, to influence them. That's all we're really trying to do.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:26:17]:
Yeah, I think influence and decision-making, I mean, these are things that's— I mean, it's the afternoon right now that we are recording this, right? We have both influenced and made many a decision already today, right? I mean, like, we have influenced others, we've been influenced, we've made decisions, and we've had decisions made for us, right? And this is part of, again, it doesn't matter what industry, what work you do, right? But your ability to do that and your ability to, whether it's in the written word or the spoken word, is, I mean, I tell people all the time, is, you know, the storytelling. Like, people make meaning in stories. They make decisions based on data, right?

Tim Newman [00:26:57]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:26:57]:
And so, if we have data and story, You're good to go, right? And that's where public speaking comes in, right? Is because, you know, we start telling stories and people say, oh, I can relate to that. Oh my gosh. You know, I mean, even the folks that are listening to this, how relatable is this to somebody out there? This is incredibly relatable to some people and they're continuing to listen. There's other folks that are like, yeah, not for me. Done. Right? And that's influence. That's decision-making. And that's what all of us do regardless of the work that we do.

Tim Newman [00:27:24]:
Well, for those of you that are done listening to this, I would suggest you not be done because we got a lot more good stuff to talk about.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:27:30]:
That's right. That's right.

Tim Newman [00:27:31]:
Hang with us.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:27:31]:
We've only cracked the ice here.

Tim Newman [00:27:33]:
Exactly. So what are the 4 building blocks of self-efficacy? And can you walk us through those in a practical way that people listening can actually start to use them today?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:27:43]:
Yep, absolutely. So the very first one is my own experience, right? So I think a great example to use is riding a bike, right? Most of us, learned how to ride a bike when we were a little kid. And the way that we did that, right, was you got on the bike and rode. And some of us were really excited to do that. Others of us had to have our parents force us on there, but you got on the bike and you started riding. So the very first, like, formative experience is thinking about what does this actually look like in terms of my own, you know, kind of experiences and moments, okay? The other one, as a younger of an older sibling, is vicarious experiences, right?

Tim Newman [00:28:25]:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:28:25]:
So I'm thinking about, Vicarious experiences is really looking at other people and what are the things that they did that you're like, yes, I should do that. No, I shouldn't do that, whatever that is. So watching siblings, watching coworkers, again, we do this stuff all the time.

Tim Newman [00:28:43]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:28:44]:
What successes are other people having? What problems are other people having? Humans, we like to normalize, right? So we look around us to other people to say, who's actually doing this? The, the third one, technically, so Albert Bandura was the research on this, but he called it social persuasion. But really, we, in the day-to-day, what we call that is feedback. OK? And feedback really is what feedback in the work setting, what am I getting from my supervisor? What am I getting from my coworkers, customers, clients, right? So what type of, how are people reacting to you, right? So nonverbal feedback, what verbal feedback are people giving you? Written feedback, is your message actually landing with people or whatever you're doing, right? And then the 4th and final one, Bandura referred to it as physiological feedback, but I think of it as both physiological and psychological. How do you feel in your body and your mind when you have an experience? And so, you know, a great example of that is we could have— so Tim, you and I could go on a roller coaster and one of us could say, this was the best, this was thrilling. I love this. And the other one would say, I am never going to do that again. That was the scariest thing I had in my life, right? We both had the same experience, but we both had a different physiological experience and a different psychological experience, right? Our body felt scared. We had like a psychological reaction to that, both good, bad, whatever it is.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:30:06]:
Those physiological and psychological feedback mechanisms allow us to, you know, it further reinforces what did I learn? What am I doing? What is my behavior? All this sort of stuff.

Tim Newman [00:30:16]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:30:17]:
All of that stuff, when you think about that cycle, and it's not necessarily like 1, 2, 3, 4, it's just those 4 different things. But that, that those loops and those feedback loops are what allows us to formulate this idea of, can I get the job done? Can I do the task right? So if I think about, again, coming back to the bicycle example, or actually, here's an even better example, climbing a ladder. Okay.

Tim Newman [00:30:41]:
Okay.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:30:42]:
So climbing a ladder. I could just crawl up it and then I realize, oh, I don't know how to get off of it, or I don't know how to come back down. So then somebody else has to help me. Maybe what I do before I actually do it myself is I look to a friend or a family member and they go up the ladder and they show me, this is how you step off, this is how you step back onto it, here's how you come back down, whatever. Okay, vicarious learning, right? And then maybe I actually say, okay, I'm going to go up it and I use my technique and they say, yep, that sounds good. Okay, now move your feet a little bit to the right. Yep, sounds good. Balance it in of your foot, you know, however, right? We're getting some feedback, we're getting some instruction.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:31:20]:
And then maybe I'm up at the top of that ladder and I say, I don't feel like I can move. My body's frozen right now. I'm having a physiological reaction, sharing for a friend, right? I'm having a physiological reaction.

Tim Newman [00:31:30]:
Exactly.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:31:31]:
Because, oh my gosh, I just realized I don't like heights and I'm 15 feet up in the air or whatever this is, right? And so we have that physiological thing. And then what happens, right, is naturally we get down from the ladder, And we say, I can do that, I can't do that, or I can kind of do it, but I need to continue to practice it because it doesn't feel good yet, or it doesn't feel right. So that's kind of those 4 different pieces.

Tim Newman [00:31:51]:
Yeah. As you're going through them, I'm thinking about it. And as we do that without actually thinking about what we're doing, those 4 different things.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:32:05]:
Happens all the time.

Tim Newman [00:32:07]:
Maybe if we were to slow down a little bit and actually think it through, You know, we're talking about riding a bike and going up a ladder, but when you're dealing with more complex or serious things, whether it's our career, whether it's our relationships, whether it's getting up on stage, whatever that is, if we slow down and think about those building blocks and those steps, We can, just like anything else, we can learn from them, get better at learning from them to make us better and more confident.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:32:45]:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, each one of those moments, you're absolutely right to call out the idea of slowing down. And I would say slowing down and pairing that with some type of reflection, right? A pause to say, what did I think about that? Or a pause to say, hey, coworker, like, can you give me some feedback on that presentation I gave at work today? Or a pause to say, hey, supervisor, like, I'd love to, you know, I don't think most people are like, I'd love to have a performance review, right? But I mean, asking people for feedback or checking in. And I mean, this is the thing I tell people all the time is that, you know, I jokingly said before, I think I'm one of the 1% of people that loves public speaking. One of the things, and I mean, my job now is essentially as a professional public speaker, but I get asked all the time from people is like, oh, Or they say something like, oh, you must never get nervous. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Of course I do. Right?

Tim Newman [00:33:38]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:33:38]:
The difference is, is what does that— what does that sensation mean? Because again, coming back to the going on a roller coaster thing, or if you put it in the context of public speaking, just because your palms are getting sweaty or you're sweating through your shirt, your heart is racing a little bit, you could interpret that as I shouldn't do this. I'm not capable. I don't have the competence. Therefore, I don't have the self-efficacy. Or you can say, you know what, what's happening is that my brain is sending the signal to send cortisol, which is the activation hormone through my body. And my body is very activated and experiencing a little bit of distress and also a little bit of eustress, the good stress. And what I'm experiencing right now as I'm sweating and breathing a little bit harder is my body's natural reaction to cortisol going through my body.

Tim Newman [00:34:27]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:34:28]:
Oh, okay. Right. So I'm pausing and I'm leaning into that and saying, What's actually happening? I'm excited and a little nervous.

Tim Newman [00:34:37]:
Right? Right. And, you know, you talk about being a professional speaker. That's what you do. You know, the first time I had to get up in front of people and talk, I threw up. And I was speaking with somebody the other day. They asked me if I get nervous. I said, yes, I do. But I don't get nervous for the same reasons.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:34:55]:
Yeah, right.

Tim Newman [00:34:57]:
I want to make sure that I'm providing value. I want to make sure that that's why I get nervous. I want to make sure that the message that I'm giving is the one that they need to hear. But even though I've done the work and I've done the preparation, and then, like you said, the eustress. I don't know if you remember Gary Williams, basketball coach at Maryland. When, when he was coaching, he would sweat through his suits.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:35:20]:
Yep. Yep.

Tim Newman [00:35:22]:
That's me when I'm speaking. I'm— because I'm so excited. I enjoy it. And, and I'm the guy that's moving around and I'm interacting. I'm talking to people. And by the time I'm done, I'm, I'm literally soaking wet. I've got it. I've got to have a towel wipe.

Tim Newman [00:35:37]:
Yeah, that's just who I am. Right. And that's just, that's, that's part of it. It's not, it's not the negative piece. It's going the exact opposite way. I enjoy it. I love it. And that's what kind of comes through.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:35:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. And it is, you know, I, for whatever reason, we stigmatize public speaking as this, most people don't like it and it's bad and it's hard and it's difficult to build your skills and all this sort of stuff. But there are so many parallels. Again, whether it's something as simple as riding a bike or the roller coaster or going up and down a ladder is like we have these same sort of experiences all the time. The challenge, I wouldn't say the problem, the challenge for us is how do you encode that in your brain? Because if you encode, again, the roller coaster as, that was thrilling and I was scared, but the scared was totally overwhelmed by the thrill and the rush of the air in my face. Okay, well, you encoded that as something that was good.

Tim Newman [00:36:44]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:36:44]:
Why are we encoding— I mean, yeah, I don't say, yeah, you threw up and that was a good thing, right? I mean, obviously that was not great.

Tim Newman [00:36:52]:
No, that's good.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:36:53]:
I mean, it's part of your story now, right? I mean, I have tripped and fallen on stage before. I've twisted ankles. I broke a toe. I mean, I've done all sorts of stuff like that. And I mean, it all becomes part of your story, but it's how we encode this stuff. It's how we look at it. And I think that public speaking has a bad rap. People think, oh, that's just not for me.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:37:18]:
I mean, when I tell people all the time is, you know, when people ask, oh, you know, what do you do? Right. They're asking you, what do you do for work? And I tell people that, oh gosh, I could never do that. I could never do that. And I'm like, but everybody does what I do. It's just I do it for work. You just do it as part of your work.

Tim Newman [00:37:35]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:37:35]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:37:36]:
Right. Yeah. I had, I had a lady that I know, very accomplished. I mean, very, very accomplished and does a lot of charity work, you know, has, has a, has a position and a title, um, in, in a Chamber of Commerce in a, in a relatively big place. And I asked her about public speaking and she said, no, I'm not doing that. I said, but you realize you do it all the time. You know, you do it all the time when you're standing up in front of the charity. You do it all the time.

Tim Newman [00:38:08]:
You stand up in front of the the board that you're on? She says, well, Tim, I just, I don't feel comfortable doing it. And that was really kind of how that conversation started. And she's become much more relaxed. And you can see it in her face and you can see it in her body language as she's standing up in front of people talking. Even, she said she even gets uncomfortable standing up in front of her team at work.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:38:35]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:38:36]:
I mean, she works at a bank and they have their team meetings and they have this, that, and the other thing. And she says she hates doing the team meetings. And I said, but you've got everything that you need. You've got the knowledge, you've got the skills, you've been doing this for forever. You're in this position because of all those other things. If you could learn how to just let some of that stuff go, a lot of, you know, the tension is gonna go away. Believe in yourself. Believe— go back to what we just talked about at the beginning.

Tim Newman [00:39:12]:
Believe in your competence. And it will show in your confidence.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:39:18]:
And I think a lot of it is, how many tools do we have in our tool belt in terms of self-regulation? And the same types of skills that we use to calm ourselves down from when we're angry and we're in a fight or a disagreement with somebody, or we get cut off in traffic, the same sort of things that we use to calm ourselves down from those moments are the same exact practices that we can use to calm ourselves in those moments of nervousness and excitement, right?

Tim Newman [00:39:54]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:39:54]:
Is thinking about, and again, I mean, there's boatloads of research that support this, but 2 to 3 deep belly breaths, the in through the nose, out through the mouth, significantly changes the chemistry in our body. All of those hormones that we're sending and those chemical messengers, we change that stuff really quickly. And the reason for that, again, when we hyperventilate or we hold our breath, I talk about this in some of the workshops I facilitate at Learn It, is most people when they're nervous with speaking, they do one of two things. They either hyperventilate or they hold their breath.

Tim Newman [00:40:28]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:40:29]:
Both of those have biological reasons, right? Because it's like, oh my gosh, saber-toothed tiger, woolly mammoth coming for me, right? And those are protectionist behaviors that we do. We're either getting our body ready to hunker down and hide, or we're hyperventilating our bodies so that we can quickly run away, huge spurts of energy.

Tim Newman [00:40:50]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:40:50]:
The problem is that our mind hasn't adapted away from saber-toothed tigers, And we're starting to look at the microphone or the team of people in front of us or the banquet hall of people or whatever. We're starting to look at those people in the audience and thinking, that's just a dozen saber-toothed tigers that are going to come after me. If we take 2 to 3 deep belly breaths, we can change the chemistry. We change the chemistry, which means we can start controlling— we use biofeedback. We can start controlling our hearts. Anybody that's wearing a smartwatch, right? You can look down at your smartwatch. And you can engage in a process of biofeedback of challenging yourself to lower the number. And guess what? Your brain can do it.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:41:29]:
It's just we have to be willing. I mean, it comes down to that slowing down and pausing. We have to be willing to do that stuff. And also after the fact to say, okay, was that actually a room full of saber-toothed tigers? Oh no, actually it wasn't that bad.

Tim Newman [00:41:43]:
It was just me.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:41:43]:
Okay, what did I learn from this? Like, what did I learn from this? What can I incorporate It actually helped really well that I had a really cold glass of water with me, or it was helpful to me. I always have a little something in my hands. I have one of my daughter's barrettes in my hands right now. It helped that I had a little thing in my hands to fidget with, whatever that is. Okay, cool, right? That's your own experience. That's vicarious experience of watching other people, that feedback from other folks and understanding what's happening physiologically in yourself.

Tim Newman [00:42:13]:
Yeah, I love that you just mentioned that. That you hold something small in your hand. I do the exact same thing.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:42:21]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:42:21]:
That's, you know, my ADHD is really bad. So for me, it's a lot of times it used to be my ADHD medicine, like in a little pill pack. Sometimes it's a pen, but it's something small that I can have it in my hand and nobody would know about it. Or I could put it in my pocket, or maybe even just a pen that that I use as a clicker. Or if I've got slides, I don't always present with slides, having the slide clicker.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:42:48]:
Having the clicker.

Tim Newman [00:42:49]:
That's right. I just have to make sure I'm not clicking the slides so they just— Don't hit the buttons.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:42:54]:
Just hold the clicker. Yeah, exactly.

Tim Newman [00:42:57]:
Absolutely.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:42:58]:
And make sure there's no dogs and cats in the room when you're hitting that laser thing, right?

Tim Newman [00:43:01]:
Exactly. Exactly. Actually, I just bought one with a clicker that has a laser on it. And As I was, I played with the laser for like 15 minutes. That's just me. But when we, when we started, we started talking about, you know, in the reading, I talked about your, the way you look at storytelling. Public speaking is about storytelling. Storytelling is about relationships.

Tim Newman [00:43:31]:
And, you know, I look at public speaking maybe a little bit different than a lot of people. I look at it from, it could be anything from a one-on-one conversation like this.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:43:40]:
Mm-hmm.

Tim Newman [00:43:42]:
It could be a small group, it could be a team meeting, it could be whatever. But it's the stories that really kind of, like you said, build out relationships. And most people say that I'm not interesting enough to have a story worth telling. What do you say to people like that?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:44:03]:
Everybody has stories.

Tim Newman [00:44:04]:
Everybody.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:44:05]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is another one of those, you know, my supervisor says this all the time, is to be a cultivator of good stories. We all have stories in our own life experiences that might seem boring or plain Jane or whatever, and because they're our own, It's what we did. It's what we lived through. But then you start realizing it that when you have that opportunity to tell that story, I mean, I think about some of the things that I experienced when I was in college, or I think about working in the higher ed. These stories that I can tell to people, not only are they interesting and remarkable stories, but they're stories that are around change, and they're stories that are around difficulty, and they're stories that ground you as a human, right? And I mean, you said before this concept, I actually just referenced that conversation that we had a few weeks past about be interested and not be interesting. I just referenced that the other day when I was talking to my father-in-law. So I love that it came up again.

Tim Newman [00:45:07]:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:45:08]:
But the idea of being a cultivator of stories in terms of being a collector, but also recognizing each one of us has experiences that are unique And they are interesting to other people because as human beings, we naturally are attracted to difference. We are naturally attracted to change. We're naturally attracted to, oh, your world is really different than mine, right? This is why we're obsessed with celebrities and influencers, because we're all like, wow, what a different world. Well, you know what? They sleep in a bed too. They put their pants on one leg at a time as well, right?

Tim Newman [00:45:43]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:45:44]:
They're humans, but they have different stories.

Tim Newman [00:45:46]:
Yes.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:45:47]:
Right?

Tim Newman [00:45:48]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:45:48]:
And, you know, I think every single person who's, who's listening to this right now, I mean, you just think back to even as I started first kind of, you know, coming on to podcasts, I'm like, okay, well, what is my story? And then I realized, wow, I have this really interesting through line over the last 30 years that keeps coming up over and over and over again. And then I've made these different decisions in life that all come back to that same through line. Well, that's interesting. I should tell that story, right?

Tim Newman [00:46:16]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:46:16]:
Or experiences that I've had. I mean, the bass fishing thing, obviously, that's kind of a one in a million, maybe a one in a billion sort of thing. But other experiences, when you tell stories, what happens is people either say, wow, that's so different from me, and I'm listening and I'm leaning in. Or people say, oh, I can relate so much to that, and I'm listening and I'm leaning in. And once people start listening and leaning in, That's where we start influencing. That's where we start telling lessons. That's where we start sharing wisdom. That's where we start layering data, right? If we're in a work environment, data helps people make decisions.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:46:53]:
Stories is what helps people feel a sense of meaning and purpose.

Tim Newman [00:46:58]:
You know, and I'm glad we're having this conversation because I've got a public speaking coach. And one of the things that we work on constantly is telling stories, telling short 2 to 3 minute stories. And he keeps, he keeps driving me to go deeper with the story, go deeper with it. Stop being so surface level. Get to, get to the point of it. Let's, let's, let's get the real feeling out of it. But you did a podcast recently with Sarah Losey.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:47:31]:
Mm-hmm.

Tim Newman [00:47:32]:
I, by the way, she's one of my, one of my favorite people.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:47:36]:
Yeah, she was, she was great. That was a lot of fun.

Tim Newman [00:47:38]:
Yeah. She was the one— I've been working with her for a little over 2 years. So like, for everybody that— I'm letting the cat out of the bag here. Her company is the one that edits all my podcasts. So after we're done with this, I'm gonna send it off to her. So, so we've been working together.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:47:58]:
She gets more of me.

Tim Newman [00:47:59]:
Exactly. But she was the one that really kind of opened me up to telling stories that maybe we, maybe we were keeping them inside for whatever reason. You know, I don't know if she— if you know the story about her airplane tattoo, but that—

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:48:21]:
Mm-hmm.

Tim Newman [00:48:22]:
When she— when we talked about that, and I'm not going to tell her story for her, but when we talked about that and what she did, And that kind of really opened my eyes to really getting a little bit deeper. And obviously, I still need to go deeper. But it's those stories that, like you said, that build the relationship. And the deeper the stories are, the more meaningful and impactful that they are, the better the relationships are going to be, the quicker that you actually build that connection.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:48:50]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:48:52]:
Do you have a story about yourself that you avoided Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:49:01]:
To that point, before I tell that story, I mean, I think what another one of those things as humans that really draw us to one another is moments of vulnerability, right?

Tim Newman [00:49:12]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:49:12]:
Of when we can listen to somebody or watch somebody who is actively struggling or they're telling a story of a struggle or a difficulty or a failure. Again, that's the stuff we like to normalize as human beings. We want to feel like we're not the only one, right?

Tim Newman [00:49:29]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:49:29]:
So when we hear somebody, when we peg somebody, this is what happens, right? When we peg somebody as confident, capable, put together, awesome, all this sort of stuff, what we think of is this sanitized version of success. But when those people start telling those stories, of the bumps and the bruises and the injuries and the problems and all this stuff, what we see is what has happened is your humanity is revealed, right?

Tim Newman [00:49:57]:
Yes.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:49:57]:
And people say, oh, I can relate to you. Yeah. And I mean, one of the stories that for a long time that I didn't tell, I think for obvious and non-obvious reasons, but was my experience of 9/11. And that is a defining moment, like a lot of people, a very defining moment. But for me, I became a student leader in college, and it was my second year of my junior year of college was when September 11th happened. And I went through this training process to be a student leader in the residence halls, kind of social gatherings. And I live in Wisconsin, so Green Bay Packers games and root beer floats and fill in the blank, whatever. I went through all this training, and then my second week of school was when September 11th happened.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:50:45]:
Obviously, or not so obviously, but I mean, I was a kid when Desert Storm happened, but that was very much this thing that happened on TV, tie your yellow ribbon around your tree. It wasn't something that felt very real to me as a kid. And when September 11th happened, within days, within weeks, I had, number one, like many of us, knowledge of people in my life that I had lost. And also, I was, and I tell people this all the time, is my generation of people, we were the last ones of people that went to college and did the Army ROTC thing as a way to pay for college. Because it was like, oh yeah, this is a great way to pay for college. You're not going to see any service or action or anything like that because things are relatively peaceful in the world. And then September 11th happened. And I had close to half of the people that lived on my residence hall floor called up, deployed, gone, period.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:51:38]:
And somehow in all of that, we had to figure out, as a bunch of 20-year-old kids, right?

Tim Newman [00:51:45]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:51:46]:
What does this mean? What happens? Then we get notification of this person KIA, this person KIA, all this sort of stuff. And it was like, wait a minute. All of a sudden, everything that I thought was a marker of success for being a good college student and being a good leader, I had, and still to some extent have, survivor guilt of these people who lost their lives. And Um, I, in the meantime, was just back going to college and doing my thing. But what I realized in, in that experience is that that set the stage, you know, that now is, you know, 25 years ago, almost 25 years ago, set the stage for how I form relationships with other people and what does valuable time together mean.

Tim Newman [00:52:37]:
Wow.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:52:38]:
Because before then, I thought, oh, my job is to help people have fun and have a good time, and we're going to do these crazy activities because we're fun college students. And then that happened, and what I realized was now I need to learn how to hold space with other people where none of us knows what to talk about and we don't know what to do. And certainly in those early days and weeks afterwards, we were all sitting there waiting for the next attack, right?

Tim Newman [00:53:02]:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:53:03]:
And you're kind of sitting like, when is it going to happen? Where is it going to happen? And right. And what I, what I realized in that moment that, that then spurred my career working in higher education for the next 20 years or, you know, almost 20 years was how to hold space with people and, and form these deep, intimate, personal connections with other people when you don't really know what's happening.

Tim Newman [00:53:28]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:53:28]:
And that has been a huge asset to me. But that was the story that I couldn't really formulate and tell for a long time because it had just happened. It was a huge— it is a huge trauma that happens to all of us.

Tim Newman [00:53:41]:
Well, first, thank you for sharing that because you brought up something that I didn't think about. And because I was actually teaching at the time and didn't actually think about it from the perspective of how we make those connections with— I mean, how to make those individual connections. Because I was always connecting with students and that type of thing.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:54:05]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:54:06]:
And I was— I never truly looked at it from my perspective about how I went— about how I did that and what I did or what I did differently or didn't do things differently. A number of years after, the college sends out surveys and those types of things. And one of my students wrote on the survey that they were very upset with me because we still had class. And this is the day that it happened, because when the day that it happened, we got the news and I just, it didn't register how bad it was.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:54:50]:
Right.

Tim Newman [00:54:52]:
Right when the first plane hit, I thought it was just some knucklehead who in a Piper Cub who hit the—

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:54:59]:
Right.

Tim Newman [00:55:00]:
And so we just kept having class until we found out what happened. And the trauma that that caused that individual was lasting because this was 10, 15 years later that they still remembered that, how insensitive I was. in that moment when the reality was I didn't know.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:55:23]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:55:25]:
And that's— that kind of sits with me now. And I know it sits with that individual. And now, like I said, we're 25 years down the road.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:55:35]:
The not knowing for me, that was the learning, right? Nobody— there was no playbook.

Tim Newman [00:55:45]:
No.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:55:46]:
And then where that not knowing, and I don't know what to do, and there is no playbook, and nobody knows what to do. You fast forward to COVID, and it turns out I had a quasi-playbook for this scenario, but it just was a completely different thing. Here's this other thing that nobody knows what to do, and nobody knows what's going to happen. And nobody knows how we're supposed to react and where we're supposed to react. And then all of a sudden, and I found myself in those very early days, I was having dreams about September 11th. I was also having dreams about the Challenger explosion. I was a young kid and watched that happen live on TV, as you did, right? Everybody tuned in.

Tim Newman [00:56:29]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:56:30]:
And I was 5 years old, wasn't in school yet, watched the Challenger explosion. I was having all of these Challenger explosion and September 11th dreams when COVID first started. I'm like, what on earth is going on?

Tim Newman [00:56:41]:
I need to A therapist?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:56:42]:
Oh my God, right? And then I realized, I'm like, these are unknown, unexplainable, or not unexplainable, but difficult to explain things that we as human beings, we think we got it all figured out, and we've been there and we've done that. And then all of a sudden when we realize, like, when we're gathered with groups of people, When we don't know what to talk about or what we're supposed to do, we get really uncomfortable. And what I realized in COVID was I wasn't uncomfortable. I was like, okay, here's what's happening, because I had that experience that I had during September 11th. And I said, well, my job is to just make space.

Tim Newman [00:57:29]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:57:30]:
And there's no agenda to what that space looks like, and there's no Here's what I need you to do, or here's what we can do, because nobody knew what to do. Just like on September 11th, nobody knew what to do. Right.

Tim Newman [00:57:42]:
Yeah, exactly. Let's switch gears, if that's all right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:57:45]:
Okay.

Tim Newman [00:57:46]:
Yeah. You went from higher ed, which we didn't really talk about a whole lot, but you went from higher ed into corporate learning and development with LearnIt. Yeah. What surprised you the most about how adults learn in the corporate world versus higher education?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:58:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. So, just as a primer to everybody who's out there, I tell people all the time, my job is to help other people get better at their jobs. And so, I facilitate these virtual workshops on all sorts of different topics. And what's different in the world of what I will call business learning, right? So, we're in corporate environments, we're in nonprofits, we're in government, small municipal, fill in the blank. What's different is that most of the people that are the learners in the workshops that I facilitate are there voluntarily and with a sense of growth mindset.

Tim Newman [00:58:42]:
Okay.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:58:42]:
That isn't always the case in the higher ed environment. Now, I didn't sit on the faculty side of the house in the higher ed environment. I was on kind of the student service, student support side of the house. I did teach some college-level classes. But in some higher ed environments, there is, for some students, it's like, this is the next thing that you do. For other students, they don't have anybody in their world to tell them what college is about. So there's this transactional sort of environment that happens, I think, unfortunately, in some higher ed spaces.

Tim Newman [00:59:19]:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:59:20]:
In the workplace, I think many people are coming to, and I'm fortunate to work for an organization that we are very transparent about what we do. I think many people come into our workshops not looking for a transactional, tell me the 3 things I need to know to do this better, but people are looking for, I need to make a transformation. I need to do this differently. I need to change the way that I operate. I need to improve my skills with whatever. And there's an eagerness and there's a growth mindset that comes with that that is palpably different than the higher ed environment.

Tim Newman [00:59:58]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [00:59:59]:
And it's not just a function of age, because I worked with non-traditional students. I mean, I had students that were in their 70s in the college environment all the way down to 16-year-olds that were in college. But it is a difference when we're in the work environment and when we can very, very easily see if I improve my skillset, my mindset, my use of tools in this area, it's going to directly reflect how I do this thing over here, that I think sometimes we were kind of behind the 8-ball a little bit when it came to higher ed of like, let's talk about systems. And to be clear, I mean, I went all the way to the PhD, so I love school, right? But teaching people how to think and make decisions is the most valuable thing that higher education can do. We have to do that and we have to reinforce that through something practical in front of people.

Tim Newman [01:00:52]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:00:52]:
And I think that's the missed operation sometimes is that we just talk about, let's talk about how to think and let's talk about how to problem solve and let's talk about how to be creative. But are we actually giving people enough opportunity to own what that looks like in an educational environment? And that's where things are transactional sometimes, whereas I think in the work environment, things can be a little bit more transformational.

Tim Newman [01:01:16]:
Yeah, you're absolutely right on. And as I'm thinking about it and had these conversations with a number of people for years, that's where I think the whole educational system has kind of fallen down. Is there sometimes education needs to be transactional? Yes.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:01:36]:
For sure.

Tim Newman [01:01:38]:
I mean, it just is what it is. But when you get to I would even say a lot of times when you get to high school, at the high school age, and definitely at the higher ed age, we haven't been able to make that shift into that transformational type of teaching and learning because it has to come from both sides. And being in the classroom most of my career, there was always some students who wanted that transformation. Always. They didn't want the, like you said, the 3 steps or the 3, you know, I do check this box, check that box, check that box. But we, we as, as a, as an industry and a society have not made that transition on a large scale, which is where we really need to be. And that's why I think a lot of times You know, when, you know, we're talking about communication here, why it's— why our communication skills for the younger generations are so bad, why our critical thinking skills in the younger generations are so bad. We just haven't been able to make that shift in that transformation.

Tim Newman [01:02:52]:
And it's— I can tell you from my perspective, it's frustrating when you have When you have some people, and I'm not patting myself, or you when you're back because we're here, but when you have people that see this and you run up against a brick wall trying to make changes and do those things. But on the other hand, I get it. They've got— that's just kind of how the system is set up.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:03:23]:
Yeah, I agree with you. I think I think one of the challenges, and I said this when I worked in higher ed, and I continue to say this as somebody who's left the world of higher ed, is that we have to recognize that there are generational differences in who the people are, the general population of the people, and recognizing and setting aside AI for right now, just set that aside. But taking that out of the mix, still, you have a completely different generation who has grown up learning in completely different sorts of ways, yet we have the same level of expectations around how to learn and how learning happens and how to achieve and how to demonstrate achievement and all of this sort of stuff. And that hasn't shifted. And my struggle with that is that that comes from a place of ego of, well, this is the way that we do things here.

Tim Newman [01:04:19]:
Yeah.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:04:19]:
And it's like, well, that's fine, but that's not the people who are coming. I mean, that's like any business saying, well, this is how— I mean, we hear this all the time, right? This is how we do things here. This is how we sell. Does that continue? Like, is that working the same way that it worked for you 20 years ago? Probably not. Are you adapting and changing? Yeah. Why is higher ed not?

Tim Newman [01:04:41]:
Right. And that's the biggest issue. There's not wholesale changes. And it doesn't even seem to be that there's much appetite for change in the industry at all. Yeah, there are some institutions that are doing a really good job at making that switch and making that change. But on a larger scale, it's not happening. And I think with some, it's almost double down. No, we're going to— you better get in line.

Tim Newman [01:05:13]:
This is how we're going to do it. And that's fine.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:05:16]:
I mean, if that's what you want to do, The problem is, is then you have people that are coming out of that environment that then are ill-equipped to think critically and to make decisions and to problem solve. And then we chastise them in the workplace and saying, oh, well, they're such bad workers and they're just so irresponsible and they're so whatever. And I'm like, well, when exactly was the moment where we gave people responsibility to choose and to act and to practice. Show me where people got those skills built in those environments. Oh, it turns out we didn't do that, but now all of a sudden we're going to blame them for something that we created.

Tim Newman [01:05:58]:
That we created, right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:05:59]:
Yeah. And it's a huge struggle. And I mean, there are lots of institutions of higher ed out there that are doing that really well and being very responsive to the career environments and the economic environments that people are going out to. But there's a lot of people that are saying, oh, well, just figure it out. That's just part of it. Everybody's got to put in their time. Well, putting in your time now, I mean, I think about this all the time, is being— if I was about to graduate as a 22-year-old senior in college right now, number one, my college experience, my high school experience has been very unique and interesting over the last 5 to 6 years. And the learning environment and the tools and assets that I have at my hand are completely different.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:06:44]:
And the skills that people are expecting in the workplace now are massively different. But the education hasn't changed in a lot of regards. And then we wonder, why are people ill-suited for the work environment? Oh, it's one of the reasons why I had to step away from higher ed.

Tim Newman [01:07:03]:
So, when you stepped away, was that a hard decision for you?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:07:07]:
Oh, it was incredibly difficult. Yeah, it was incredibly difficult. I mean, I had my master's degree and my PhD. I had finished my PhD. I went into a senior executive level role, chancellor staff role at a university, essentially kind of the highest that I could go, and was absolutely woefully disappointed in what the work was and what was actually the conversations that were happening behind closed doors and the challenges that were being wrestled with versus the real challenges, student finances, student mental health, career fitness, all of these sort of things. And making the decision to leave higher ed really came out of a place of I was tired of sitting. I was doing nothing to help students actually be successful in college anymore. I was sitting behind closed doors, Having a whole bunch of overblown bureaucratic conversations about nothing where nobody was actually making any decisions, and all we were doing was fighting all the time.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:08:13]:
And I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. And it was very difficult for me to have those moments of reckoning of realizing I don't fit in this work anymore.

Tim Newman [01:08:26]:
Right.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:08:27]:
And then what do I do? Right? Because this is all I've ever done. I mean, I had worked in higher ed from the moment I went into my master's program in the early 2000s and right up until 2021, 2022. And I was like, well, what else do I do? Right? So I went through this huge, I call it a discernment process of like, what are my values and what do I like? What's the stuff that charges my batteries? What's the stuff that discharges those batteries? And where I landed was I have always liked where I can help people teach or help people learn, where I can teach, where I can supervise, where I can work with other people. And so it was natural for me to go to the world of corporate learning. And as a side part of that is I love public speaking. So I love having the opportunity to be in front of people and help them learn.

Tim Newman [01:09:17]:
Well, where can people connect with you and learn more about your work on storytelling, self-advocacy, and building confidence from the inside out?

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:09:25]:
Yeah, the best place, the absolute best place would be find me on LinkedIn. Miki Fitch Collins is my name, full name there. The other thing that I'd love to toss out to folks too, Tim, if people want to check out a little bit more about the work that I do with Learnyt, if you just go to Learnyt, L-E-A-R-N-Y-T.com/Miki, you can learn a little bit more. I host a podcast, but you can also get some free trials to take some of our workshops And I'll put both those links in the show notes for everybody so that they're there.

Tim Newman [01:09:54]:
But Mickey, I love this conversation. I mean, we got a whole bunch of things.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:09:59]:
You got a round 2 in us, I think.

Tim Newman [01:10:01]:
We do, because there's some stuff we haven't even touched. Haven't even touched.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins [01:10:04]:
That's right.

Tim Newman [01:10:05]:
But thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I really do appreciate it. And we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcast.com to get your free ebook, Top 21 Challenges for Public Speakers. And how to overcome them. You can also register for the Formula for Public Speaking course. Always remember, your voice has the power to change the world.

Tim Newman [01:10:24]:
We'll talk to you next time. Take care.