Nausheen I. Chen is a public speaking coach and 3-time TEDx speaker.
Please enjoy her 386-word Micro-Interview:
Thanks, Nausheen.
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"Do you have a work routine?"
Haha these days I work all the time but that's ok as I'm in the growth phase of my business.
"What do you wish you'd known about your work when you first started?"
Teaching someone something you've learned through experience without studying it formally can be very challenging. This is especially true if you're someone like me - who's always been a nerd, studied hard and done things by the book. But with coaching, it's the first time that I'm drawing from experience first and then formalizing methods and systems later, instead of the other way around. So I wish I'd known I can set up my own systems and methods - I don't need to follow anyone else's rulebooks.
“What did your biggest professional failure teach you?”
When I was a filmmaker, we got our first big commercial. I went through all the usual steps - conceptualizing, scripting, storyboarding. I involved the client throughout and they kept approving. However, when we presented the first cut, the client was disappointed. I was shocked. I realized it was because I never stopped to question why the client kept giving us "easy" yeses - because they were "trusting" our vision instead of actually giving us inputs. Learned to dig deeper since then and ask the difficult questions.
“Has anything helped you shorten your craft's learning curve?”
To be honest, I took the long, long way around. I started speaking "in public" when I was 21 and hosted my first broadcast radio show. Over the next decade and a half, I changed jobs, changed careers and changed countries but my love for speaking to an audience stuck with me. Did it for free, for peanuts, for passion. It was only after speaking for about 17 years that it occurred to me to do it and teach it for a living.
“Do you have a book recommendation?”
Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi.
It changed the way I thought about creating networks and building relationships. He talks about how connecting people with others makes your network richer. And adopting the abundance mindset of people benefitting from being connected with others (vs thinking of it as cashing in favors, for example) is what makes you achieve impossible things.
“Any parting piece of advice?”
You are as flexible, as adaptable as you let yourself be. We live our lives being "married" to a set of rules that we think are true and worthy of being followed. But if those "rules" are what stops you from progressing, or if they stop you from being kind or empathetic towards others, then they're limiting you. Question everything.
