I’ll get round to it eventually

Today I managed to tick something off my to do list that has been there since last September. It’s not anything urgent or that anyone else is dependent on, but one of those jobs that would take a lot of time and mental energy and I’d need to be in the right frame of mind to do it. Today was that day.

I’ve been doing a series of interviews with bellringers and posting them to a Youtube channel over the last year, I guess you could call it my lockdown project (despite the fact that I’ve not been restricted by lockdown at all). There was an interview I recorded in September that still needed to be edited and made ready for uploading. It’s not due to go out yet, as there are others ahead of it in the queue, but I kept putting off the editing as I just didn’t feel in the right frame of mind to do it.

Today though, annual report deliveries are much more local, so didn’t take that long to whizz round, so it provided a good opportunity to tick a few longstanding items off the list.

The edit took about 2 hours, cutting out the “ums” and “ahs” and silent thinking pauses, the repetitions and waffle. Its important that each interview covers the main questions and puts both the interviewee and #bellrinigng in a good light. Any references to anything slightly odd needs to come out. I’ve also been taking references to the Covid restrictions out, so that they make the conversations more timeless.

I did also get around to uploading the next interview in the sequence and sharing that, so hopefully people will get to see it over the next few days. The last one I uploaded was 2 months ago, so it was a while overdue. With the one that I’ve just finished editing, I still have 4 interviews to upload in this series. Then there’s the Bellringers Question Time and 2 talks associated with the Ringing Course that will be uploaded. Plenty of content over the coming months.

By the time the last interview has been uploaded, we should be back into some semblance of #bellringing and there might be opportunity to actually record some ringing to showcase what we’ve been talking about in these interviews all this time.

So, 2 longstanding items ticked off the to do list. Only another 3 to go, plus all the stuff that comes in regularly anyway. A good day at the (home) office.

Opening doors

When I get asked to give talks its one of the scariest things and takes me on a roller coaster ride.

My first question is why have they asked me? And the cynic in me replies “because they need to fill a slot and you’re an easy ask“. But maybe, just maybe, its because its a topic I know about and the person that’s asked knows that I can do a half decent job of it.

My first real worry then is what on earth have I got to say that anyone would want to listen to. I’m no one special. I haven’t done anything earth shattering brilliant or enlightening or entertaining. No one is going to want to hear me spout on about xyz when there are far more interesting and entertaining people who could do it.

Then there’s the “what am I actually going to talk about“. The latest ask hasn’t been too specific yet so I’ve asked the question. I could redo a talk I’ve given on a specific topic before, so I won’t have to prepare anything new, or do they want something different?

Then there’s the “how long have I got”? This is where, once I’ve written my talk I’ll time it to make sure it fits and I get all the main points across. I’ll read and re-read through it multiple times, including immediately before delivering it.

Then there’s the “oh my god, how many people will turn up? Supposing no one does?” Well, that’s not really under my control to do anything about. The one good thing about doing talks over Zoom is that you can change the view so you don’t have to see everyone’s faces and therefore don’t know if there’s one or one hundred people watching. Of course the trouble with doing that is then you miss out on any visual cues from the audience, like wanting to ask a question or wanting you to get a move on and shut up.

I generally don’t get nervous about giving talks, its the bit afterwards. Whilst I’m talking I know what I’m going to say, I’m well prepared, I’m in control. I’ve been to the loo, I’ve got a glass of water handy. But at the end when the facilitator opens things up to questions, that’s when I start getting nervous. What if someone asks a question I don’t know the answer to? Or worse still, I don’t even understand the question? The former can be resolved quite easily with a straight forward ,”you know, I don’t know the answer to that but I’m going to go away and find out, then I’ll let you know”. That’s all good if you actually do that, which I always make a point of on the rare occasions it happens. If I don’t even understand the question I’m not beyond asking them to rephrase it. Particularly if its quite a technical question, I’ll make a joke of it and ask them to dumb it down for those like me who are not technically minded.

The thing about giving talks is that they can open doors to lots of opportunity. An opportunity to meet new people, to listen to their questions and think about things from their perspective, to get involved in something else as a spin off, to be heard by someone who wants you to give your talk to a different group and start opening doors again with another different audience.

As much as I dread doing it for all the reasons above and want to say no, the chance of more doors opening and more new experiences happening is too great an attraction, however flattering the ask was in the first place.

Being a bit random

When I’m interviewing people for senior posts I like to throw in a question that has nothing to do with anything, and also doesn’t have a definite answer.

A few months back my boss was telling me about writing some interview questions for a senior post within her team, so I suggested that she asked the question “how many jelly beans can you fit in a suitcase”?. The question has no answer because there are too many variables. How big is the suitcase? What type and size of jelly bean? What is the suitcase made of, soft or hard? Are the jelly beans in packets or loose? Can you squish them to get rid of the air spaces between them? And so on.

Essentially the question is to throw the interviewee off guard, to wake them up from the serious questions, and to get them to vocalise how they might approach a problem and how they might handle being thrown a curve ball.

I’m assisting with some interviews next week for a senior role in another service. The person I’m on the panel with was the successful candidate of the jelly bean interview. Again I’ve suggested a random question. Too many people have heard about the jelly bean one so we have a different one in mind. I’m confident none of the candidates read this blog, so I’m not going to be letting g the cat out of the bag. We’ve decided to ask the question “how many balls can you fit in this room?”. It has the same effect on the candidate, they won’t be expecting it, there are too many variables like size of ball, whether the furniture could be removed, could the balls be deflated, etc.

The trick then is to place the question somewhere in the middle of the interview. They won’t be expecting it, but afterwards they might be cautious that there’ll be another random question. It helps to identify their ability to think on their feet and to cope with the unexpected. It’ll be an interesting insight to their personality.