Episode 24: Become an Empowered Presenter – Interview with Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

Best-selling author Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic joins us on this episode to talk about her latest book: Storytelling with You: Plan, Create, and Deliver a Stellar Presentation. She shares lots of helpful advice on making effective and successful presentations. 

You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode

• What can hinder you from becoming an effective presenter
• Addressing common concerns with presenting, like handling Q&A
• Virtual presentation pet peeves
• How to keep your audience’s attention
• Why dashboards are not a place for storytelling

Resources

• Storytelling with You: Plan, Create, and Deliver a Stellar Presentation
• Upcoming workshops Cole is hosting (one in London coming up on October 26th)
• From Dashboard to Story – relevant blog post from Storytelling with Data

Get in Touch with Hana

Let me know what you think of the episode, you can message at hana@trending-analytics.com or on Instagram @hanalytx.

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If you enjoyed this episode, check out this episode where you learn how to conquer your anxieties with presentations.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Hana: We have a guest on today’s podcast Cole Nafl the bestselling author of Storytelling with Data We actually first connected early 2021 when we were co-hosting a clubhouse session together on data visualizations And that was a really interesting experience talking about something very visual on an audio only platform And now she has released a new book this time about presentations called Storytelling with You Released just a couple weeks ago Congrats on the new book and thank you for being here today to talk to us about 

[00:00:32] Cole: Thank you for having me Hana

[00:00:34] Hana: First of all I loved how you started off the book sharing about how you are an introvert and identify as an introvert as well And I could relate to your experience with having to be really deliberate and purposeful about honing your presentation skills these are the skills that don’t usually come naturally to us and it doesn’t mean that we can’t be great at them And you’re a great example of that 

[00:00:57] Cole: Oh thank you 

[00:00:58] Hana: Yeah Thank you for being so open about that because I know there’s a lot of data professionals who can relate to being an introvert and going into the field expecting not to interact with people as much or present as much So I’m sure your book will motivate a lot of readers to become good as something that seems to be unnatural to us 

[00:01:18] Cole: That’s the hope right Because I I think you’re right that one of the reasons that people end up being drawn into technical roles is because of all the control you get to have over those pieces right You can develop your ability to write code or to analyze data and visualize data and these can be these very precise Things and skills to develop where there’s a clear path to doing so and I think that’s one of the things that’s struck me so much in the past decade plus is we’ve focused on helping people make graphs that make sense as part of storytelling with data is just the role that the individual plays when it comes to communicating because you can make Great graph but if you can’t talk about your work talk about that graph and the work around it to others in a way that makes sense and gets their attention and makes them interested right And want to pay attention We run the risk of a lot of that work getting misinterpreted or ignored And so for me it started out as know if if I wanna teach people I’m passionate about this space then I need to figure out how to do those things I need to figure out how to talk in a way that makes people wanna listen and engage and act And I think over time honed those skills for myself and then realized it’s really actually similar when I look back on it to the path that I took with graphs right A lot of trial and error and figuring out what works And learning from each instance that I’ve done that with myself and my speaking abilities as well And had this point where I was reflecting back of if I’ve if I’ve been able to do this 

[00:03:00] when I think back where I was when I started and how I felt for many years when I had to speak about my work and how nerve wracking that was and if I can transform myself to feeling confident and eloquent when I’m speaking in front of others this is something that anyone can do I think too often we Are hard on ourselves and say No I just I can’t do that I’m not naturally good at that Or somebody else you know you see a great speaker Oh they’re great They’re naturally good at that which I think is rarely the a skill that you can develop in strategic ways just like you can the technical 

[00:03:39] Hana: Yeah we don’t see the work that these supposedly naturally gifted speakers put into to get to where they are yeah that’s a very good point And I think this ties in really well to the first question I had which is again I’m curious how you decided on Titling your book Storytelling with You Can you share why you went with an emphasis on us as presenters by titling it this way You know versus like storytelling with presentations or storytelling for your audience 

[00:04:04] Cole: Yeah I think the I like the personal bit of it right Because you know if you think of storytelling with presentations and we did this this was the title Was in my head at first and how I was always thinking about it But then there was a point where I stepped back to say Does this make sense Is this is this going to be confusing to people Right Because there is it makes sense for those who know our brand right Storytelling with data storytelling with you But for someone else who sees a book called Storytelling With You How how is that going to land and brainstorm some other ideas

[00:04:40] But I just kept coming back to this one because because of the emphasis on the individual because when we’re communicating it really it is you who are doing that You are taking all of the steps that are either going to align things for a successful communication scenario or could go haywire in different ways And so really trying to I think empower the individual to say You can do this I’m gonna show you some steps It It is still trial and error and figuring out what’s going to work for you and what will be authentic But here’s a guide Here’s a playbook that will help you feel prepared help you plan help you build your confidence so that you feel good when you go in front of other people to talk about your work whether it’s formally on a stage or in a day to day business meeting setting 

[00:05:36] Hana: I love when you said empowering the individual because when I was presenting in my early days and I was really nervous and I didn’t have the confidence to present I often would use my slides as a crutch and just hope the attention is on my slides And I realized you know if What’s the point of me presenting if I could just put put up the slides you know like there’s there’s a reason why I’m up here so I love how you emphasize empowering individuals 

[00:06:01] Cole: Well and that becomes a very big shift in how we create and how we think about our materials as well Because if the equation right you can figure you can put more or less emphasis on the different pieces And so I think that’s a natural thing early on to wanna perfect our slides and with the idea that that’s what’s going to do the communicating But we limit ourselves so much because you know you put a slide up and then you’re at the mercy of the people looking at it and what they wanna do versus when you can put at least equal if not greater attention on yourself and the words you’re going to say And then your slides don’t become the point Your slides become the thing that support you or you know when you need to be able to Detail or show data or use something visual as an explanation aid or to help get people on the same page It actually when you put more attention on yourself and your delivery it enables you to use your materials in much more strategic ways when it comes to the whole package And so I think especially for the introvert starting with the slides starting with those pieces probably makes sense then Pivoting very quickly into all right now that your materials are set what are you going to do to develop yourself and to sound like you know what you’re talking about and to use your voice and your words in ways that will instill confidence in those listing 

[00:07:34] Hana: love that. From from your experience with observing people and you also train people on the subject what is something you’ve noticed that often hinders people from delivering stellar presentations? 

[00:07:47] Cole: I think the biggest thing is really just the paradigm of communicating first and foremost for ourselves or for our project for our data and instead of shifting that paradigm and really thinking when we’re communicating and particularly when it’s something important or critical we shouldn’t be doing it with ourselves in mind Really Our audience should be front and center and that audience can take a ton of different forms right It might be your stakeholders for a project that you’ve just finished or colleagues who you need to convince to do something in a different way or maybe you’re standing on stage and need to change hearts and minds it’s 

[00:08:30] It’s all of those pieces coming together so that you say you know what does success look like Not for me but what does success look like after this presentation or meeting When it comes to my audience how they’re going to feel what they’re going to do Because I think when we craft our materials and when we plan and execute with our audience front of mind We position ourselves better for success right Which makes a ton of sense when we step back and think about it And it sounds like a really obvious thing we should consider our audience but too often we don’t do that We totally skip that step We go straight to PowerPoint or Keynote and we start making slides and we start making graphs And you know they’re great slides and great graphs but they’re actually not going to serve our a audience in the way that we maybe need to And so I think just coming back more specifically to your question what’s one mistake people make I think it’s Fully thinking about their audience and communicating for them And so the book is divided into three sections and the whole first section it’s yellow section in the book is plan and it’s all of the low tech things that you can do upfront before you really create graphs and slides to fully consider the context in which you need to communicate And the first chapter is on audience. Then there’s a chapter on crafting your message And so it’s you know how do you think about the people you’re going to be communicating to and not just generally specifically how do you get their hopes and dreams and motivations in mind How does that mean you subsequently target how you communicate Forming your message compiling the pieces building that story 

[00:10:14] And so all of these are low tech things to do up front that slow us down in I think really important ways because the pen the tools you’re using are pens and paper and your brain and when you’re physically writing out ideas That takes thought and time in ways that I think is really useful Cause there’s been such a drive for productivity and efficiency in all things that it’s come at the expense I think of A lot of the foundations that help us communicate thoughtfully So the first section really gets into those pieces So for the person who says Well yeah I think I do that right I don’t communicate well enough for my audience Start with chapter one and we’ll flip that paradigm around 

[00:11:04] Hana: I appreciate that you call out that it slows us down in important ways because I think that’s where I see a lot of data professionals They’re so busy they’re already overwhelmed with their data roles and the last thing on their mind is You know presenting their work and then just kind of wanna rush through it do it as quickly and efficiently as possible and move on go back to their work right And so all this preparation that’s required may seem like a lot of work un maybe even unnecessary It may seem like that But from my experience and as you mentioned in your book but this preparation can really help you with delivering a more confident and effective Presentation So I like how you say like slowing us down in important ways so you’re not sugarcoating you’re not saying it’s gonna be quick and easy It’s not gonna be something you can do overnight or the last minute It does require some planning and preparation So speaking of which you know fear many presenters have is with the q and a portion Do you have any advice on how people can prepare for this before their presentation and even how to address any hard questions that may come their way during the delivery? 

[00:12:07] Cole: Absolutely So I’m a big fan of talking with others about your work right So colleagues can be fantastic resources to use if you are feeling nervous about questions that may come up have give your presentation if you have time for it to a colleague and prep them to to ask you question You can even if you’ve got you know a particularly gnarly audience member who you anticipate may try to throw things off have your colleague play that role and try to throw difficult questions at you and that sort of preparation And then the conversation oftentimes that ensues back and forth when you when it comes to strategizing how to deal with some of those things can be very useful And when you’re doing that it can It can be helpful to think about who your audience is going to be and where or from what types of people you anticipate You might get challenging questions because that can then help you decide who to do that mock session with Who’s going to be able to maybe take on the perspective of that type of Member more easily and you can do this you know do it with a group of colleagues or do it several times with different people Cause I think the more that we talk about our work with people who don’t have the same foundation or tacit knowledge as we do that helps everything That helps the whole presentation because when you do so you’re landing on different words and different ways of explaining things You know the person you are delivering to or doing the Q and a role with can ask you questions or ask for clarification So I’ll say that for any nerves that anyone has about presenting and even if it’s just talking about your project with your manager or a more daily scenario the more you can talk about your work Before you have to do it for real the better you’re going to be at doing so because you’ll have found the bridges and the transitions and the way to talk about things that will help there And I That’s useful by the way Just the practice of talking out loud is something that I’m a big proponent of and so you can do that on your own which can be useful particularly if you’re starting off because it’s a little bit Nerve Like it’s it’s it feels uncomfortable to talk out loud when you’re not used to it but really forcing yourself to do it out loud because that really forces you to figure out how do you get from one idea to the next in addition to what words am I going to use when I’m talking about the And so the more you do that the easier it gets And then by the time you get to the real thing if you’ve done it a few times outside of that maybe a little bit on your own And then once you’ve got some confide There do an exchange with somebody else get some feedback there and then by the time you do the real thing those nerves will have calmed Cause I think that’s one thing alone just coming back to your question that can help you feel confident answering questions but the more you can anticipate what’s likely to come up and be ready to deal with that And it doesn’t mean you have to have a slide for every question that but it That you know your stuff so that you’re able to pivot and address come up Actually that’s one great way of building credibility with your audience and showing them that you’ve thought about their needs Then you can actually do this in a way where you almost seed a question or you or you talk about something in a way that makes it likely that a certain question will come up that you are well poised To answer because then that shows your audience when the question does come up and you’re ready to answer it that you’ve thought about it you’ve thought about their question and helps helps demonstrate that thoughtfulness I think in communicating And so When you when it’s a forum where you don’t know the answer or where you need time to gather your thoughts looking for ways to buy yourself time can be useful So depending on the scenario sometimes it would make sense to pull in somebody else who’s there to respond first right Or then you can say something like Oh Hannah that’s a really interesting I wanna tell you what I think about it but actually before we do that I think John has something that he might wanna share here or you know and you only didn’t do that When when you’ve got a a reason to call out someone specifically or if you don’t have that then opening up to the group Right I’ll share my thoughts but before I do so let’s actually open this up to everyone here because I think you’re going to have the context to bring in right Maybe somebody’s dealt with this before or has a solution that they wanna talk about and that can be a way of Putting things back inviting more voices into the conversation that which can be helpful and also gives you some time to gather your thoughts to then be able to address what has come up 

[00:17:05] Hana: That’s a really interesting strategy I actually haven’t tried that myself I usually I don’t know I get nervous about the silence and feel this pressure to respond although I will say that I don’t shy away from Also letting people know if I don’t know the answer to something at the moment and that I’ll follow up but I like your strategy that if you are in a panel or if you’re able to bring in other people from the group to answer first that you think would be more appropriate to even answer and gives you some time to think I like that strategy so thank you for sharing that with us 

[00:17:33] Cole: Absolutely and you said something really important there which is this idea of pausing which is always a good thing to do and takes practice because it can feel really uncomfortable But when you So if you imagine if you’re if a question’s posed to you you’re ready to answer it but you need to gather your thoughts for a moment first Just pausing and thinking about it for a moment And then responding eloquently is so much better than the Ah well right Filling it with sound And so that’s one thing that that I recommend is people are building their confidence for presenting and for speaking about their work getting comfortable with pauses And it’s just another one of those things that takes practice and it takes practicing on your own where you can pause for a really long amount of time 

[00:18:24] Hana: Right 

[00:18:24] Cole: And it doesn’t matter Right And use that as a way to then get comfortable with some of these things to be able to bring it into your work as well And then look for low risk places at first when you’re trying to test out new things in the wild as well 

[00:18:39] Hana: Right I something I noticed with pauses too is that it can be used to really bring people back in Like they when you hear a pause you lean in you know it it you’re waiting for what words will come next And as you mentioned if you say something eloquent after that it becomes really powerful way of bringing the attention back

[00:18:59] Right

[00:19:19] Right

[00:19:28] on the flip side you mentioned in your book some podium pet peeves that you have A couple of them being can you hear me Or Calling attention to technical difficulties And I have similar pet peeves especially when it comes to virtual presentations And I often hear people start off with Can you hear me Or Can you see my screen Or Let me figure out how to share my slides And I I tell people not to start like this I have gotten actually some pushback from folks who say that because of bugs and conferencing softwares they have to make sure that people are able to hear and see them But How do you recommend that people start virtual presentations

[00:20:14] Hmm

[00:20:52] right

[00:21:51] Right

[00:22:03] Mm

[00:22:34] Right Right Yeah And you know can risk people losing people’s attention. A challenge that I’ve noticed especially with virtual presentations and a lot of us going through the pandemic and having to do more virtual meetings and presentations is that we Are likely losing our a’s attention They’re usually multitasking you know they can get away with a lot of distractions at home or where they’re dialing in from Do you have any tips on how we can get back our audience member’s attention 

[00:23:05] Cole: Yeah this is a great question and it’s it’s a struggle because everybody is on Zoom calls all day long and so being able to Speak and use materials in a way that stand out and that yeah keep people out of their inbox and with you is is challenging but there are certainly some tricks that you can use And so practice again is key I’ve talked about this in a Couple of different ways already but practicing aloud practicing with your technology getting comfortable speaking clearly because you can do a lot of things with your voice cuz one of the challenges with virtual is that you’ve been reduced in dimension right Instead of in 3D space where now in flatland and you might be in a tiny box in the corner of someone’s screen and so figuring out how you can authentically but at first it can make sense to go a little above and beyond You have to be bigger almost to maintain attention in the same way It’s similar actually If you’re in a big conference venue and you’re standing on a stage and there are a lot of people you have to use your body more and move about the space in order to I don’t know to 

[00:24:28] Present in a way that where people can see and feel and and understand what’s going on and so having expressions be a little bit more animated than they might be otherwise With your voice using some of these things that we’ve talked about with pauses volume is another thing You can vary I can get really loud to get people’s attention or soften as another way to get people to really tune in and then use pauses as we’ve talked about So you can do things to yourself and the way that you’re speaking that helps keep people tuned in You can also do things to your materials to help facilitate this And so one thing to be aware of is when you put a slide up on your screen and people have looked at it they’ve read or taken in whatever’s on it that’s when you really run the risk of losing people Because you know I can look at the slide and now Click back over to my email inbox and I’m lost And so not having there be static slides on the screen for long periods of time And in some cases that might mean taking them down so that people are focusing on you and you can be using your hands and the space where people can see you to have there be some motion that helps keep people’s attention You can also do things to Slides specifically and here you not want to not overdo it but you can have things appear one at a time or a couple elements of a time This works particularly well with graphs anyone who follows our work at storytelling with data sees many examples where we do this where instead of just putting the whole graph on the slide all at once we’ll we’ll build it you know start by showing The Y axis and the X axis just the skeleton of the graph and talk through what it’s going to be Showing along each of those a axis and this can be a way of keeping your audience’s attention because they can’t tune out or they run The risk of missing something can also create some anticipation on the part of your audience Pe Can be useful for maintaining attention And then depending on what you’re showing you can even keep building the graph piece by piece where you might show a single data point and talk about the context around it and then add more to it And so you are rather than just show a graph or show a slide you actually walking your audience through it building Building it and talking through it so that your voice and the visual that people are seeing go and do this at a pace such that you keep people’s attention and now you’ve been able to use your material and your voice in a way that it’s just different from I think what many people are doing when they’re presenting which is just throwing up the same slides that they would if they were sitting around a conference table with other people and being thoughtful about how you’re presenting and how you try to do what you can to make that a successful situation for yourself and a pleasant situation for your audience 

[00:27:30] Hana: Right I love that Thank you for sharing all I especially didn’t consider about the static slide and how after someone reads it they will think Oh yeah I’ve gotten what I need to know that she’ll be talking about for the next few minutes and I can zone out or check my email. What’s the best piece of advice someone has given you about presentations? 

[00:27:51] Cole: To stand up I was doing a speaker training at Google This was as I was getting ready to start delivering data visualization courses So this is back at like I don’t know 2009 2010 and I I had I went through a Train the trainer program which was like a week long of sessions where we we recorded ourselves and gave each other feedback and did all sorts of mock presentations learned about adult learners and so forth And the one of the instructors sat in on one of their first training courses that I delivered and it was two hours focused on making graphs and My slides were projected at one end of the table We were in a conference room with a big boardroom style table and I was seated at the opposite end of the table after the session she said the whole time she was like watching a ping pong game where it Going back and forth back and forth because she needed to look at the slide because what I was talking about was shown there But then I at the other end of the table was so animated that she couldn’t not watch me She said Don’t compete against it Stand up walk and position yourself at the front of the room so that you can be working in concert with your slides And for me this was total game changing advice because not only did this mean I could move around in different ways and start experimenting with that part of presenting which can be super useful but also there was something for me about standing up I think as I was still going through that transformation from you know introvert who would rather be by myself behind my computer to Being in front of people where standing up suddenly I was I was no longer me introvert Cole I was presenter Cole and it actually made it feel like I could step into this role out almost outside of myself That was really useful early on for being to get people able to get through nerves and some of those early present And so I’m a big advocate and I think we can do it more often than we do in meeting settings as well but you know rather than be a seat at the table try standing up or try standing up for a portion of things It allows you to see what’s going on on people’s faces and in the room in different ways You can move around and position where you are strategically So if you have the benefit of being in the same space as others and somebody gets out their phone All you have to do is walk over closer to that person as you continue to speak and they will put their phone down because they can 

[00:30:28] Hana: It’s true 

[00:30:29] Cole: feel’s going that And so it affords a different different level of control over the setting as well That can be really 

[00:30:39] Hana: I’ve been guilty of this of sitting down and using that as as another crutch other than my slides to hide behind the table and the seat and you know in many situations I know for For many of us who work in the corporate world it may not be the norm to stand up in a meeting and present next to your slides but it’s something we can start trying out And if it helps for those who are listening to try out in a low stakes environment where maybe it’s a meeting amongst your team members or your boss you know people you’re comfortable with and getting more confidence withstanding up next to your slides or when you’re presenting 

[00:31:13] Cole: Absolutely And if it feels uncomfortable calling it out as something you’re going to do can help with that Hey folks today I’m gonna do something different I’m actually going to stand up this is going to allow me to point out some nuances in the slides That’ll be helpful to see and you know makes it so I can see your faces so that we can have a better discussion or if you’re not wanting to do it For the entire presentation you might think about well is there a slide or a a progression within your broader presentation where it would make sense for you to be there you know if you have a graph that you’re showing you can actually stand up just for that piece so that you’re able to be using your body to signal at different parts of what you want people to look at and and use that to direct attention And so look for small To be able to start doing some of the things that we’re talking about here because that helps you test it out see what works see what feels good for you and what seems to work with your audience and your stakeholders and then you can do more of the things that start to feel more comfortable over time 

[00:32:18] Hana: I do have a couple of questions that came in from listeners The first one is from Paul She was actually on my podcast earlier this season and she’s How do you incorporate storytelling in business facing dashboards that have multiple users looking for their respective insights instead of a single presentation where you know the single message you want to convey This has been a challenge when leaders want compelling storytelling in an interactive dashboard format 

[00:32:46] Cole: My point of view is that a dashboard is not the right place in which to be telling a story or not the right tool to use to tell a story So I tend to draw a distinction between the exploration of data and the explanation of data And for me Dashboarding or I’ll throw any sort of regular reporting into this bucket as well Those sit more on the exploratory side which is super useful Tools that help you go through data quickly to understand where are things in line with our expectations Where are they not in line with their expectations They can help us Find potentially interesting stories faster but then my view is once you’ve found the interesting stories then you actually wanna take them out of the dashboard and do a lot of the things that we teach in our workshops and books and so forth of really curating now the story with data for your audience And so I think just coming back to The specific question of what do you do when you have an executive wanting you to tell stories with dashboards is to help them understand that difference and the vocabulary of yes the dashboard helps us get the story faster Interactive stories have a place I don’t know that it’s the business setting where it’s at least not at the executive table right The there are use cases for that in an operational type environment where you have people digging in and looking at the data real time But those scenarios I think are are different from what we’re talking about here And so some of it can be data literacy and vocabulary lesson which you obviously have to be careful about how to broach that But talking about the dashboard as the tool that helps us find the stories But then once we have something that we need to have happen right a discussion that needs to take place or a decision that that needs to be made that then there’s another step of taking that out of the dashboard and really curating the information for the issue at And so starting to show some of that I think through example can be another way to do it Of we have the dashboards we actually used it to find this really interesting thing but rather than dig through the dashboard to resurface the interesting thing let’s focus in on that And for this we do have a more curated path 

[00:35:16] Hana: Got it So when you talk about taking the story out would that look like having a presentation where you do have the storytelling component with these specific Audience members instead of like a mixed audience but going individually and presenting to those folks the story that’s relevant to them 

[00:35:33] Cole: It can Right And I think that is one of the reasons that dashboards get sold as the end all be all solution It’s like they can be everything to everyone but they can’t Right Not simultaneously and not in the way that I mean they can but yeah It’s a little bit more convoluted than that But yeah when there is something important That you need someone to pay attention to or do something with That’s the scenario then where it can make to do what you describe and rather than have the dashboard be the thing that communicates that And sometimes it it may do that reasonably well and that’s fine but if you need specific attention and understanding then really making that path for your audience And oftentimes yeah That’s a PowerPoint deck or or similar 

[00:36:20] Hana: Another question that came in is from Leanne She’s asking What’s the best presentation you have ever 

[00:36:27] Cole: That’s a tough one I’ll say one that sticks in my mind that I often reference is Hans Rosling He’s done he had done a number of presentations some Ted Talks I think of him as one of the founding fathers of data storytelling he founded an organization called Gapminder where their mandate or their goal was to bring greater awareness to socioeconomic issues around the world And all of his talks are great The one that I like the most It was done with the BBC and it’s only five or six minutes long they’re in this kind of old warehouse Somewhere in the uk and they’ve got it’s a bubble graph and and it’s all crazy and it’s projected it looks like in into thin air And he’s he’s dancing around and he’s he’s as as they press play right And the bubbles start to shrink and grow and move around He’s narrating the story He’s telling you what to pay attention to and pointing it out and kind of jumping around and he’s so passionate and into And it is contagious I’ll I’ll often use that to talk about authenticity though because not everyone could pull off you know dancing around a bubble chart and and make that work but he made it work so well and so I think it’s a good lesson for all of us as we present to think about how do we do that in a way that taps into Us and one way to do that is just the next time you find yourself talking to a friend or a colleague about something you’re really interested in notice what you do Notice what you do with your voice and with your body and then roll the best parts of that into how 

[00:38:14] Hana: The final question I have for you to wrap up the show is how do you take care of yourself or unwind after a big presentation 

[00:38:22] Cole: Oh this is a great question Oftentimes you have this high after presenting and actually so we did A number of sessions around the launch of the new book before last here in Milwaukee where I live and this was one of those for sure right where presenting all day long and then build to a crescendo at the end and then it’s done And so I what do I do to unwind I don’t have any I don’t have specific habits I don’t think when it comes to that you know I trade in my shoes usually pretty quickly because I tend to present in heels and that gets tiring after a long day but no I think being able to be around other people then in that mode because I tend to be I tend to be very happy after I spend time communicating in a setting like that to others So being able to be around other people to share that I think is a nice thing but I’m also an introvert so that I’m exhausted So after that high goes away then I kind of wanna be in a room by myself and not talk to anyone for a while So and I think that’s probably part of it is just allowing yourself space and the the things that you need to recoup and recover and be ready to do 

[00:39:36] Hana: that Thank you so much for all the gems that you shared with us here on the show today For those listening Cole shares a lot more helpful advice in her latest book Storytelling With You I read the book and I highly recommended I’ll have links to how you can purchase this in the show notes And Cole you also have some trainings coming up Can you tell the listeners about that 

[00:39:55] Cole: We do we have another great session coming up in London that’s on October 26th where we’ll do our classic one day storytelling with data workshop And then we have our European book launch party So that’ll be super fun I believe given when this is airing We will be almost shutting down registration So for anyone listening who wants to join go to storytelling with data.com/workshops and sign up soon We do also have a virtual half day workshop coming up on November 17th and that’s 2022 

[00:40:26] Hana: Awesome Thank you again Cole for coming on here today It was a pleasure chatting with you 

[00:40:31] Cole: Thank you for having me I had fun