A couple of weeks back I was invited by Brenden Carter, Creative Director and General Manager of Learning Hook to be a guest on their podcast.  The invite was immediately accepted.  I have known Brenden for many years and we even worked together for a while.  I have the highest respect for his work because he’s the type of person who is curious and inquiring of other people and always ready for a conversation. He’s genuinely interested in all things to do with learning and one of those people who when starts to go on a creative, somewhat tangential perspective to the conversation and then brings it back to a practical approach with a self-deprecating laugh.

So when he asked me to participate, I didn’t hesitate.  it was also an opportunity to be involved in a podcast which was the first time I had been involved in an AUDIO podcast.  I’ve done video podcasts and live streams but being interviewed for an audio podcast was a first for me.

How Did I Prepare?

Brenden provided me with some general questions that would guide the conversation however he mentioned that it was going to be more free-flowing.   If you know Brenden, then you know that you’re going to have a great conversation because that’s his usual manner too.

However, I did write three key points down on paper that I wanted to get across and they were:

• To dispel the myth of social learning for organisations (that it’s not about social media)
• That ‘social’ means collaborative and the use of tools and platforms are merely channels to people who can help us do our work or achieve our goals
• That making our knowledge, experiences and work public is for the purposes of making it visible – and by that I mean it’s accessible 24/7, searchable and persistent – and that it can be interpreted, reused, remixed and contextualised in our own ways.

The things I learned about doing the podcast are the following.

Firstly, don’t verbalise your agreement with the interviewer constantly.  I’ve listened to this podcast a few times to review my voice, my tone and my messages. I noticed that I kept saying, “yes, yes, yes” to Brenden’s questions which interrupted his flow.  I guess that this is the difference between a live conversation and one that is being recorded.

• Mental Note:  nod in agreement instead while being recorded.

Secondly, when you’re making a point, don’t bang on the table.  Even worse I thought if you had bracelets on your wrists. The banging on the table are picked up on the audio.

• Mental Note:  keep your hands clasped together on your lap. Make slight movements when making your point.  Keep away from the table.

Thirdly, I noticed that I do something I always do in real life too.  That is, I like to bring the conversation back to the original question.  Usually, we can get quite excited by our conversations but one of the attributes I know I have is that I don’t forget the original question or intention and I bring that up as a way to finalise the conversation and move on to the next point.  This was evident in a couple of places in the interview when Brenden asked the question but we both danced around the response getting excited but I brought it back.  I think this may be my perpetual need to have ‘completion’, ‘finalisation’, or ‘closure’ in not only my mind but also people who may be listening in on the conversation.

I notice I do this a lot when I communicate with people. Wonder what’s up with that?  That’s one to further reflect on my character attribute another time.

Here is the episode for you to listen to.  If you’re interested in listening to more, their podcasts are on Podbean and iTunes.

As always, interested in your thoughts.  Have you got any advice for people being interviewed on audio podcasts?

This blog post by Helen Blunden was written in Melbourne, Australia and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.