Use Your Superpowers
Get Out of Your Comfort Zone!
Almost everyone in the organisation is a hyper extravert, everyone is a great speaker.
Right?
What I have observed is that some people have this natural ability to express their thoughts and ideas in a very convincing manner. They have great communication skills and they know how to share their ideas with others. I have also a friend who is a successful story-teller when he gets the chance to speak.
As a designer, I did not consider myself a great communicator like that friend. I am mostly a designer who is capable of thinking out of the box. I am a designer who is good at finding creative solutions for problems.
I have to admit that it was quite a big challenge at the beginning (I am a designer, I like to design things not to talk about them!). However, the methodology of service design; its toolkit and probs helped me to compensate for my average verbal communication skills. Maybe I was not an impressive speaker; however, I have impressed my stakeholders equally with my service design probs!
I started my creative career as a designer, and I still am. But when I found out about service design, I fell in love with it!
Service design is not only about making great services but also about implementing those smartly. That requires a lot of communication!
In an organisation where almost everyone is a hyper extravert and everybody is a great speaker, it was quite a challenge for me to start working as I wanted to. The reason behind it was that it was next to impossible for me to mix with around 50 uber-friendly and naturally talkative individuals. In fact, it was the toughest time in my life. I look forward to have my way through this tough time because this is the time when I have to perform at my best.
I’ve always been a more reserved person and one who prefers to work with visual tools rather than with my voice. Before I started working at that place, I knew that I have to be more vocal about my ideas, I fully grasped the value of communication and speaking up in strategic conversations. But my voice was not my strong suit. — I wasn’t precisely sure I could do it.
When I started, I was very nervous. My colleagues were so friendly and charming that I felt like a simpleton among them. I’m more of an introvert so public speaking was not that easy task for me. To make matters worse, my job and my responsibilities at that time, required me to be a fairly good public speaker. This made me nervous because of my introversion. On top of that, there were many people in the company who weren’t designers or service designers who were influential and needed to understand why and what we were designing.
The biggest challenge for me at this company was learning how to perform the assignment of a service designer well enough to convince others that it was worth their time and money to invest in design research and development (R&D)
After all, the company is built on the philosophy that “everyone has a saying, everyone is an intra-preneur,” and it takes its mission very seriously. But I quickly found that the team was so dedicated to their work that it was inspiring as well as motivating. And I also found out that there are many ways you can contribute to an organisation. Yes, you can be a good and inspire others to join your cause, but even if you’re not a born speaker, you can still be a valuable team member by using your talents in design. For example, many of the tools we use were created with design thinking methodologies and service design.
In the end, the service design methodology and its toolkit helped me compensate for my average communication skills at that time, And then use those things to make my points when I spoke up. In other words, use probs. Eventually, I felt more confident to speak up! Because people around me appreciate my contribution.
Don’t let yourself think “I’m not a good speaker” or “I’m not a designer” because there are lots of ways to participate!
If you are in a similar position, maybe you can also find other designers with great communication skills whom you could emulate. For example, when we met with investors to pitch our ideas for new products and services, I watched an amazing designer present our company’s vision for how we could improve their business using design thinking. He wasn’t just a great speaker — he was also a service designer!
