Inspirational Women Of the Speaking Circuit: Sydney Elaine Butler Of Accessible Creates On The Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Speaker
Engage the Audience: The audience loves to feel like they are part of the experience of the speaker rather than just observing. This makes you more memorable. Ask them questions, ask them for their thoughts. This allows you to have a vocal break while also ensuring that the audience is paying attention and keeping their interest.
At some point in our lives, many of us will have to give a talk to a large group of people. What does it take to be a highly effective public speaker? How can you improve your public speaking skills? How can you overcome a fear of speaking in public? What does it take to give a very interesting and engaging public talk? In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker” we are talking to successful and effective public speakers to share insights and stories from their experience. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Sydney Elaine Butler.
It is Sydney’s understanding that their professional purpose must be to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to be successful regardless of barriers in their way and that they must, as a professional, remove these barriers. Sydney conducts training and consulting for other companies on how to be more Accessible and Inclusive from a Human approach and how to recruit and retain more diverse individuals through the lens of Intersectionality/Human Resources as well as other areas of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in an authentic manner at the company they founded called Accessible Creates due to understanding the barriers that exist within the workplace for diverse individuals.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
The story of how I grew up? I grew up understanding that I had more obstacles than most, being a biracial girl who had speech and other challenges; however, my parents were always supportive and encouraging where they could be. I attended speech therapy for numerous years while in school and had challenges in school. I had special interests in certain subjects in which I excelled. I thrived in extracurriculars, such as Soccer and Girl Guides. Throughout my time in Girl Guides, I became more confident in learning as well as speaking up for myself and using my voice. I then went to an Art School for middle school and fell in love with acting and performing, and learning how to overcome my speech challenges. In High School, I fell in love even more with Theatre and also found love in Business studies. I wanted to be an Environmentalist, but I did not have the grades to do so in Mathematics and Science. So, I applied for a Business-Human Resources program and fell in love again, while also understanding the lack of Accessibility in Business, and decided to become an HR Professional who focuses on Accessibility and other areas of Diversity and Inclusion.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
When I was in the process of figuring out what I wanted my career to look like I put a PowerPoint presentation I created for a company I was working at on LinkedIn about Disability Pride month and then a person reached out to me asking if I would be open to speaking at an event about Neurodiversity in the Workplace as their company hosted global events for managers, HR and more. I took that opportunity and loved speaking in front of a large virtual audience, and realized I could make money by speaking as one aspect of my career.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
The most interesting story is that I was a member of a local HR association since I was in College for Human Resources, and I told my classmates that I was going to be a speaker at one of their events in my 40s as one of my “long-term goals”. I am 28 years old now, and I have already spoken at the association and got paid to speak at the association when I was 27 years old. All because I believed in myself and what I knew I had knowledge that would be useful to share with other members of the association, and the association believed in me, too.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The funniest mistake I made when I first started was trying to make everything funny, ironically enough. I thought that to be more digestible of the seriousness of the topics I was speaking about, I had to be funny to an extent. I realized that where there are moments of levity, I need to talk seriously but be more personable with my audiences. I needed them to see how it applies and is relevant to their lives instead of trying to make them laugh.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There are so many people I am grateful for who helped me along the way. Still, honestly, my partner Gordon helped me feel supported when I first came up with the idea for Accessible Creates, and I needed a logo — he does graphics and logos. He’s an artist, and he created one with my vision for my logo in mind. It remains my logo to this day, four years later, and I receive compliments on it regularly. Also, on days that I doubt myself before I go on stage, he reminds me that my voice matters.
You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging and intimidating. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?
My advice would be “We all have a story, and many stories in us, we deserve to have our stories be told as ourselves”.
What drives you to get up everyday and give your talks? What is the main empowering message that you aim to share with the world?
Some days it is hard, but what drives me every day is my inner little girl who had lots to say but had a really bad speech impediment, and people thought I would never be able to clearly express myself. My main empowering message I aim to share with the world is “we all have a voice, and sometimes it takes us a while to find it, but once we do, we need to use our voice for good and to speak up against injustice.”
You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?
Thank you. I am not just a speaker, I am also a trainer, coach, and consultant. I am working on helping others find their voice while continuing to use my voice to create more accessible workplaces and world.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“So it’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it.”
— Carrie Fisher
This quote changed the way I thought about my abuse and trauma I experienced in 2017, while it was awful and my rock bottom, I did not let it be the end of me, but rather a new me, a more driven me. I was given trauma and CPTSD while also being autistic and disabled in other ways (I did another article on that on here). But I decided to take time with myself, heal from those situations, and figure out what and who I wanted to be moving forward. I wanted to talk about my experiences and help others in the workplace who suffered like I did, and have disabilities and neurodivergent conditions like I do. This led me to be a public speaker around Mental Health, Neurodiversity and Disability Inclusion because I wanted to show people indeed it is not what you are given but how you take it, and try to have an impact to change people’s understanding of these things and how it impacts how someone shows up in the world, but how you can still succeed and thrive.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker?” Please share a story or example for each.
1 . Engage the Audience: The audience loves to feel like they are part of the experience of the speaker rather than just observing. This makes you more memorable. Ask them questions, ask them for their thoughts. This allows you to have a vocal break while also ensuring that the audience is paying attention and keeping their interest.
2 . Be adaptable: Have your content prepared and ready, but also be ready to improvise and go with the flow of the audience and the room.
This looks like having a script of what you are going to say, but also knowing when to go a little off script for a couple of moments throughout, and get back on script when need be. This allows for a better learning experience for all involved, including yourself.
3 . Do not freak out about little details, but instead focus on the message: As long as you know your message for your presentation, do not worry about the little details; the fear of forgetting the little details leads to greater overall fear, so instead remember your message and make sure that it is clear to your audience.
4 . Be true to yourself and your story: When you speak, you are speaking for your own lived experience, and that is powerful. No one knows your story quite like you do. This is your chance to share parts of your story with others, and you can share as much or as little as you would like. But by being true to yourself and your story, people can see that, and they respect it.
5 . Be Prepared: Know your material, know the nuances of your material. You do not have to have full scripts memorized, but have an idea of the message of your presentation and of each of your slides (if you have slides). Break into many different stories or situations that give relevance to your audience.
As you know, many people are terrified of speaking in public. Can you give some of your advice about how to overcome this fear?
My advice would be to find out what message you want to leave people with. I find most people struggle or have a fear of public speaking because they do not know what message they want to leave people with. It can be an overall message in your public speaking ventures or a message for each speaking topic. If you know the message that you want to leave people with, it allows you to speak naturally with more confidence and meaning.
You are a person of huge influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Oh, my goodness, there are so many movements, but I think a movement I would like to inspire is understanding intersectionality in both professional and personal settings because it allows us to understand a whole person and what makes them who they are. We need to understand how intersectionality connects us all and builds a sense of community. We need to understand that we are all worthy of human rights in the workplace and in our everyday lives.
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
I would love to have a private chat with Christy Carlson Romano. I loved her as Kim Possible as a little girl, and I love her new career path; she has gone down. She is an inspiration to me.
Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?
https://linktr.ee/sydneyelainebutler — Here is a link with various ways to follow my work and I on social media.
This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
Inspirational Women Of the Speaking Circuit: Sydney Elaine Butler Of Accessible Creates On The Five… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.