When it comes to building your career, growing a business, or pursuing a meaningful goal, there is one advantage that is often overlooked: having someone willing to advocate for you. Everyone needs someone in their corner, especially at their place of work.

Whether speaking for a club or as a keynote speaker, you may find yourself behind a podium delivering a speech or presentation (or perhaps accepting an award… if so, go you!). When you finally find yourself behind a podium, there are plenty of common traps we all fall into and mistakes we inevitably make.

One of the biggest traps I have seen in my career is companies promoting great analysts to leaders. Now, I get the thought process behind this mistake. You see someone doing amazing work, and you think to yourself… “They have done such a great job with their work so far; I bet they will continue to do a great job leading others.”

This one may seem like a no-brainer, but… log your work! We cannot expect to get credit for things that are not noted down somewhere. I cannot tell you how many individuals I have seen (because the number is too large to remember) who do a lot of work, like a lot, a lot - and fail to note the work they have done.

Filler word? What is that? To put it simply, it is our way of filling gaps between words or thoughts. If we don’t know what to say and we are trying to fill what would ordinarily be a pause in sound coming from our mouths while we think, we end up adding in a filler word.