Rich Watts is the founder of Further Communications and was a speaker at the last DisruptHR Bristol event. We asked him to share his top five reasons that you need to be speaking at the next DIsruptHR event in 2026…
Your ideas deserve to be heard.
You are brilliant. You have unique experiences. You have great ideas. Those ideas deserve to be heard. DisruptHR is all about bringing new ideas and inspiration to the audience. Your thoughts and inspiration could be what changes the career or life of an audience member.
What a power to have.
That might sound over-the-top. But think of all the speakers that you have been inspired by in the past; at work, at school on YouTube. They started out just like you. The ideas you share don’t have to be world-changing, but they might just be the spark that lights up change within the audience.? Our triggers collide with other people’s triggers. A small friction suddenly snowballs into a bigger conflict. “Being right” starts to matter more than “doing the right thing.”
This is the best audience you will ever have.
The DisruptHR audience are curious. They want to hear your ideas.
The DisruptHR audience smile a lot. This is reassuring if you are a nervous newbie speaker.
Most of the audience work in HR. It’s well-known that this means they have to be naturally lovely and supportive people.
You could not get a better audience. They have signed-up to hear your ideas, they will positively encourage you and they want you to succeed. If this is your first (or even your fiftieth) time speaking, this is the perfect audience to have in front of you.
Everyone will know you.
Standing on stage literally puts you front and centre in your audience’s minds. If you want to position yourself as an expert or raise awareness for a cause or idea that you are passionate about, then standing up to speak is a great thing to do.
Once you have that microphone in your hand your power is (almost) limitless. Use it to inspire your audience and you will be amazed at how many positive conversations it generates afterwards.
I’ll help you to succeed.
I am a public speaking geek. Supporting people to develop the skills to communicate to groups is what I do. I love seeing speakers succeed.
With this in mind, I have offered to help all of the speakers at the next DisruptHR Bristol event to write, refine and rehearse their talk. If you sign-up as a speaker I will join you for an hour of free 1:1 coaching to make sure that your performance is the very best it can be. You will be brilliant.
Mild discomfort drives change.
If you’ve read this far then I reckon you are seriously considering standing up to speak at a DisruptHR event. Maybe you’re excited and ready to sign-up, or maybe there’s still a little flutter of nervousness at the thought.
It’s perfectly natural to feel nervous about being on stage, it shows that you recognise how valuable that opportunity is and how much you want to succeed.
Want to beat that moment of nervousness as you speak your first words? Focus on the huge feeling of accomplishment and the buzz that you will get when you receive that huge round of applause at the end of your talk – there really is no feeling like it!
What next?
There are three things you can do right now. Choose one or choose all of them:
- Click here to sign up for our newsletter and be the first to access tickets — join us as part of the amazing audience at the next DisruptHR event!
- Click here to sign-up as a speaker at the next DisruptHR Bristol event (go on, you know you want to!) Leave your talk title and brief description and we’ll schedule a call.
- Click here to follow me on LinkedIn, learn more about Further and to receive lots of lovely tips and techniques that will help you to communicate successfully at work.