All right, I'm going to go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining us for Ethics on the Mic. Come on in. I am Jamie Nolan, CEO of nsa. I am delighted to be here with my panelists, Lenora Billings Harris, CSP CPAE Cavett recipient and Global Speaking Fellow. We have Michelle Villalobo, CSP board member, and Terry Brock, CSP CPAE and Cabot recipient. Welcome and past president. So thank you so much for being here.

This is about what are some common issues that speakers face relative to ethics and integrity in your field? And sometimes it's about bringing awareness to things that speakers might not even think about because they haven't been in the situation before. And also just to have a conversation. This is not us being the ethics police. This is not us trying to make any accusations. But we know that there's a lot of blurred lines out there, branding pressures. AI is bringing on a whole new set of questions. And so I just thought it would be great to bring this as a topic to our members. You can come in.

I know it's a weird layout. I thought it would be great to bring some of our seasoned members who have been through many different challenges and obstacles throughout their career and just have a conversation. So you were given a little postcard when you walked in. We do want to try to answer a few questions that you might have on this topic towards the end. So we're just going to ask that you write your question or questions down. I will twice throughout this say, raise your hand if you have a question and Craig, our volunteer in the back of the room will pick them up and bring them up to me. But I'm going to go ahead and get us started because I think we have a lot of great content. So how this is going to work, we have kind of four parts.

The first part is what we really consider to be non negotiables and what we stand by as a profession. So we're just going to touch on a couple of those. The second part is going to be gray areas where we might need some more discernment as professionals about ethics and integrity. Then we'll take audience questions and then we'll just have a few takeaways and next steps. Sound good? All right, let's get started. Okay, so the first topic we're gonna talk about is truth in self promotion. We've often heard things such as, I'm a best selling author. Well, are you a best selling author on New York Times? Are you a best selling author on Amazon? Are you a best selling author for 48 hours and now you're at 10, 48 million on the list.

Like what does that mean? And then also, you know, a lot of members have honorary PhDs and things like that. So we're just going to talk about what those credentials may mean. So I'm going to start with Michelle. And Michelle, I would be curious for you to share. Where is the line between creative marketing and misleading the audience?

I think ultimately where you draw the line is what can you back up? Like what is it? Because when you say best selling, okay, people might interpret it in a number of different ways, but ultimately if you say in this category on, on Amazon, then you've backed it up and it, and it. I think people respond more to that kind of authenticity and it backs up your claims. I think it makes you seem more credible when you tell us why and how. Your call calling yourself a best selling author, ultimately I think the line is when you're intentionally trying to make it something that you're not. And ultimately I think when I check in with myself, like, am I and is this truthful? Is this not truthful? One of the big barometers that I use personally is if I'm attached to something, if I'm attached to being perceived a certain way, then I might be inclined to misrepresent. So. So the first step for me is always kind of like releasing any sort of attachment for my ego. Do a little bit of inner work so that I know, all right.

It doesn't matter if somebody thinks I'm better or worse. Does that make sense?

If it doesn't feel good, listen to your gut.

Right?

Yep. Great. Thank you. Lenora, in your experience and what you've seen throughout your career, do you feel that we should establish shared language for things like best selling author or award winning speaker, things like that?