Ep. 47 How To Be An Unforgettable Communicator with David Henderson

All right, take three.

Hey, Darren Lacroix, what do you get when you cross a civil rights lawyer with a Bible teacher, with a husband, with a toastmaster who's unashamed to show emotion in a presentation?

I don't know, but it sounds like a setup to a great riddle.

Well, the answer lies in my dear friend David Henderson, who is also the 2010 Toastmasters World Champion of public speaking.

But.

But that's only the beginning of his story and the tip of the iceberg. Wait till you hear this story.

Yeah, you're gonna love how he has the emotion authentically that I envy. Check this out.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Present podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story, and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation, Ahas. Let's dive right in.

Darren. Let's welcome David Henderson, world champion civil rights lawyer and a face now seen on MSNBC and cnn, published in the Washington Post and Newsweek. I gotta take a breath. David, welcome, my friend.

Thanks. Good morning.

Thanks for having me on the show, y'.

All.

We're thrilled to have you on podcast stage.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the last time I saw you both together was after the world championship when I won it 10 years.

Ago, when the throngs of people around you and they whisked past us and they're like, darren, Mark.

I think they were trying to finally get a world champion with hair. Darren.

That'S actually a good point. Fair point.

I've gotten to know David over the last 10 years on a personal level as well. I was so blessed. I was in Texas for a business trip and he and his wife hosted me, then fiance hosted me for dinner. You can tell someone's brilliance, and if you go to his corporate website, they'll tell you David is a good speaker who improved through Toastmasters, but he credits his absolute best speech, his number one speech outside the courtroom was to convince Dr. Josephine Thinwa to say yes to him. And I love when they call her the thin one because she's so thin. But he married a really smart person, and like me, I think he married up.

I did. Big job. And that's above our mantle place at home too.

That's wonderful. All kidding aside, David, your journey I find fascinating because many people find toastmasters to really build themselves and to build their career. But yet you were doing well as a state prosecutor in courtrooms, doing opening closing arguments. But you joined Toastmasters after you were doing that. Tell us about that.

I did. My journey as a lawyer is a big part of how my communication skills developed. I knew I wanted to be a trial lawyer, and if you want to be a trial lawyer, you've got to go someplace where you get to try cases. So I migrated from being at a silk stocking law firm to the DA's office. Once I got to the DA's office, two things happened. One, I realized that the things you need to know to communicate well in a courtroom, they do not teach you in law school. And most lawyers never learn those skills simultaneously. I was tapping into something that ended up making my communication really effective that I didn't understand. But what I did know is it was making me emotional when I was delivering closing arguments in cases. And to be frank, I felt embarrassed about it. And so I joined Toastmasters initially planning to eliminate the emotion in my communication altogether. And when I met you at the World Championship, I think I was between stages two and three of what came after that.

Well, now I want to hang here for a second. You were trying to minimize the emotion in your closing arguments. Now, you know, Darren and I here at stagetime, we teach people the power of using emotion, and you were trying to actually limit that. Did you consider that a liability in your line of work?

That's a tough question to answer. I think the basic answer to the question is yes. And I think saying I was trying to reduce it was an understatement. I was trying to eliminate it altogether. And to put this in perspective, after the World Championship. So after I won the Toastmasters World Championship, I actually worked with an acting coach for a period of time, and my hope was that she could teach me to act like a stoic person when I was delivering closing arguments. It's crazy that that's what ended up making my closing arguments great, but that's how insecurities work in communication, right? It doesn't matter what other people think. It matters how you process what's going on.

Now, Darren, I can see you cringing when he said, I'm trying to eliminate emotion. You're like, no. What's going through your mind, brother?

Well, I'm just thinking of when he was on stage at the World Championship, emoting so much literal crocodile tears because he cared so much about his audience and his message and that I had never, ever seen before in the history of the contest. And that, I believe, is one of the reasons you came out on top, because you were just so open and so real and so raw. And I hope the rest of the story goes that you now use that in the courtroom to your advantage, because that's who you are, 100%.

What struck me is the authenticity of the emotion. That's what Darren is saying. It didn't appear to me you were trying to manipulate the audience to curry favor and go, oh, poor David and his friend. That was not what I saw. I saw a genuine, honest, heartfelt emotion. And I hope I didn't kill your thought that you're going to share just now.

No, not at all. You're making a point that I think we're going to need to discuss, and that is there's several aspects of how you incorporate emotion into presentation, But I think the most important thing for people to keep in mind is that the emotion isn't something that you generate. The emotion is something that's already there. You might need to find a way to tap into it. And that's actually a critically important point, especially when it comes to sales. But in terms of my progress, stage number one was elimination. I thought, let me just eliminate this, because that's the way most people in a business context and absolutely in a legal contest speak. They do not include emotion, not at all. And so I thought, I need to get out of this habit of letting this even tap into my communication. So level number two was thinking, okay, I have failed miserably at trying to eliminate the emotion. So if I can contextualize the emotion, maybe that will be enough. And I have a great example from a speech contest where that happened that I can share with you later when I realized, okay, now I've learned how to do this. What I had not learned how to do yet, and what I didn't even realize was a possibility, was if you communicate the emotion correctly and you contextualize it correctly, it becomes an immersive experience for the people who are listening to you. And that's when the communication becomes really powerful. So I have a speech that I gave about my mother forgiving my grandmother on her deathbed of abandoning her as a child. And after I learned how to really deliver that speech, I had people walking up to me saying, your speech meant a lot to me, because here's my story and how it impacted me. I didn't anticipate that was even a possibility, but that's where the use of emotion ended up carrying through. In terms of how I communicate. And last thing I'll footnote in case you want to explore it anymore is that all of these discoveries were part of the development of my communication through what I was learning in Toastmasters. And it took me a while to process exactly what I was learning and how it works.

And Mark, let me jump in real quick. For those of you listening, contextualize. I just looked it up on Dictionary.com to put a linguistic element in action in a context, especially one that is a characteristic or appropriate as for purposes of study. Okay, so forgive me, David. Mark knows the routine. When he uses big words, I'm like, oh, man, hold on.

I love it.

It's a running theme here that I am the word nerd. And I'll use a word like plethora. And Darren will go, okay. And once in a while, he'll use a nice word. Nicely done, Darren. He says yes. He scores.

So now tell me with plethora, he told the three amigos joke, did it?

Not that time. But, you know, it's interesting that you said this progression. Level one, level two, and so on. And seeing that emotion is valid, yet you confessed to me in conversation, not only did you use emotion, but you tended to use costume to relive situations. Is it the littlest doctor or the youngest world's best doctor?

Yeah, the best medicine.

The best medicine. And he had to put a lab coat on. Write the story of your mom and your grandmother. And then in the aviators, you had the bomber jacket. Then the World War II flying hat with the goggles. And you told me that right before you were gonna go to speak, you began to second guess yourself. And you said, should I take this off? What am I doing? It's ridiculous. What was going through your mind at that point?

That's one of the biggest aspects of my experience as a speaker. It's hard to be different. It's easier to be like everyone else. And that presents a challenge for everyone who's trying to improve their communication. I've had people argue me down on this. I don't think they listen to what I'm saying when I say this. We're afraid of public speaking as a society. Everyone is. But it's not because we're afraid of talking. We're afraid of being who we are in front of other people. Like, I stand by that firmly. We think I'm not smart enough, I'm not cool enough, I'm not good looking enough, I'm too short, I don't have enough hair, whatever it is. We don't want to be different, and we're afraid of how people are going to respond to it. So using things like costumes, which I'll footnote this, the costumes were not intended to add any drama to the presentation. The costumes were actually intended to save time, and they helped me do that significantly through nonverbal cues. Now, that said, when I was backstage before the World Championship, those of you who entered the Toastmasters contest, if you make it to the World Championship, they actually have like, a backstage with coffee and muffins in your day. In your day. That's right. It's crazy, but one of my fellow contestants who had made it to the finals before walks up to me, and he sees me in half of my costume, and he says, is that what you're planning to wear up on stage? And I don't know how to tell him, no, I'm actually going to put on a helmet with some goggles. And he said, yeah, I think this is always so much harder for younger Toastmasters. And. Yeah, I know. Wow. By this time, I learned, just keep your ipods in, listen to your music. And so I put them back in. When I do presentations, sometimes I tell a joke. I was this close to walking up to him after I won and saying, you know, I've got a song on my ipod for you. How you like me now?

Whoa, nice.

Stop me. I didn't. But, yeah, no, it made me scared. I was like, this is what I'm gonna do is nuts. Like, it's so crazy. Maybe I need to tone it down. And I decided, you know what? About 15 seconds into the speech, there was, like, a whoop that I did. Said, I'm gonna put all this nervous energy into that whoop, which is really, really loud, and I'm just not gonna look back. I'm gonna see how it works.

Well, I'm glad you did. And I know so many people after that presentation at a contest had remarked he was crying on stage, but it didn't. Again, it didn't seem contrived or manipulative in any way. It was just part of you telling the story. And I remember you telling someone afterwards that you were trying to stop crying and you realized, you know what? It's not gonna happen. If I can let people understand why I'm crying and connect with them there, then it is a game changer for you. What has your experience been over the last 10 years? Dealing with that.

So after the World Championship and what you have to understand, I wasn't a professional speaker when I went to the World Championship. I was very much a student of communication. I still consider myself to be that. On a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of what my potential is and how much I've tapped into it, I think I'm at like a 6 or 7 right now, at like a 4 or 5 at the time of the world championship. So what has surprised me is how positively people have responded to me using emotion and storytelling in other contexts. I was asked to start doing trainings for other prosecutors after I won the world championship. And I told my wife, I'm really nervous. Prosecutors are a tough group. I don't think they're going to laugh and like stories. So I did a presentation at an annual training event. I said, you know what? I'm just going to suck it up the same way I did in Toastmasters. I'm going to give this a shot. And the response was overwhelmingly positive. Overwhelmingly positive. And what's amazing is not how positive the response was. The amazing part was how afraid I was to be different in the context of giving those presentations. Now, when it comes to how emotion can be used positively or not, I got really lucky in that my emotions were so strong I couldn't contain them. When you try to contain emotion that's there, sometimes it can present a significant problem. So the example I was talking about from a speech contest earlier that I'll give is the year that I won the world championship at the division level. I cried when I gave my speech so that another contestant and other people said they found the other contestants tears to be very awkward. And I found myself thinking that's strange because I cried way more than he did. So I started trying to figure out, and this is a critical aspect of improving your communication, is figuring out how to receive and interpret feedback. Because people can tell you if they like something or not. Not everybody is on the level where they can explain exactly why they liked what you did or not and how that impacts what you should do or not next time. So when I started talking to the people who were giving me this feedback, I realized that his problem was that he hadn't contextualized why he was emotional. He was explaining this stamp collection. It was like a military coin collection. For certain experiences in the military, you get a commemorative coin. He had collected his over the years and he became emotional because one of the coins was connected to a friend of his and an event that some other friends did every year, memorializing the friend who was no longer with him. And so what I found myself explaining to him was, look, instead of just holding up the collection of medals and going through them historically in chronological order, which is a lot for an audience to receive unless they already have some familiarity with what you're doing. You need to start off with a story about this yearly event that you do. And what you do is you say, and this is not perfect. This is just a sketch of what you would write. Same bar. Five gentlemen show up the same way they do every other year. There's six chairs in front of them. First person steps up, puts down his medal. Second, third, fourth, fifth person steps up, does the same thing. Everybody's waiting on the sixth person. And when no one shows up, the other five guys raise their glasses and say, for Charlie. And then you explain why the medal is important. And then you walk through the history of your medals and you're going to become emotional because you're thinking about your friend. But now people understand why you're emotional, and it doesn't seem awkward. It makes perfect sense. Same way a father's emotional when he gives away his daughter, or military personnel are emotional when they're talking about losing a friend in battle. When you understand it, then not only does it make. I thought it'll make sense, but I didn't know is it also becomes more powerful. Does that make sense? That does.

And Darren, that's how you contextualize a story. Okay, I'm sorry. I could not resist doing that. We banter back and forth every week about this.

I love it. I love it.

I'm so appreciate you giving us a deeper insight into the power of emotion. Because so many people don't understand an emotion authentically and genuinely can be such a powerful means of connecting with the audience. And people don't often think of Darren as being an emotional guy. But I've got to know over the last 19 years, and I know when he shares some of the stories that he has from his heart, the impact is just as powerful. He's more than just stage time. Stage time. Stage time and humor. And I really appreciate that approach you take. And I think of this in the context of, okay, here is a gentleman in Toastmasters. He's learning, he's growing, he's changing, but he's got to go back to court and put bad guys in jail. It almost seems like a dichotomy. How do you balance that, David? Or did you, when you were a prosecutor, how did you balance that?

No, it's tough to balance. And it took me a while to figure out how I was balancing it. So what I noticed is the only time that the motion ever became an issue was during closing argument. It was never an issue at any other time. When I was working on a case and I finally figured out why, and this relates to communication that goes well beyond a courtroom. I would. I'd say it this way. It's. The issue is knowing your product, understanding whatever it is you're trying to sell. And thinking about speeches in court as closing arguments is actually a mistake if you're trying to do better at giving them, because you've got to think of it as a persuasive argument, as a sales approach. And knowing your product for me, is knowing my client. So when you're representing the state of Texas, technically your client is the state, but it's more the person who has been wronged. So I was working in special crimes, and we're working with violent crimes and special crimes. And I'll tell you a story that actually puts in perspective what I'm saying, Even though this was not a court argument. So I was working with this family. My very last assignment was any DWI that resulted in a death came straight to my desk. And this young man had been out on a Friday night. He was volunteering to help children with special needs. So I don't have children yet, let alone kids who are in college. But if I raised a child who was college age and they spent their Friday evening helping children with special needs, I would feel that I had done a good job. Well, a drunk driver was driving on the access road at 100 mph and rear ended him. And forgive me, this is the only horrific fact that I'll deliver, but it's actually important for what I'm going to say. If you've ever been in a car crash and your head kind of jerks forward and you get hit from behind, the extreme version of that will kill you. And that's what happened to this young man. His head jerked back so hard that it severed his spinal cord from the base of his skull. Again, that's the only negative detail I'm going to give, and I apologize for that. But I need to tell you that so that you understand what it was like for me to be talking to his mother, his father, and his sister in a conference room explaining that the maximum penalty for that conduct in Texas is 20 years. And juries don't typically give the maximum penalty. They had a history at the time of giving offenders probation for those types of offenses. And what I told his parents was, there are times, though, when you need to decide what the right thing to do. Is. And you disregard what the general protocol is. And I think the right thing to do here is for your son to have his day in court, even though he can't be here through us taking this case to trial. And I explained why I felt that way. And I have this weird thing. I can't always tell how I'm being perceived, which is a whole nother topic of discussion. But I remember after the meeting, I reached to shake a sister's hand, I reached to shake his dad's hand, I reached to shake his mom's hand. And before I could even shake his mom's hand, she just reached forward, she grabbed me and she hugged me, and she held onto me for a long time. And so when I was delivering closing arguments, I was thinking about experiences like that. It's really hard to not tear up when you're doing that. But what was more important, I realized than the tearing up was the fact that I had those experiences to build on when I was giving the closing arguments in the first place. And that's actually what was making them so powerful.

Wow.

Again, context. It's not just a case being argued or a closing argument. The context was the experience you had with the family. So the case was not just a case, it was a family. It was much deeper, it was much broader. And what I'm hearing is when you were doing that work as a prosecutor, I'm sure now a civil rights lawyer, it's not just a case. It's human beings. It's family, it's. It's emotion. It's an entire experience. And I would wonder if that's ill advised for an attorney to get so connected to the cases. Is that kind of frowned upon in the profession? I don't know, the law profession itself. I'm curious about that, David.

I would say no, not for trial lawyers. And what you have to understand is most attorneys are not good communicators, not by a long shot. It's a misconception that attorneys are good communicators. We typically are not. And to the extent that some lawyers are thought of as good communicators, I think it's because the bar is so low in terms of communication skills that by definition, we do talk more than most other professions. So if you compare, we're going to do better if we just have to stand up and give a presentation. But on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say your average attorney is performing at a 3 or 4. I would also say that if your case is only a case, nothing more you're probably going to lose. Your best shot is 50, 50. If what you're selling is a product to you and nothing more, you're probably not going to do very well at sales. And the list goes on and on. It has to be about something more. But like most of what I've learned when it comes to communication, this resulted from other things that I learned. So most of my communication comes from an experience where I didn't understand something or was facing a challenge, including how I need to connect. And I can tell you the story about that happened, if you'd like to.

Hear it, of course.

All right. So in San Antonio, Texas, when you're in the special Crimes division, you start off on domestic violence cases. And part of what you have to do to become better as an attorney at communication, and I think this is true for anyone who's trying to improve their communication. There are two ways to sell something. You can either assume that your product is perfect. And I know people who do that. They drink the Kool Aid, they assume their product is perfect, and that's how they sell it. I think the superior approach is to believe in your product, but to also recognize the things that are not perfect about your product and learn how to market those in a way that's meaningful to people. So this is a bigger issue than some people like to admit, because it requires us to acknowledge things that we may not like, but that are still true. So one of the things that I didn't like, but that was true in San Antonio was that a lot of people did feel like, I don't know what the issue is. If a man hits his wife or his girlfriend and they don't have a problem with it, why should anybody else? And so when you're trying these cases, you have to find a way of making it clear exactly what's going on. And there was an occasion when I was talking to a woman about her case, and I realized, I'm not talking to her like she's a person. I'm talking to her like she's nothing more than a witness and an object in my case. And when I realized that, I just sat with her, I started talking to her. I was amazed by how much she taught me. I was also amazed by how close she and I became. And I was able to present her case in a way I would have never imagined before. I actually started getting to know her. And here's the thing. That's part of what being a lawyer is. If you look at my degree, my degree says attorney. And Counselor at Law. Everybody forgets about the end counselor part, but I'd make the argument I can probably find something similar in most any profession in terms of what you're supposed to be doing.

That's amazing.

Wow.

And counselor, I don't recall anyone ever telling me that before. But the counselor piece really speaks to the need to communicate effectively with your client. And I have to be careful here because you mentioned know your product, and if we assume that what we're selling is the same product, we haven't gone deep enough. You were able to see her not just as a witness, but she's a human being who was victimized. And having that conversation and having that communication with her, not just speaking, but listening, really led you to building the kind of relationship. And what I also appreciate is you speak about communicators, not just attorneys, and let people think it was only for attorneys. This is for everybody who communicates well and the desire you have to continually improve. And I got. I meant to give you a little chuckle when you said attorneys lowering the bar. Was that a pun?

Bar.

Attorneys lowering the bar.

It should have been. I wish it had been that intentional. It will be next time.

The reason is I'm also known for all the bad puns and I've been pretty good today. And, Darren, I'm going to try not to.

Yeah, we're not done yet.

But this particular journey from attorney and toastmaster certainly is fascinating. But you've had to also expand your communication that you present on paper as well, having written in Newsweek and also the Washington Post, and you present short presentations. You get six minutes on MSNBC or CNN since you changed from prosecution to civil rights. And that transfer sounds interesting. I don't want to get into any heavy material right now, but you have to give different types of presentations. You get two minutes on CNN or msnbc. What do you tell the person who tries, who wants to master table topics, for example? You get two minutes. What techniques have you learned to be precise and concise, but very clear?

I think the most important thing for me to note here is that I don't believe that the nature of the communication changes based on the environment or the time limitations that you have. People who participate in Toastmasters, I'll hear them say things like, you know what? This doesn't help me because I don't give five to seven minute speeches at work. I've got to give presentations that last 20 minutes or 30 minutes. My response has always been, if you understand what's going on in what you're doing in your Toastmaster speeches, then you can convert that into a speech of any time frame. It doesn't matter if you're giving a two minute speech, a 20 minute speech, or 30 minute speech. And I keep referencing Toastmasters because I believe in Toastmasters very, very strongly. And I also believe that if you join Toastmasters and you participate in the speech contest and you master the basic skills, I think any person can make it to the district level at the contest. And if you're willing to work hard, I think any person can win at district level. Once you go beyond that, you get into other things. Now, that said, Mark, you asked me specifically about table topics. Part of what people don't appreciate about table topics is it's a mix of giving a response to the question that you receive and also thinking through what your overall ethos and strategy is when it comes to communication. If you name 10 people that you think are great communicators, part of what you're going to find is that those people also have deeply set values and principles that directly correspond with how they communicate. And I often come across people who say they want to become better communicators. And they'll ask, oh, so how should I stand? Or how should I move my hands? And my question is, well, tell me what you're about first as a communicator. And they normally can't tell you. And our response is, well, if you don't know what you're about, if you don't know what your organization is about, if you can't tell me that, how can you expect to deliver a message that anyone's gonna wanna listen to? Once you know those things, then it gives you the material that you need to deliver an effective presentation in a short context, which is critical because not only do they only give you like six minutes when you're giving a news presentation, they also don't tell you what they're gonna ask you before they actually ask you.

Now, just for context, Darren, before I turn it over to you, for those who are unfamiliar with Toastmasters, the table topic is a portion of a meeting where a topic master asks volunteers to respond to a question. It's extemporaneous, you don't know the question, it is posed to you, and you have one to two minutes to respond in a mini speech to that question. And David, you mentioned on TV you get six minutes, but you don't know what's coming.

You also don't know. I say six because you don't know how long you're going to actually Have. There's one more thing I want to add in here, Mark, and I apologize. Darren, I know that we're going to go to you next, but I just want to footnote that part of what I think presents a challenge for people in communication is the way they approach trying to learn. I will say this. If you want to become better at communicating, I think you have to be a bit obsessive about it. And I say that because I am obsessive about it. And sometimes people ask, well, when do you practice? How do you practice? And I think I'm practicing every single time I chat with someone. And for me, that's one of the main ways I improve my communication is through chatting with people. The great thing about that is it'll also make you a better person and it'll help your life become better because people will look forward to speaking with you when you start to think about things like how do I improve at table topics? How do I improve at holding people's attention? My question is, walk me through your daily routine. And someone will often say, well, I go by Starbucks at 7:30. Like, okay, let's stop right there. Do the people at Starbucks like seeing you each morning well enough to remember your name and anything about you? Do they look forward to seeing you when you walk inside the room? Since my wife and I have worked on improving our communication, we have received so much free stuff it is insane. We got upgraded to business class on our honeymoon flight just because we chatted with the person behind the counter. It's crazy. We've had upgrades at restaurants. It has been insane how much better our life is because we are courteous with everyone and polite. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm talking too much.

No, no, no, you're not talking. I want you to finish. This is my little signal to Mark. Let me jump in before you jump.

In, because all yours, buddy.

When we have piggyback thoughts, we want to continue in that vein before we go to another vein. So it's a strategy. But I want to know, because when you say you're practicing when you're talking or when you're chatting or you're talking to people. Now I want to be clear, what do you mean by that? Because somebody can just yap and not increase or improve their presentation skills or communication skills just because they're doing it, how do you look at that?

True. That's an excellent point. And let's take a step back. To become better at communicating, I think you need to least three things. One, you need a mentor. Who can give you sound advice on how you go about improving, but you also need a friend who will give you feedback, honestly. And my wife is that person for me. My wife will tell me when something is boring. She'll tell me when it sounds like something is self interested. And now, mind you, we're married now, but we actually met. If she were here, she would say our first date was a Toastmasters meeting. Which is not true. It is not true. She did go to a meeting early on. And Darren, this is getting to your point. Believe it or not, she heard me give a speech and I asked her, what did you think? And I think she gave me one of the most intelligent responses I've ever heard. She said, and I keep in mind, my wife is super smart. She's an MD, PhD. It's amazing how down to earth she is given how smart she is. But she's highly educated, super smart. She's also a genuinely nice person. And she told me, mind you, I've known her for a few months at this point, like maybe even a few weeks. She said, if you had been one of my professors in college, you would have been my favorite professor. And I'm thinking, awesome, that's great feedback. Then she goes, but I don't think that's a good thing when you're talking to everyday people. So I was like, you know what? That's a blow. That is a good comment. And so when you're talking to people and you're chatting with them and people don't develop an ear for doing this, you have to be able to develop an intuition for when people genuinely like listening to you and when they don't. And you can do that by asking yourself this question, am I contributing to this person's day? Yes or no, Am I making their day a little bit better because of what I'm telling them? Are they smiling at me? Do they look like they're happier? Do they look like they're calmer? One of my favorite things that happened, you can probably tell there's a trend here. I chat with people who are behind the counter where I shop. One of my favorite things that someone ever told me was there's a young woman who was behind the counter. This was like during the after Thanksgiving sales, the mad rush on the stores. She just said, I think this may sound a little weird, so please forgive me, but you have a very calming presence. And I really appreciate that today when people are telling you things like that. There was a flight attendant on one of my flights and I was, I Noticed people were just. They were grumpy, they were angry because the flight had been delayed. And I found myself thinking, I don't want to contribute to this. I want to be positive here. And so I just tried to be polite. I had no indication that she even noticed, because I'm bad at telling what people think about me. I'm just. I've got these gifts when it comes to interpreting what people are thinking and feeling, but sometimes I'm bad at determining how it's being directed at me. And I remember I had to ask her for my coat at the end of the flight. And I was thinking, I really want to do this politely because people have been giving her a hard time this whole time. And as she's handing it back to me, she just looks really awkwardly, and I'm like, man, I hope I didn't do something to offend her. And she says, I just want you to know you are a beautiful person. And then she handed me my sports coat. And for me, that's the goal when you're interacting with people. You want for people to be sharing those types of things, because, honestly, that's so nice. It's probably awkward for her to say it in that context, but your goal should be to get those types of responses from people. And it's not just to be nice to people, to make the world a better place, but that also helps you the next time you're writing a speech or a presentation. In terms of knowing how to communicate to people in a way that they're going to find meaningful and of value. Does that make sense? Hmm.

Mark, we're getting a schooling here. We might. We might have to recap with the whole episode as the recap.

I did want to ask one more question, though, because not only have you shown your dexterity as a communicator in recent months, and we're recording this now In July of 2020, you've been published in Newsweek and the Washington Post as well. You've done appearances on MSNBC and cnn. And as a speaker giving arguments and going to court, that doesn't always translate to being a good writer. Good enough for Newsweek and Washington Post. How did you come up with having that dexterity in both the writing and the spoken word?

I'm glad you asked that question, because I remember my mentor and toastmasters came to me one day and told me something that just made my heart stop. He looked at me and he said, your problem at this point is not with the speaking, it's with the writing. And when he said, that my heart just stopped because I found myself thinking, how am I going to become a better writer? I was in my 30s at the time, and my thought was, you're supposed to know what you're supposed to know about writing up to this point. And I put it this way. If I am a better speaker, which I am because of Toastmasters, I would say I'm 100 times better at speaking because of Toastmasters. I am 1000 times better at writing because of Toastmasters. If there's a disconnect between your speaking skill and your writing skill, you're doing yourself a disservice. And I'm just going to be real and say it this way. I think that if I work with someone on speaking, on speaking better, by the time they get through their basic manual in Toastmasters, I firmly believe I can teach that person to talk as well as I can talk. The issue at that point is how good their content is, how good is what you're communicating. And that's a function of writing, which takes a lot more. You have to. You know, at one point, I started reading a lot more to improve my writing, which good writers tend to do. Josephine had a list of, like, 75 traits he wanted her ideal partner to have. I've never asked her to go through just how. How much I failed to meet up to that list. But I will say that one of my musts was I wanted to marry someone who I trusted to edit my writing. And I 100% have. And so you have to practice at it. You have to work at it. And if you cannot draw a direct line, and I mean this, a direct line between your ability to speak and your ability to write, then you're not improving in the ways that you should be as a communicator.

Wow, Mark, I love that we get when we sit down with some of the best presenters in the world. And what I love, David, about you is you're not someone who's just working to be a professional speaker. You're working to be a better person and taking what you learn from Toastmasters, as they place that schooling and applying it to what you do every day. Tell me, when you're. When you were doing prosecution, not persecution.

Prosecutor.

When you're persecuting the prosecution, when you're in front of a jury, what are some of the. Let's just say, what are a couple of mistakes that you see a lot of lawyers make in their presentation to the jury? And then what are some of those ideas that you know are like, we call them in stage time, University must avoid and must have. Give us a couple of those.

Absolutely. People tend to assume. Lawyers tend to assume if I tell them what the law is, then they have to follow it, which is a ridiculous notion. That's not true at all. Lawyers also assume that what people. Lawyers believe. I'd say what's even a bigger problem than that is lawyers believe they can change people's minds by giving speeches. And that's nonsense. I know that sounds crazy, because a big part of my job is persuasive communication. But you communicate with people by tapping into things they already believe what they already identify with. And this also came out of adversity, because after I won the world, so I didn't tell my boss I was entering the speech contest.

I was just scared.

My boss was a super intimidating lady. Super intimidating. So I didn't tell her. But she was a media hawk. She just, like, had an eagle eye for picking up what happens. So she learned that I won the world championship before I even told anyone about it. And I had planned a day to come back and kind of detox. I'm sitting at Starbuck. I get this call that says, no caller id. I'm like, oh, goodness, this is the front office. And someone gets on the line, and they say, the boss wants to talk to you about something. Can you get down here? And I'm like, I'm on my day off, but I can be there in 15 minutes if I have to be, because I was scared of her. Everybody was scared of her. And then so they said, no, let me let her know. And they called me back, like, 10 minutes later, and they said, no, she just wanted to talk to you about this speech contest she entered. And I wanted to let her know. And so they said, you can just show up whenever you're back in the office. And so I'm like, okay. I relaxed. And when I walked into her office to speak with her, she had this majestic desk. Like I said, she was an intimidating person. She walks around from the desk, she extends her hand. She said something I never thought about before. She said, every lawyer wants to be the best communicator in the world. And I was like, that's pretty awesome. I should use that line. I'm saying that because she made a huge deal out of the fact that I won. And then one day, she sits me down in her office. She's like, you're a good communicator. You're super creative. And my head is just swelling. I'm like, okay, this is awesome. I love what she's saying. And she said, so from now on, what I want you to do is use all that brain power and all that creativity to figure out the maximum charge for these offenders. And every time, I want you to ask for maximum punishment. And again, my heart dropped because I was thinking, that's not my job. Arguing maximum punishment every single time is not my job. Wow. So I went home and I told Josephine, I said, there may come a day when I come home and tell you I've been let go, because I tell her I'm not going to do it in a particular case. And so what I started doing was I researched every case that she asked me to do that on extensively. Some of them I took to her and I said, my research indicates that we cannot try this case. We have to dismiss it for these reasons. I always had an ironclad argument, which was hard, though, because some of these were high profile cases. Every other time when I started doing this research, I found some detail that I did not know. And that detail made it possible for me to argue maximum punishment in a way that I had not anticipated. I'm talking for a long time, so I have a great example I can give you, but I don't want to talk too much.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Mark and I have no lives, so.

This is.

This is our life. So go ahead.

So we had a case with a woman who was driving while intoxicated. She's going the wrong way on the highway. She was three times the legal limit. And she ran head on into another driver who was also intoxicated, and she killed him. And again, is it a case where I think the jury is going to have a hard time with what happened? Yes, it is. Are they going to give the maximum sentence? Probably not. However, when I started researching the case, I was able to question because this witness, the woman who was on trial, also did something really smart. She got on the witness stand, she apologized to the family, and she was tearful in terms of saying she regretted what she did. But because I'd researched the case and because of what I learned through Toastmasters, I understood how best to ask her questions. And so I started off by saying her name was Frances. I said, frances, you just apologized to this jury and you said that you want them to show you leniency. Right. And I'm just going to give you the questions that I asked. You can imagine what the answers were. I think the questions tell the story. I said, don't you agree you have already been shown leniency and There was a long, awkward pause. And I'll repeat this one response. She said, I don't know what you mean. I said, I'm just asking you a simple question. Haven't you already been shown leniency? And she looked at me and she says, no. I said, okay, well, let's go back in time. You were arrested three years ago for dwi, but the police officer didn't even pull you over, did he? You pulled yourself over because you saw a police officer on the highway and you thought he was arresting your husband, but he wasn't arresting your husband, was he? At a completely different person in the car, but you were so intoxicated you couldn't tell, could you? And now your child was in the car with you when you pulled yourself over, weren't they? How old was your daughter at the time? Are you telling me that you honestly think this jury will believe you don't know how old your child was three years ago? How old is your child today? Okay, subtract three. Your daughter was 11 years old when you were driving while intoxicated, but you weren't charged with a felony. You were charged with a misdemeanor. Don't you think that's leniency? Answer. No. Okay. After that offense, you picked up another offense for driving while intoxicated a year later, and they didn't even revoke your probation and send you to jail. They gave you probation a second time because they know you're a single mom. Don't you think that's leniency? No. Fair enough. After you picked up that second dwi, you picked up another case of felony. And despite the fact that you were already on probation for two other cases and you now picked up a felony, they still gave you probation. Don't you think that's leniency? No. You messed up that probation. You violated it. And they were supposed to send you to jail for the violation. They didn't do it, though, did they? Don't you think that's leniency? And the list kept going on because she hadn't put it ignition interlock on her car. She wasn't supposed to be driving at all. And it built up to me asking her a question. I said, listen, I want to ask you a very basic question that I think needs to know. Are you here? And lawyers typically don't ask these types of questions. Lawyers ask long, convoluted questions with big words. So this question is something that I could not have asked before I joined Toastmasters. I simply asked her, francis, are you here because you did something wrong, or are you here because of someone else's mistake? And she paused for a long time, and she said, I'm here because of someone else's mistake. I said, okay, that's important for the jury to know. You bear no responsibility in your mind for what happened, do you? And she said, no. So the reason why that's important is because instead of just asking for maximum punishment and closing argument, what I said that I thought was justified was, look, I'm just going to say this plainly because there's no better way to say it. You have to put her away as long as you can. And this is why. You're not doing it to be mean and you're not doing it to be vindictive. You're doing it because you have to put as much time as possible between now and the first chance she gets to get behind the wheel of a car again, because she's made it clear that she's not going to stop. And here's the kicker. I called the defense lawyer after that case to tell her I actually thought she did a great job. And she said, you know what? Since you called and told me that I'm going to share something with you, and again, when you're trying to figure out how your communication works, this is an example of what you're looking for. She said, since you called me and I appreciate it, I'm going to tell you this. On my way out to my car, I met my client's sister, and she walked up to me and she said, you know what? That young man never met my sister before, but he has her pegged. That is exactly what she's like. And so I took that as an indication that what I was saying was meaningful. And so the lesson there, if you're not a lawyer, the lesson there, if you have to sell something, sometimes what you're selling isn't necessarily about what you're selling the way you think it is. You have to find some other way to communicate. And if you think I'm crazy, think about this. Those. I think they were the Folgers coffee commercials back in the 1980s. Folgers wasn't selling coffee with those commercials. They were selling a morning ritual that involved coffee. They were selling this aroma of coffee when you first wake up in the morning, that's gonna make people go out and buy coffee.

I don't know what you're talking about.

You gotta find a way to do that. Right?

Right. Gary, no coffee. Right. I appreciate that, Dave, because you mentioned that. And I Could hear it in my brain now. The best part of waking up. His phone is in your cup. I remember the jingle as well. David, I tell you this. I cannot believe this time has gone by so quickly. I have learned so much from you, and I haven't even talked about the media side of what you've last several days. But I do have one more question regarding using your communication and changing your career path from prosecutor to civil rights lawyer. And does that new role increase, decrease, alter the way you communicate, or is it more a passionate thing? Or is there no change at all when you change your career as far as how you communicate?

I wouldn't say there's no change at all because my learning curve is still almost 90 degrees when it comes to communication. I feel like I'm learning new things almost every day. When it comes to communication, I learned ways that I can do things better After I get nervous before every single speech, after every single speech, I look back over things I could have done better. I always have at least two or three things. Always, always, always I have at least two or three things I identify that I could have done better. Now, with that in mind, I would say that this role for me is a natural role for me that I think I've been spending my entire career working towards. I didn't want to be a prosecutor. I feel like I had to be in order to develop my trial skills. However, my experience having been a prosecutor makes me a more effective civil rights attorney. What I also like about this setting, and this is something that we haven't talked about, we haven't talked about part of what I have to do as a lawyer, which is, I call it combative communication. You have to learn how to be appropriate while also being confrontational. You have to learn how to have difficult conversations with people. You have to learn how to question people aggressively at times. Those aspects of my communication repertoire have also all been enhanced by toastmasters. But what I look forward to is going into a direction with my career where most and almost all of my communication can simply be the more positive aspects of communication. I feel like civil rights work is enabling me to do that, even though people on the other side are not always positive in terms of how they respond.

Man David, thank you so much for being here. Our audience are people who want to be better on the stage. So they're selling maybe an idea, a product, a service, their coaching, maybe their book that they're selling in the back of the room. If you were to sit down over a cup of coffee with somebody and somebody said, david, I really care about my message. I really want to be unforgettable. What would you tell me?

The advice is so specific for every person, depending on how you're speaking. But I think here's the most general advice I can give. The way you think about communication will largely determine how you develop your communication. And I hear people oftentimes communicate to me that they have the wrong goals about speaking. One of the goals people have is to be completely calm and Zen when they're up on stage. And my thought is, if you don't feel nervous at all, you may want to second think what it is you're doing. And I'll liken it to this. The best analogy for communicating, I think, is dating. If you're gonna go ask someone out and you feel 100% completely calm, certain they're gonna respond positively, you're not worried or nervous or anxious at all. Maybe you're not with the right. Maybe you haven't picked the right person to ask out. Right. I felt confident when I asked my wife out, but I was nervous, I was excited. I had this type of energy with respect to how I was communicating. I think it starts there. I think also to step into the next realm beyond the basic communication skills, you have to figure out what makes you unique as a communicator. Everybody has something that makes them unique. You may not know what it is, but everybody has something that makes them unique. Not only that, but the things that you think are Achilles heels may become the most effective means of communicating for you. I tried to get rid of being emotional. That's what makes me an effective speaker now. So you have to embrace those things. The last piece of advice that I will say, and I can't save you from this part. You have to be willing to make an idiot of yourself. A few times I have said, my wife asked me, because sometimes my wife will say, well, you always know what to say. And I'm like, love. I have a list of stupid things I have said, times that I have just stuck my foot in my mouth in front of other people. And when I have embarrassed myself as much as you could ever embarrass yourself. So if you don't have moments like that, you're probably not stretching yourself far enough and improving your communication. Does that make sense, Darren?

Absolutely. And I just want to recap something we said and see if you have any more insights for that presenter that wants to be unforgettable. They see your speech and they realize you cried, you emoted, you had the crocodile tears. But they were so real and so authentic. So, by the way, actresses probably hate you because they have to train for years to be able to do that. And this guy does it naturally. And then using the props, too, using the hat, the bomber jacket, the goggles, those things you did because they were part of you, part of you telling the story, part, part of your belief. I just want to make sure people don't walk away. Oh, I gotta cry. Well, if you're not a. Yeah, yeah. I'm just clarifying for some of our listeners, like, don't cry if you're not a crier. Don't use those props. Pick the things that work for you that you feel you need to. Anything else to piggyback on that?

Yeah. In fact, thanks for saying that because you helped me refine my answer to your last question. I tell you, I always think through what I say. I can always seem to find a better way of. Of saying it. Here's my advice to anyone who's communicating. I don't think speaking is actually about speaking. Let's take a speech contest as an example. I don't think a speech contest in Toastmasters is actually a speech contest. I think it's a contest to see who can generate the biggest, most positive feeling, and whoever does that is going to win. That's not true for every single communication because sometimes we communicate about things that don't involve necessarily positive feelings, though more things do than we acknowledge. But with that in mind, what you want to ask yourself is, how do I feel about what I'm communicating? Like, how does it make me feel? And then as you're writing your speech, as you're figuring out how to deliver it, the question you have is, am I communicating what I feel to the audience with what I'm doing? More importantly, am I generating the same feeling based on how I'm communicating? Now, that's going to mean that for most of you, you're not probably ever going to cry when you give a speech. The one emotion I'd say you do have to incorporate is humor. And there's a place for that. And I used humor in my father's eulogy to great effect. There's always room to use it. But the central theme here is you do have to spend a lot of time thinking about communication. For all the emotive content that I use, I think that anybody who listens to me talk about speaking would acknowledge I spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to do. And as you're thinking about it and how to communicate what you're feeling. The central theme here, if there is one, is you got to be you. If you're a serious person, then that's how you communicate. There are things you've got to learn about incorporating humor, sure. But you got to be you. If you're an emotive person, you have to be you. The mistake that I will acknowledge, though, is you can't ever make it about yourself. And that's actually where people get into problems with emotional communication most of the time.

Yeah. By the way, I cry when I watch my recordings. That's when I cry.

It's painful, isn't it?

It's painful for a different reason. Right.

And most people aren't, you know, most people aren't willing to look at their own recordings. That's why I love when you said, you know, what's three things you could have done better? If we could just create that habit of looking at what we do, like being out of the emotion of it and sitting there watching ourselves and say, what three things I could have done better? If they could just develop that. That habit, they would change the trajectory of their communication.

Yeah, absolutely. 100%. 100%.

And, Mark, as you gather the keepers for this episode, David Henderson, if somebody wants to reach out to you, I know you're big on Twitter. That's kind of your thing. How would they find you online and on social media?

You know, on social media, Twitter is the main avenue that I'm using these days. And I'm at Oak Cliff lawyer. All one word. Oak, just like the tree. Cliff, like the overhang. Oak Cliff lawyer. I think it's yes. OakCliffLawyer is how Twitter does their handles. And in terms of finding me on the Internet, I'm law. There are very few people named Ellwanger. E L L W a N G, E, r. So if you Google Elwanger David Henderson, it'll come right up.

Cool. Mark Brown, what are our recaps here, Man?

I am so having my brother David joined us today, one of his first keepers is emotion doesn't have to be generated. It's always there. I love it. It's hard to be different or afraid of being who we are in front of others. So be who you are. Get this. A costume can help you save time to set the context. We must all figure out how to receive and implement feedback. Okay, I love this one. The nature of your communication does not change with the length or topic of your speech. Our values correspond with how we communicate. Always assess Your presentation and ask, what three things could I have done better? Also, ask yourself daily, am I contributing to someone's day? Read more. To improve your writing skills and draw a direct line between your writing and your speaking, you exert influence by tapping into what people already believe. You don't just change their minds. Your Achilles heel may be your strongest asset. And be willing to be an idiot to find out who you are. One more thing. If you're going to be a good communicator, sometimes you have to be obsessive and know that our values correspond with how we communicate.

Gary, over there and Mark, I want to piggyback on one that you said. Just remember what I love what you said, that you and your wife, David, both are trying to continually get better. So even in their conversations with that person over the counter, am I contributing to this person's day? Mark, I know you said it. I just want to remind people, every person you communicate to. And Mark, you have been just such a great example of that in who you are in your person's life. Because you always say that Mother Teresa line. What is it?

Always leave someone better and happier. Leave someone better and happier.

And one that you didn't mention when he's doing the clues in front of the jury. Just having the idea that. Don't try and force your point. Don't try to get people to feel things or believe things. Tap into what they already believe they believe. I love that. Genius.

Mark, I tell you, I could sit here and just. And gush over all of this. David, it has been a pleasure to talk to you, my friend. And Darren, just so you know, I gotta get a little alliteration in here. David Henderson's reaction, even when he's emotional, has always been positive. From journalists, judges and jurists. The three Js, journalists, judges and jurists. And now we've just had a real blast with you. David, I wish you and Dr. Thinnuwa every blessing to massive success in your career. And I thank you for sharing your life, your journey, your experience, to help us and those who listen to us to become unforgettable. Thanks so much, buddy.

Look up to you guys. Thanks for having me on your show. I appreciate it.

Thanks for sharing your attorney journey. There you go, Mark.

Boom. I love it. I love it.

I hope you join us Next week. Mark and I are going to dive into something we've never really talked about before. And it was inspired by watching a Garth Brooks documentary. What? All right. Hey, stay out there. Look for those three ways to communicate better and David, thanks for being here. We want to help you remember it's the work you do offstage that determines if you're unforgettable on stage. See you next week.

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