TJ Walker explains why people become stiff on camera or in front of crowds, even when they're relaxed one-on-one. The fix isn't learning a new skill but staying consistent with how you naturally speak. Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan did this at every scale.
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Let me take you into my world for a minute, if I could. Every day I have executives from all over the world. They come into my TV studio and they shake my hand. They come across as interesting, gregarious, forceful personalities. They gesture, their voice is dynamic, they sound interesting, engaging. I think, wow, this is going to be a piece of cake. And I say, okay, let's get down to business. Let's do our practice TV interview or our practice speech. I turn the camera on and all of a sudden this person who was so comfortable and confident and relaxed, all of a sudden it's, yes, I'd like to tell you about our third quarter results and what. What happened. The person goes flat. Their face is stiff, their body's stiff, their hands stop moving. Their voice, that was loud and easy to understand and fluid, all of a sudden it becomes robust. It's horrible. People change themselves. That's the big problem now. People say you shouldn't have a foolish consistency. There's nothing foolish about being consistent when what you have works for you. People think they come to me, a media trainer or speech coach, to change them to become more theatrical. That's not it at all. The reason people come to me is so I can help them be consistent. Most people are good talking one on one or when they're speaking to someone they're comfortable with. The problem is, you get in front of a camera, in front of a larger audience, we change ourselves, we stiffen up. We stop doing all the things we do in normal conversation. Big, big problem. Now, the good news is people can learn how to be much better speakers, much better at appearing on the media in one day, because you're not having to learn a whole new skill set, like learning how to play the guitar or learning how to play a good game of golf. All you really have to do is unlearn habits that occur because you're nervous. All you really have to do is speak the same way you do when you're comfortable. When you're relaxed, look at the masters. When you look at someone like Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan in his prime, they spoke the same to one person, five people, a thousand, ten thousand, or on tv, they sounded the same. They gestured the same. They came across comfortable, relaxed and confident. Guess what you can do. So the biggest insight, the big secret when it comes to speaking or dealing with the media is that there is no secret. You don't have to learn a whole new skill set. Of course, there are minor changes you have to make depending on the venue. If all of a sudden you're in a room with a thousand people, you need to pause a little longer. You need to gesture a little larger because people can't see you. You need to pause more because it physically takes time for your sound to get around the room. But these are minor things. Again, the big problem for most people is that they are inconsistent when they speak, and because they're nervous, they change themselves and become stiff and boring and flat. So you should try to be consistent, consistently good. That means doing all the things you do in normal.
