Ep 101 Myths About Politicians, Professional Athletes and Media Training April 10, 16

Are all professional athletes and politicians media trained?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

One of the things I try to do on this show is clear up some misconceptions out there in popular culture that people have about media training, presentation training, athletes, politicians. A lot of people just assume because athletes spend so much time talking to the media, the mandatory press conferences after tournaments, games, that of course they are professionally trained. I mean they're in organizations that have so much money. Image is everything to a lot of them. They live and die by their PR brands, their marketing, entertainment organizations. They are media organizations, so of course they're media trained. Well, here's what will surprise you. No, a shockingly high number of professional athletes are not professionally media trained. How do I know this? Well, I'm based in the New York City area. We have an awful lot of professional sports teams here. Now I'm not just saying this in a self serving way. Well, they don't call me. They must not use any training. I do get calls from time to time to do media training for major, major athletic franchises and I'm always shocked by how little importance they place on it. I had a call just last week from a major major sports team, one of the big four sports based here. They wanted me to give a 45 minute speech on media training for social media. So okay, well, but what about actually doing interviews with TV and radio reporters and newsprinters after games? They said, oh, well, we handle that internally. So as I always do, I dug a little deeper. So you rehearse them, you coach them, you critique them yourself. You have your own in house studio. And the PR representative said, well, no, tj, we just give them a few tips really. You've got someone who is in the largest media market in the United States, arguably the most important media market in the world. You're throwing them out there doing things that could completely create their image and affect their livelihoods for the rest of their life and they don't get even a half day of training. Now sadly, I find this to be the case with so many professional athlete teams, athletic teams. I do get calls from around the country to train and typically it's kind of a situation where they, they want me to train 50 rookies. I've had NFL teams call me about this. TJ, we want you to train 50 rookies and we want it to be in two hour sessions on different days. And then they want to start negotiating price, something I really don't like to do it gets right down to it. They say, well TJ we hired someone else. They were willing to do the whole thing for basically peanuts. I would be embarrassed. It's not my fee. But to tell you how low a so called professional sports team, professional media trainer was willing to go in order to get to be able to tell friends, oh, I'm a trainer for this NFL sports team. So it was a laughably low fee, easily 85% lower than my normal rate. And this firm was willing to do it. That's not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is you got 50 people and trying to do it in a two hour window. Folks, you can't give someone real training for how to be good at media interviews in two hours. When they're one of 50 people, you can create an awareness, not much else. So how do most athletes do it? They learn through trial and error. Now the good thing for a lot of athletes is that from the time they were in high school, some of them middle school, they tell out of college or their first few years of pros, they've had a time to do thousands of interviews. So like with anything, you certainly reduce your nervousness if you've done thousands of interviews. Unfortunately, you might not ever really get to the point where you're great if you don't have basic training. The irony of course, is that all of these athletes have had thousands and thousands of hours of coaching and training in order to become their best in their sport. And yet for most athletes, their professional careers may only last two, three, four years. And yet how well they speak will completely define the rest of their career for the next 40, 50, 60 years. Think of how many athletes, not just the ones who get their own talk shows and are network analysts, but even small town athletes, quite often leverage their fame to become head of an insurance company where they are speaking in the community, gathering up new clients all the time. So how well they speak has a huge impact. I can tell you with a lot of the big insurance companies I work with, they often hire professional athletes as their salespeople. Because people, once they find out it's a professional athlete, will come to a sales meeting or they'll go to a golf outing because they want to be able to say, oh, I went golfing today with that former all star for that NFL team that we go root for every Sunday. It's a huge, huge draw. And these athletes are drawing upon their ability to communicate and yet they have very little, little formal training. It's kind of sad, but it is a reality. Same with politicians. So many politicians go from the state legislature or county commission to the state legislature, Congress and it's all trial by error. They get more comfortable, but they never get great because they never learn the nuances of exactly what makes something quotable. Exactly what is the sound bite that that reporter is going to use, even if they've been talking for two hours or two minutes. People who have been trained or at least trained properly can really know in advance more on some of these misconceptions in just a moment.

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So no, when you see a politician, when you see an athlete speaking to the media, there is by my estimation less than a 5050 chance they've ever received any professional guidance, true coaching or training on how to do what they do now. A little different at the presidential level, but even there there are some exceptions from time to time of people who just think they're too good. They don't need coaching at all. Why does any of this matter to you? Well, it matters because makes you realize you can still be better than people who are in the news all the time just by getting coaching. Because you don't have to learn the hard way. And you might not be in a position where you're going to be doing thousands of interviews before it really matters. If you're a fantastic football or basketball talent in middle school and you're doing interviews after games in high school and in college, it might not matter that much that you're not great yet. But if you're already a mid level career position for a corporation or your own startup, you're an author or an expert, you don't want to wait any longer. You need to be great now. So that's why I'm glad you're here listening or watching this program. But if you want to take it up a notch, whether you use me, use someone. Find a trainer to really help you get great right away. Don't learn on the job. Don't subject your audience to your learning mistakes.

Do you have a speaking related question for number one USA Today best selling author TJ Walker. For more than 30 years, Walker has been a public speaking coach and media trainer to presidents of Countries, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Ms. Universes. Send your questions to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter jwalker.

Question I received just the other day in a training I was conducting up in the Boston area. TJ Should I use big words in my speech? I want people to think I'm smart. It's a technical audience. I want to show them I know their lingo. Here's the thing. I find that in general, the smaller the words you use when speaking, the more effective you are with your audience, the more they can understand you and actually the higher they will perceive your intelligence. When you use big words, the real danger is you sound pompous, you sound canned, you sound phony, you don't sound believable, and you sound like you're trying to impress someone. Guess what? Nobody likes it when they feel like someone is trying to impress them. Winston Churchill, learned individual, wrote the 10 volume history of English Speaking peoples, would often tell his staff and others says, you must understand. The ear can read big words. The eye can read big words. The ear processes smaller words. He would pride himself in being able to give complicated speeches on foreign policy, never using a word with more than two syllables. In the United States, for example, if you look at arguably the two greatest speakers in the last 30 years, well known in popular culture, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, they use remarkably small words because any big word you can think of to use, you could typically use a couple of small words to make the same point. Average speakers, mediocre speakers are trying to make people think I'm smart. Look at me, look how great I am. Don't you think I'm wonderful? Great speakers are trying to make the audience feel better about who they are. Great speakers want to help the audience in the simplest, clearest way possible. So my advice, you have to use a technical term occasionally that everyone in your audience understands. By all means use it. Otherwise, use the simplest words possible. Leave the big words for the text. You want to put big words in the PowerPoint slides that you hand out later. Fine. But the words out of your mouth should be simple, short and easy to understand, even when you're explaining wildly complex thoughts. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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