Ep 108 Learning from the Unknown Speech Critic April 17, 2016

Are you getting the feedback you need on your presentations?

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

Did you hear what I just said? Presentations. Turns out there is no such word. That's not how you pronounce the word. I have apparently been mispronouncing it for years. Highly embarrassing, considering my profession. Now, how do I know this? Did I have a nice friendly client tell me? Friend or family member? No, I had feedback from someone who doesn't know me, who's never met me. I got this in Feedback in a review on itunes for my show. I want to just share some of it with you. This is from Tilglath, Pilsner and Tilgathglath. I do appreciate this a great deal and he said a lot of nice things about my show. But what he did say is he has one request to me, please, tj. It's pronounced presentation, not presentation. You know, I saw this and I first thought, well, this guy's crazy. And I looked it up and sure enough, he's right. I went to one site, I thought, well, maybe that's just, you know, the British. The British pronunciation. I went to a couple of sites. He's right. He's right, he's right. No website, no dictionary said that my pronunciation was the correct one. Now, the reason this is, I think, significant to you, it's not just that you're listening to somebody who's stupid, who can't pronounce what he does for a living. It's the value of feedback. Specifically the value of feedback where there is some distance, where it's not clouded through friendship, through other hierarchies, a boss, a superior. I don't know anything else about him. That's why this feedback is incredibly helpful and insightful. Now, it's embarrassing to think I've been a presentation coach for 32 years and mispronouncing it all this time, but the facts don't lie. I've hurt myself on audio and video, calling it presentation. I have consulted the dictionaries and in fact, I've been saying it incorrectly. So how is this relevant to you? It's because I do want to recommend to you, those of you who aren't doing it, record yourself on video, your presentation, speeches, talks, frequently asked questions, whatever it is you do to help people, whether it's a hobby, whether it's something you do to make money, post that and post it on YouTube. Put the audio version of it on itunes and you'll get interesting feedback. Now some of the feedback you'll get can be mean and, and you just have to ignore that. Believe me, I've had plenty of feedback from people where it was just vicious and mean spirited. But that is in fact the beauty of the itunes feed feedback is I haven't, I've yet to get any nasty, negative, silly or tedious feedback there. People that at some level have to identify themselves. And itunes seems to have a lot less sympathy for nonsense compared to say YouTube where you get a tremendous amount of nastiness, especially if you're doing anything that's political. And I hate to say, especially if you're a woman or a minority or anybody who is not a white man. Believe me, I get a lot of nasty criticism on YouTube or have in the past, but I think that the criticism is even more mean spirited if you are a woman or a minority or anyone other than a heterosexual white male. So what do you do with this? Again, what I think you need to do is read all criticism. If it's clearly mean spirited, irrelevant, just disregard it, don't respond to it, don't think about it. Again, don't let it bother you, just ignore it. If it's valid, try to research a little more. I mean that was my thought process when I first saw this. I didn't like it. I thought this person was, you know, trying to say, well you have to say tomato and not tomato. And then I realized, no, this isn't one of those things. I was just clearly wrong. And now it's made an impression and now I'm saying presentations, not presentations. So I do want to thank him very much and I want to urge all of you, even if you're not a public person, even if you're not trying to be a professional speaker, even if you're not trying to become a world famous expert, there is real value to putting yourself out there, opening yourself up to criticism from complete outsiders who don't have any other ties to you. You will in fact learn a lot.

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. J. Walker.

So you've heard me talk about getting criticism from outsiders, people who aren't connected to you. It is possible to also get helpful feedback, constructive criticism from people close to you. But be Warned. It's difficult. It's hard for egos not to get harmed, and it can be difficult to not create arguments. I do believe if you want to be a great communicator, you have to get a little bit of a tough skin. You have to get a thickness there. Listen to all criticism. And even if it's only one out of a hundred complaints, critiques, you can still learn from that. I remember half a dozen years ago or so, maybe about four or five years ago, my wife, then fiance said to me, she had been with me, I believe it was, to the ABC studios in New York for an interview. And she said, tj, you're starting every answer with well. I thought, that's ridiculous. What does my fiance know about this? I'm the expert. That couldn't possibly be the case. And then I looked at the video. I looked at the video of other recent interviews, and it turns out I had developed a bad habit of using well as a placeholder. It was my version of a um or an ah. And while I pride myself in being articulate and not saying uhs and ums, and I've helped clients for years get rid of their uhs and ums, here I was guilty of doing the same thing. Putting out a sound as a placeholder that does nothing to actually enhance communication, did nothing to make me look better or sound better. I'm not the first person to use that. Ronald Reagan famously would often start off his answers with, well, Nancy and I. And it became a bit of an object of ridicule for him. Although Reagan, obviously a talented speaker and communicator, was not always as smooth with with his answers to interviews and media requests, as opposed to the set speech and the teleprompter. So what did I do? I practiced what I preach. I took a piece of paper and I typed the word well on it. And then I put a red circle around it and a red slash mark through it, just like you see no left hand turn, no parking. I put that symbol on top of the well. And then I taped that on to the top of my cell phone. I put it on my watch for a while. I put it on the bottom of my various computer screens. And after a while, I stopped saying, well, I wish my wife hadn't been correct, but she was. I can't say that I always agree with every single critique she has because she sometimes says, why are you being so boring? Why are you going on and on? You can't learn all the time from every critique, especially from a family member. But oh, when you do, it's so helpful. It has helped me immeasurably. So thank you, Joanne. I do appreciate that feedback and I do think it's helped make me a clearer speaker. So that's my big challenge to you. Make sure in the attempt to make yourself feel good or to eliminate negativity from your life, you're not accidentally cutting off good, sound, constructive criticism. I know it's hard these days because there can be so many negative people in your workplace. The Internet is overwhelmingly, at least in some forums, incredibly negative. But you've got to learn filter to get rid of that part and be like a miner panning for gold. If 99% of your pan is filled with rocks, but there's one nugget of gold, it's worth it. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for spending time with me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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