Ep 140 Poor Communication Skills Hurt Millennials in Workplace May 19, 2016

Are poor communication skills destroying the long term career prospects of Millennials.

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

Oh boy. This is like putting fresh baked chocolate chip cookies in front of a bunch of little children. When it comes to how other presentation experts, media coaches have picked up on this story and I think of it as I'm no better. I saw this story and I glommed onto it as well. There's a new survey out by the Hay Group which with full disclosure is a previous client of mine. They did a survey, they looked at a vast number of employers all over the country and they found that 80% of employers are struggling to find new college graduates with the so called soft skills they need. And this is a quote from one of the stories about this Communication is the most in demand soft skill in most industries, including engineering, finance, healthcare, information technologies and sales. They have a quote from Rosemary Heffner, Chief Human Resources Officer at Career Builder. She says job seekers with a good mix of both technical and soft skills will have the best prospects right out of college. What are we to make of this? As you can imagine, I have a few opinions here. More on those in just a moment.

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At some level, I find it comical that people feel the need to say that Millennials or anyone else has poor communication skills and poor presentation skills. That's like saying college graduates today know very little about hieroglyphics, or about cuneiform, or about tablet making and scroll making. Well, why should they? They're not taught any of those skills. People are not taught communication skills. Why would they be good at it? Now, I have mixed feelings about this because on the one hand, I am incredibly appalled that people are not taught public speaking presentation skills every year and at every level of schooling. And Chris Anderson, in his excellent new book, he's the owner of the TED Talks, talks about how there should be a new type of presentation literacy. He calls it the four Rs. Reading, writing, arithmetic and rhetoric. I'll talk about that in a future show where I review his book more thoroughly. But he's absolutely right. We need to have a concept of presentation literacy. I mean, my goodness, there's some colleges where you still can't graduate if you don't know how to swim or speak a foreign language you'll never use. How about learning how to speak the language that is your native language that's used in the country where you live. That would be a nice thing. And I don't mean just writing, I mean actually speaking it. So this survey from Hay Group reports to show that it's this big, big problem. Well, but is anybody doing anything about it? As far as I can tell, absolutely not part of the problem. And here's where my take is a little different from most. Hay group, along with most people in hr, define public speaking communication as a soft skill. And Hay Group in their press release even goes to the effort of putting in a dictionary definition of a soft skill. Soft skills are defined by Oxford dictionaries as personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. In addition to communication, organization, writing, leadership, problem solving and customer service are among the most desired soft skills in nearly every company. Well, here's my problem with that. When you say something is a soft skill, it sounds fuzzy, it sounds debatable, it sounds a little sketchy. Once you tell yourself public speaking presentation skills are soft skills, you're kind of letting yourself off the hook. It's kind of like saying, well, that's like abstract modern art. The beauty is in the eye of the beholder and you want to just throw paint around and someone thinks it's pretty, well, that's fine. I don't mean to knock Jackson Pollock, but it is a little bit different from that. When it comes to presentation skills, it's actually extraordinarily easy to quantify it. I believe that every aspect of public speaking is 100% quantifiable. It's as much of a hard skill as physics, chemistry, mathematics, accounting, any aspect of science. What do those things have in common? What does math have in common with other aspects of science or physics? It's that it's measurable, it's testable, it's measurable. You can actually test whether something works. You don't have to guess. Is two plus two equal five today? No, they're agreed upon standards of what works and what doesn't work. If you're taking a basic mathematics test in first grade and the question is what is two plus two? You simply don't get a check mark. You're not going to get 100 on that test. If you put that, it's three or five or seven or zero, you actually have to put four. And that's why it's not a so called soft skill. With public speaking, you can measure it as well. If you have to give a presentation on a subject matter, stand up, give it. When you're done. Ask people what they remember. If they don't remember your key points, you failed. It is exactly the same as putting five on the answer of what is three plus seven? It's a wrong answer. You failed. And I'm not trying to be cutesy and say one plus one is three and there's synergy. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about just basic competency. And of course, millennials are horrible at public speaking. But guess what? Baby boomers are horrible. My generation, horrible at public speaking. The vast majority of The World War II generation, horrible public speakers. I train people all over, I go all over the world, and everybody thinks that they are uniquely bad. People in their country are bad. People in their age group are bad speakers. And the truth is, nobody is uniquely bad because people everywhere are horrible public speakers and presenters because, for the most part, nobody is taught. Now, on the one hand, this offends me. On the other hand, it's great news for me because it creates this opening for me as a consultant, as a trainer, to fill the gap. So don't feel too sorry for me. And if all of a sudden everyone did receive good, proper instruction on how to present, how to communicate, how to excel at rhetoric, I'd be out of a job. There wouldn't be a need for me. So I have mixed feelings about this, to say the least. But what's the real lesson here? Certainly, if you are a millennial, if you're in college, if you have kids of your own who are in college, spend some time with them, for goodness sake. Spend some time with them building their presentation skills. Now, you heard or you should have heard on this program and others. An ad. I say it's an ad. It's a giveaway. It's a promotion where I give free access to my online presentation training schools. If you mention that you heard it on this show and mention the episode number and you are a millennial, I'm happy to give you my course on for college kids, how to Present more Effectively. Also how to Present More Effectively in job interviews. I will give you access to that course free of charge. You simply have to write to me and ask for it. And this way, you're not going to be part of this 80% that's considered a disaster. You'll be a part of the top 20%. Very few careers in life will you be harmed by being a better speaker. But there are numerous, numerous careers. I don't care if you're an artist, conductor of a symphony, CEO of a bank. All of those skills need strong all of those jobs need strong public speaking skills. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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