Ep 181 The 83 Year Old Public Speaking Coach June 29, 2016

A public speaking coach In India celebrates 50 years in the business.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with T.J. walker.

This story caught my eye. From a major Indian news publication, a woman named Meena Ramanathan celebrates 50 years as a presentation coach. I thought I'd been around a long time. She's got me beat. I was basically two months old when she started her practice. She started this in 1963. So it's been more than, more than 50 years. Apparently. Her husband worked for the U.S. consulate, had a problem conversing with the boss. She started reading books on the subject. Next thing you know, a friend of a friend wanted some help and that's how her training practice started. She's 83 years old, folks. 83 years old. Been doing it for 50 years and she still at it and is still helping people. I want to share with you some of her insights over her career in just a moment.

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So she's been training people on how to give presentations more effectively for 50 years. Here's some of the comments she shared with a major news outlet in India. She says, when we first started, we wondered how we could really help people. But when we realized the importance, how important this skill was, it just didn't stop. And she's now done more than 5,000 training programs, has trained thousands of people. She also those of you who haven't worked in India, there's not just one language, there are hundreds of languages. She comments that language is not a problem because there's so many aspects of communication that aren't just about language. And she's been able to help people in different languages. Here's something that caught my eye. She said specifically, quote, eye contact is the most important aspect in communication. One to one, communication is not a problem. One to five communication is a problem during interviews. You might be sitting in front of four or five people, but they will be asking questions one by one only. So we say your eyes should travel with the interviewer to portray yourself as a confident person. And that's helped many people in their interviews. I do think this is good advice. I would differ from her the primacy of this. I do not think eye contact is the most important thing because if you don't have an interesting message, it's not going to help. I think having a compelling, interesting, memorable message is the most important part of a presentation of speech. But I do think eye contact is important because if you have lousy eye contact, it will destroy most speeches even if you have all the other aspects. Here's something else. So 50 years she's been talking about the problem with eye contact. And every every week, sometimes every day in a week in 2016, I encounter clients of mine who have poor eye contact because they want to stare at their notes, they want to stare at the floor, they want to stare at their PowerPoint slide. Now when she started this back in 1963, there were no PowerPoint slides. But anyone who's nervous could always look away, could look at a transparency back then, could look at the floor and it just does not convey confidence. Something else that stood out in her conversations with the news media there. Once I was doing a program in Ponds, India talking about the importance of posture. I noticed this problem of posture with an engineer. I told him to change his posture to improve communication, but he found it difficult to make a change. I then told him if he becomes chairman and Managing director of Ponce tomorrow, can he have this bad posture? You wouldn't believe it if I say he changed his posture and also became the managing director of that company. You need to induce faith through your speaking. Again, very, very much on target. I don't think just having good posture is going to make you the chairman or CEO of a big company. But if you consistently hold yourself round shouldered, meek, mild, timid, as if you were scared of your own shadow, it's extremely unlikely that any board of directors is going to name you the CEO of a company or chairman of the board. That I am quite confident in asserting. So it just shows things can change. PowerPoint sites can change, YouTube can change. There's so much technology that affects public speaking, but a lot of the things have remained exactly the same. The problems that got people in trouble 50 years ago in many ways are the same problems Dale Carnegie faced when he was working with people 100 years ago when he started doing presentation training at the YMCA in New York City. Some things change, technologies change. But speaking is fundamentally a human activity and humans don't really change that much. For better or worse. More in a moment.

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.

We'Re talking about the story of Meena Ramathanan, the 83 year old presentation coach in India, celebrating more than 50 years in the business. By the way, my wife loves this story. She's like, TJ, I sure hope you're working and making money at 83 and staying out of my way and bringing money home. And I hope to do it as well because it is fun and when done right, there's no natural reason to retire. It's not physically demanding and if you have your mental wits about you, it is something you only get better at in my humble opinion. I wanted to share with you a story that she shared with the media. She said, quote, once I had the opportunity to travel with Indira Gandhi on a plane when she was in power, former Prime Minister of India. I went up to her to get an autograph. She never looked at me. She just signed on the left side of the card. But I asked her if she could sign on the right side of the card. Then Indira Gandhi looked up at her and asked what she was doing. I replied that I was doing a course on communication and public speaking. Surprised, she started telling me the difficulties she had in her early years and encouraged me to do more with my course. She even asked if I could come to Delhi to teach her son. That's when I understood that even a person of such caliber had difficulties in communication. This certainly rings true with me. It doesn't matter how powerful you are, how famous you are, whether you represent a billion people. Nobody is born knowing how to be a great speaker. Nobody is a natural born speaker. It's not an innate talent. It is a skill that's learned and it's taught by someone like Meena Ramathanan or other trainers all over the world. It's not a huge industry, it's not a regulated industry, it's not an accredited industry. And if someone tells you they are an accredited public speaker, trainer or media trainer, my advice would probably be run because they're probably someone who's fallen for an Internet scam. But it is an industry. It is out there. It's been there for a while. It's been in India represented by this woman for 50 years and I wish her well. I hope she has another 50 year run and good luck to her and congratulations for such a strong record of accomplishment. I'm TJ Walker. I want to thank all of you for your time today and deviating a little this program today. But most shows every single day are simple answers to your questions about any aspect of public speaking. Speaking to the media, speaking during a time of crisis and verbal communication as well as body language. So if you have any question on that, just give me a call. 212-764-4955 or email tj mediatrainingworldwide.com thanks again as always. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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