Ep 184 Is Public Speaking Practice Over-Rated July 2, 2016

Is public speaking Practice Overrated.

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

Today's questions come from Leon Frazier, who, interesting side note, came to one of my public workshops. It had to have been 15 years ago. I've continued to communicate with him through my weekly newsletter at Media Training Worldwide, and we continue to stay in touch. And he sent in three questions today, which I'm asking. Lesson for all of you, I do think is the importance of regular communication and communication that's easy for you whether it is daily video, audio, text, newsletter or a combination of all of those. It's so easy to lose touch with a client, a prospect, a customer. And the more ways you make it easier for customers to connect with you, the better. So Leon, it's great to hear from you. Here's his first question. TJ The New York Times had a recent article that world champion tennis player Serena Williams does not play in many warm up or practice tournaments before the Grand Slam tournaments. Allen Iverson, the former all star basketball player, is known for his dismissive comments about practice. But can you afford to practice your speech out loud? Can you not afford to practice your speech out loud before you have to give it in front of an audience? So there certainly are people who say, Ah, T.J. i don't want to practice my speech. I don't want to get stale. And they might actually reference Serena and Iverson, Allen Iverson as well. These stars don't believe in practice. Why should I? Fair question. I'll have the answer in just a moment.

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So here's the answer. If you're Serena Williams. Yeah. You don't necessarily have to go to every single practice tournament because you're already playing thousands of hours of tennis a year and you've played tens of thousands of hours throughout your lifetime and she's still playing, if not every single day, every week and she's still practicing. So the analogy, if you follow it to speaking is, yeah, if you're already making 200 speeches a year and you're giving a speech tomorrow and 90% of the messages you've already covered in previous speeches numerous times. Well, yeah, maybe you don't have to rehearse all that and maybe you're just in such a groove that things aren't really going to come out well. But essentially the last hundred speeches you gave are practice for that speech you're giving tomorrow. Same thing with Allen Iverson. Maybe he doesn't enjoy practice that much, but he's playing 100 so games a year, however many games they play. So he's already playing hundreds and hundreds, hundreds of hours of basketball a year. So that is practice. When you're playing every single day and doing some warm up and practice every day, that is practice. So let's not confuse the additional 5% or 10% of practice for some of these pros. If they're already spending thousands of hours of doing. If you're already spending thousand hours giving speeches, giving hundreds of speeches a year, can you taper back a little on some of the rehearsals? Some of the. Well, sure you can, but for most of you, you're not doing hundreds of speeches a year. If you're doing one a quarter and you want to use Serena and Allen Iverson as an example of why you shouldn't practice, you are barking up a wrong tree. Next question from Leon. He says Donald Trump, like him, her, loathe him, has been the master at creating short, memorable phrases on where he stands on issues. Build a wall, ban the Muslims, make America great again. Now that Hillary Clinton will be his opponent, will she have to create short, memorable phrases to communicate her brand as well? Certainly for any politician, the ability to speak in sound bites, to formulate in a focused, clear way what's good about you and what's bad about your opponent is helpful. And I think that even Hillary's biggest supporters will say she's not necessarily the master of the sound bite. Now, what Donald Trump has going for him, it's an advantage as well as a disadvantage, is he's very, very quick to attack. And Leon, you know, since you've been through my training course before and a lot of the regular listeners and viewers of this course know too, but I'm a believer that all sound bites come from 10 speech patterns. And some of those patterns are ones that Donald Trump uses pretty much every time he attacks. Absolutes, emotions and sometimes specific example, humor. So pretty much everything he says has five of those. Hillary Clinton, as someone who's worked within the system, who has been at the pinnacle of power, has been in the White House as first lady, has been a US Senator, has been secretary of state, by her very position, she's not as equipped to just attack everyone and everything. But what we have seen this is depending on when you're watching or listening to this. This is being recorded in May of 2006, excuse me, in June of 2016. So Hillary Clinton has just become the presumptive Democratic nominee. What we are seeing from her just recently are stronger attacks on Trump from her and those are getting quoted. Part of it is the nature of when you're a frontrunner running for a nomination, you had to stay above the fray. You don't really help yourself. Attacking Donald Trump started out at the bottom. When he got in and everyone was attacking him, it led itself to attacks more I do think that regardless of who wins the presidential race, it's not necessarily going to be by the candidate who gets the most forceful sound bites across. It will be by the candidate who communicates their message most effectively. Donald Trump's message appears to be we need change. We need things completely different from Barack Obama. We need a real outsider and we need somebody who is, you know his words, to make America great again and to stand up for political correctness. Hillary Clinton's message is going to be and that Hillary Clinton is some sort of dangerous continuation of Obama. Hillary Clinton's message at this point seems to be that Donald Trump is a dangerous demagogue who is a racist, a phony businessman who has ripped off middle class and average people and all of his business dealings and is psychologically unsuited to have his finger on the button. And that she's going to continue mainstream centrist and occasional liberal policies. That's essentially her message. That was not stated in sound bites. But I think the winner of the presidential race will come down to who is more effective at communicating those messages. Which message prevails? Sound bites will be a part of it, but they'll only be a part of it. People receive so much information about presidential candidates in the general election because that in my view, sound bites are really not as big a factor for smaller races where people are just dying to get any coverage. It might make a big difference, but not at the presidential race. We'll take Leon's final question in just 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 jwalker.

Final question from Leon regarding trolls. Whether it's a good news story about yourself or someone else or a bad news story about a tragic situation, you can always count on some reader to make a sarcastic or hurtful comment. Hiding under a pseudonym or anonymity who Are the trolls and should you care about what they say if you have otherwise positive PR coverage in the press? Well, short answer is no, you really shouldn't care. Other solutions. If it's your own website, your own blog, you can have a system so that people have to check in through Facebook. With Facebook, you see their name, you see their face. That eliminates most of the nastiness. You could go to a system where comments are moderated, and if you think it's just ridiculous, hit delete. Or you don't approve it, that can stop it. Other forums, if you're on YouTube, for example, my recommendation is if you're doing something high profile, it has any political component to it. Just don't read the comments. Now keep in mind, just because someone criticizes you doesn't make them a troll. I get criticism from time to time on my videos on YouTube. I read them all. And if someone says, TJ, you're a fat, ugly slob and you're always wrong and you're a shill because you said something nice about candidate so and so that I can ignore. If someone says, tj, the lighting is too dark on your face, you need to adjust it. Or there's something wrong with your audio. On a stylistic side, I take that very seriously. I listen to it. If someone says, well, tj, you referenced a particular media show or you criticized someone but you left out the fact that and they're putting in specific facts that might have changed my analysis. I read it carefully. I might respond, I might even do a separate video. So it just depends. You also asked, who are these people? I don't know. In my experience, they tend to be losers. They tend to be people who are not putting out their own content. Almost without exception, when I see someone leave a nasty comment, a comment that is a cheap shot, or a comment saying, you know you're a loser, you only have 29 views to your video. Every single time I've ever done that, if I go to their channel and see how many views their videos have, the answer is always the same. Zero. They're too cowardly to show their face. They're too cowardly to create their own videos. They just sit back and criticize. And to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, life is really about those who do, not the critic on the side. I listen to criticism. Depending on your industry, you may have to just completely shut it out. But don't let it bother you. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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