Ep 2 Steve Harvey Messes Up Miss Universe Announcement

Comedian Steve Harvey makes a huge blunder as emcee of the Miss Universe contest.

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

Folks, whether you're watching this in early 2016 or 2019 or 20, I believe people are still going to be talking about Steve Harvey's blunder at the Miss Universe contest 2015, where he announced the wrong winner. Nothing could be more embarrassing for a contest for the young women involved and the emcee. I want to dig deep and talk about this particular blunder, how it relates to you and any mistakes you might make and how you can avoid that. Lessons to learn from this. First of all, Steve Harvey, in my view, is a consummate communicator with a tremendous work ethic. He's got sitcoms, daily TV talk shows, daily talk radio shows, number one New York Times best seller. I mean, this guy is absolutely everywhere. Still does Stand up has a huge, huge following. I will confess I'm not really a huge fan of his, but I have tremendous respect for his work ethic. Now let's go behind the news and really look at what happened. I have seen the script that was given to him. It was on a note card and graphically it was laid out almost like a 2000 Florida butterfly ballot. That is very, very confusing to the eye. The second runner up, the first runner up, their names were lower left hand corner. The winner was lower right hand corner. Even for a skilled, consummate professional communicator, someone who's in front of a camera as often as Steve Harvey, it's still a little bit distracting to have to be handed something. You're on live national tv, lights in your face, cameras in your face, and to be given a script and then have the layout so oddly laid out where all the other names are on the left hand side, the winner on the right hand side. So it's easy for me to see how this blunder took place. How did he respond to it? Well, I'm going to give you some tips on that, but I want to do it following the particular sequence, this show. So for starters.

Body language.

When you screw up, and it's inevitable, at some point you're going to make a mistake, maybe not on live national tv, I'm announcing the wrong name of a Miss Universe contestant. But your body language is important. If you look embarrassed, if you look frightened, if you look scared, it's only going to make things a thousand times worse in the mind of the audience. Now, I do give Steve Harvey credit. Once he found out, he went back on stage, he apologized right away, and he corrected the information. That's really the best you can do. But I want to talk about a whole separate category of mistakes and blunders. Those are the mistakes we make in our own mind. We left out a word, we went in a different order in those situations. No one's going to know if you call out the wrong name of a Miss Universe contestant winner. Well, sure, everyone will figure that out, especially when you've rectified the situation. But the vast, vast majority of mistakes we make as communicators on television, doing podcasts, giving speeches, presentations, talks, even one on one job interviews, the vast majority of mistakes we make, no one else knows it. And it's typically our body language where we screw up our face, roll our eyes, where we do something through our body language to suggest we're dissatisfied with how we're doing. So the solution is not to somehow become perfect. Although you should try to do everything possible to minimize mistakes. The solution is don't make matters worse with your body language. Don't show contempt on your face, don't roll your eyes, don't look exasperated. And if you do that, you really are going to be in much, much better shape. I want to analyze this whole Steve Harvey situation through the lens of different segments we'll be doing here on this show. By the way, thank you for joining me. This is the first week of our show. It is a new daily TV and radio, video and audio show available to you whether you're watching or listening on iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and a whole lot of other platforms. So thanks so much for joining me participating in this. We will be taking your questions as always, and I do want to share with you some various segments and show you really how we're looking at this from a lot of different lenses.

Inside dope, the craft of media and presentation training.

Okay, here's the insider perspective on this. Steve Harvey is a consummate pro and he's very, very busy. I'm sure they still did at least one rehearsal. But my recommendation where I think they went wrong, a couple of areas. Number one, graphically, everything should have been in the same exact order. Names on the lower, on the lower, far left side in the same sequence each time rather than changing the graphics. Secondly, they should have rehearsed where they actually gave him names and they could have just been made up names where he could have practiced going through the sequence. And the whole the first runner up is and the case that the winner having all that down. So when he actually did it for real life, he would have been in much better shape because it would have been completely familiar. And now I do have some sympathy for him because I've screwed up in remotely similar situations. Now, I've never been the MC of the Ms. Universe contest, but I have been a judge and a trainer to various beauty pageants around the world in Europe. And I've been brought out on stage before. I was asked to announce, I believe it was the second runner up, and the emcee handed me the script. And all of a sudden it is in a different language that I just don't know how to pronounce that name. Fortunately, the MC quickly realized I couldn't read it, thanked me and stated the name Alice. So it wasn't a huge, huge, memorable blunder for people watching on national TV and watching on TV all over Europe, but it was still a little bit embarrassing to me as a professional communicator. Now, in my defense, I didn't really know I was going to be called up on stage to do that. So I'm not sure what I could have done. Although in an ideal situation, I would have been told exactly what would happen. And since the votes were being tallied, presumably they couldn't give me the name in advance, but I could have phonetically laid out the names of all the contestants, or certainly the finalists had it there and would have been ready. And in retrospect, perhaps I could have somehow asked for that. So everybody makes mistakes. Here's the other kind of insider perspective on this. Steve Harvey isn't going to be hurt by this. Now, if he were a faded sitcom star and this were the only thing anyone had seen him on for the last five years, well, then, yes, this would be the first thing people associate with Steve Harvey. He's the guy who blundered the name of the winner of the Miss Universe contest. But because Steve Harvey is a consummate pro, he's out in the media every single day. He is redefining himself every day. He is defining himself as a successful communicator every day. TV talk shows, sitcoms, stand up talk radio, a guest on other shows, he's putting so much out there that he's forging new memories of himself as a communicator with the public, with the audience, with his fan base. And that's why the good news is, any one particular blunder typically doesn't define you. Now, speaking of Miss Universe contest, I did have a client many years ago who was, in fact Miss Universe. And during her reign, she was doing a Runway show, a fashion Runway show. Stepped on her own dress, her own skirt, the whole skirt fell off. Quite embarrassing. Quite a YouTube sensation. No, I'm not going to link to it. Embarrassing. But did she let that define her? No. She's gone on to a very successful career as a spokesperson, media personality. She's in TV commercials in her own native country and is highly successful. She doesn't let one mistake, one little blunder, one accident. It wasn't a mistake, it was an accident define her. And that's really the key to being successful as communicators. Problems are going to come up, blunders are going to happen, mistakes will happen. It's all about how you do in fact react to it and how you can overwhelm the public, overwhelm the audience with more good stuff. Okay, folks, now it's time for a little self promotion. I try to make this mostly about you and helping you, but it's time for a little bit of promoting it.

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Okay, folks, it's time for questions. We do take questions on this show. In fact, most of this show is really just me answering your questions about public speaking, speaking to the media, speaking to large audiences, speaking to small audiences, speaking in a job interview, any place where you're speaking. If you ask me a question, I will give you my advice based on working with more than 10,000 clients from six continents over the last 30 years. So here's a question that came in. This is from one of my students on the online platform Udemy. Dear Mr. Walker, I'm getting involved in local public notary that seeks to expand nationwide. I know the business owner personally. He's a mentor. He's very professional, well reviewed, great teacher. We're seeking to gain new clients without cold calling. But there's no exception. All our work is done by phone and the web. My question is, how can I make this an opportunity for myself if I'm not confident in myself on the phone? And my mentor admitted he doesn't think I'm ready to yet represent our company. I need to do my homework, but he's putting me off unofficially on the clock pretty much for on the job training. How do I get over this? So I'm glad that you're trying to improve your communication skills. On the job training is fine, but why force your customers and prospects to suffer through your learning curve? Why should they have to suffer from that. What I recommend is practice on video or at least on audio. And as you've heard me say before on this show and you'll be hearing a lot of practice just with your cell phone. If you don't want to record yourself on video, use the memo function so that you can record the audio of yourself and practice your cold calls. Now, I'm not a huge fan of cold calls, but if you are going to cold call, let's make it great. Let's record audio. Listen to it, ideally record video, watch it and get to the point where you think it's great. Then show it to your boss. Get your boss's feedback to make sure he thinks you're great. Then, and only then, I'd ask that you subject yourself to your actual customers and prospects. Do that and you will be in great shape. So thanks again for all of your questions. I have a question for you. Here's my question for you. What is the biggest speaking blunder you've ever made? We've all made mistakes. It might be in first grade where you froze and you just ran back to your seat. Everybody has some blunders. I've shared some of mine here. I'll continue to share because I make mistakes all the time. Fortunately, because I'm typically speaking every day, if not on this venue, to live audiences. The good outweighs the bad. But we've all made mistakes. So that's my question to you. What mistakes have you made? What's your biggest speaking blunder? Please share that with us right here. Send it to me on Twitter jwalker or send a comment infoediatrainingworldwide.com or post it whether you're watching this on Facebook, YouTube or on my blog at Mediatraining Worldwide. Thanks so much for joining me. As always, may all of your speaking opportunities in life be a huge success.

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