Ep 208 The Philosophy of Great Public Speaking July 26, 2016

So what are the rules of great public speaking?

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

Thanks for joining me today. This episode is going to have a little more philosophy to it, but still, I hope you'll get some good, practical, specific how to tips. People often ask me, well, who's the best speaker? Or do you see what this person's doing wrong, rip this person apart? And often people want to know what the exact precise phrase formula is for a great speaker. And certainly I have a lot of strong ideas about what to do and what not to do. And if you're a regular listener viewer here, you're hearing them seven days a week. But I want to step back for a moment and look at this from a broader philosophical perspective in a way that I hope will help you. And here it is. There's no one formula to be a great speaker any more than there is a formula to to being a great artist. Some people love Rembrandt, some people don't. Some people love Andy Warhol. I'm not a fan. Some people love Van Gogh. Some people love Jackson Pollock. Some people can't stand it and think it's just idiocy. There's no one formula for being a great artist, a great painter or a great musician. Some stand out. Some capture huge, huge audiences. Others fade away. Some have audiences, huge audiences in the short term, but five years later are forgotten and make no impression. But the one thing I think we can agree on, whether your main hobby is in music, painting, sculpture, there are people who are defined as greats, and their style can be completely different from other people within the same genre, and they're considered great. That's how I feel about public speaking. There are so many different types of great public speakers. So to me, it's not about saying, well, you know, Bill Clinton is great, but he needs to walk around the stage more. That's completely missing the point. Or Ronald Reagan is great, but he relied on note cards too much. Now, that's not the both people. Clinton and Reagan were great fans. In the case of Bill Clinton, still a great public speaker. So I want to focus on this in more detail in just a moment.

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If you are a baseball player, you can be a horrible fielder, a horrible thrower. If you can consistently hit a home run and a ball coming to you 120 miles or however fast Fastballs or something like that. If you can consistently hit that ball out of the park, you're going to make millions and millions of dollars a year. You can be the designated hitter and you can get rich and famous just by doing that one thing well. You may have awful form. You might throw in a silly, awkward. It's not going to matter if you can do that one thing well. Similarly, when it comes to public speaking, if you can say things in a way that an audience finds interesting, memorable. You can break all the rules. You can read with your head down, you can scratch your head. You can talk in a boring monotone that most people would consider awful. You can violate every single rule as long as you engage people and they find your ideas interesting, memorable. So how are you going to use that when it comes to your own preparation? I certainly think you should at least think about some of the basic rules. I mean, there are some good rules, like don't have your head down and read. That, I think is a perfectly good rule most of the time. Don't do a data dump. Illustrate key points with stories. All of them are good rules. But at some point you've got to step back and ask yourself, am I truly engaging this audience? Am I connecting with them? Are they understanding me and remembering me however it takes? Maybe you're like Gary Vaynerchuk. You use a lot of curse words and you're manic and you're messy. Works for him. It doesn't have to be your style. Maybe you're very, very neat, straight laced, focused, and you stand behind electric and you don't move at all. That works for other people. But you've got to focus on what really works on your audience as opposed to just checking off boxes on a checklist. I'm not against checklists. I use checklists in my own trainings with people. I ask them to grade themselves on about 30 different categories. Their posture, hand movement, voice, volume. It is important when learning these skills, getting a sense of fundamentals that help or hurt. But at some point you got to forget all of that and focus on what really works more in a moment.

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This is why I believe it's not particularly fruitful to officially categorize someone as a good speaker or not a good speaker. It's kind of like trying to label someone a good novelist or not a good novelist. If people are still reading the book 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. If it is given as an assignment in high schools. At some level it's stood the test of time. And it stands out from all the books that are instantly forgotten and sell three copies a year. I'm not saying popularity is the only thing, but it is something. So when you're looking at a speaker, I urge you, don't sit there and say, well, he said three ums. And my speech teacher said that's the worst thing you could ever do. And I counted the three ums and forget about it. Some of the most successful communicators in the world, some of the top talk show hosts, they say um all the time. And uh, people still find them interesting. For some speakers, it's their humor. For some speakers, it's their warmth. For some speakers, it's their compassion. For some, it's just the sheer overwhelming odds they overcame in getting there today because their life was so awful that it's motivating. So my big challenge to you is ask yourself, what do you really have that's different, that is unique, that's going to stand out? If you don't have anything that unique doesn't mean you can't be a good speaker. But you've got to figure out a way of presenting it that somehow comes across as authentic. Interesting. And is that one good thing? My biggest point to you in all of this is rather than figuring out how to reduce flaws, figure out what is the one big thing that's actually good that's interesting. Back to the baseball analogy again. You can be a horrible fielder, horrible catcher, if you can just hit home runs, you are going to be in great shape. Football, if you can kick through the goal post every single time and never miss, you can be a 98 pound weakling. You can run the 100 yard dash in five minutes. It doesn't matter if you can do that one thing. You might not make $100 million a year, but you can always play on a professional football team because you can do that one thing well. That's my challenge to you when it comes to your speaking. Figure out what is it that you really do well and let's build that. And when you see other speakers out there, don't pick them apart and analyze, uh, oh, they, they look down at their notes for a second. Don't look at it from that perspective. Instead, try to really look at them, listen to them and figure out what are they doing well that you can build on. That, I believe, is the best way to understand and enjoy other speakers. It's also the best way to build your own skills long term. 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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