Ep 49 Why Is Authenticity Important for Public Speakers Feb 18 16

Why is it so important for speakers these days to be seen as authentic.

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

Welcome to the program today. All of today's questions come from one of my professional colleagues, Dr. Nick Morgan. Now those of you who've heard me talk about other people in the business, I don't try to be negative or nasty, but I have to tell you, I have a fairly low opinion of most people who call themselves public speaking experts and media training experts. Well, Dr. Nick Morgan is one of the true pros. He is a genuine expert. I read his blog all the time. Sometimes I read it@forbes.com where he's a regular. Sometimes I read it directly on his website, publicwords.com and I'm going to tell you about some of his upcoming programs. But he was nice enough to share with me the top some of the very top questions that he gets. Most regular questions he gets from his clients and students all over the world. I wanted to share some of my answers with you on these questions but also remind you, give you a gentle nudge to go over to his website and check them out as well. Also check out he has a great public workshop for those of you especially in the Boston area where he's based. He has a great one day interactive public workshop coming up and I'll provide the link to to that in the show notes as well. Here's the first question that he gets. Why is authenticity so important these days in a speaker? I think a part of the way I would answer this is people can get information and facts from so many different places. You just go to Google and you type in your question, you get it. It's much harder to tell if someone really believes it. If it's a con man, it's a phony. As we've seen in some of the recent political debates of 2016, voters will not necessarily count against someone telling a bold faced lie. They don't necessarily count it against someone giving a promise that they know can't be fulfilled. But if you're coming across in a way that seems completely phony, you're repeating yourself word for word as if you're a robot following a script. That's when alarm bells go off. And regardless of where you are in the political spectrum, it's kind of something that everybody feels comfortable attacking. So that's certainly one of the reasons in the political realm as to why authenticity is so important. Now I'm going to differ with some of my I'm not necessarily differing with Nick, but I am going to differ with some of my colleagues. I think there are some experts out there who spend so much time talking about authenticity that they neglect to focus on actually having an interesting message. If you're a speaker, you can come across very authentic. I mean, I could come out in my bathrobe, unshaven, with a cup of coffee in my slippers and be authentic and say, hey, folks, I don't want to try to impress you and put on airs. Just come out and slurp coffee. Yeah, that's how I authentically am on a Saturday morning or most mornings. But that's not interesting to you. I think you always have to have both. You have to come across as authentic, but first and foremost, you've really got to deliver value to your audience. So for more on that, check out some of the numerous postings that Nick has has placed on his own blog andorbes.com the next question that Nick gets most often why is storytelling important for a speaker? To me, that's obvious, and I'll be honest with you, I wish we didn't have to tell stories. I tell my clients this. The reason stories are so important is audiences don't remember anything other than stories. Don't take my word for it. Ask around, test people. Now, people won't tell you they want a speaker with a lot of stories. But when I ask audiences around the world, tell me about the best speaker you've seen in a while, what do you remember? They only remember the stories and the passion. And that's why stories are so important. The other big tip about stories is it's a lot easier for the speaker to retell a story rather than going through a whole bunch of data and going through a bunch of slides or reading something that's really, really hard. The third most question that Nick gets what are the most common mistakes beginning speakers make? And of course, the biggest one. And it's not just beginners. It's a lot of intermediates and even advanced speakers. They try to convey way, way too many messages, too many facts, too many bullet points into a presentation. They try to show everybody how smart they are, and they just do a massive data dump. And of course nobody's impressed, everybody's asleep, everybody's checking their cell phone for email, and the speech is a complete flop. Now, Nick also has some very interesting recent post on what beginning professional public speakers do. And I can well remember from my days at National Speakers association conventions, people coming up saying, hey, can you introduce me to a speaker bureau as if that were the magic. So he lists that as one of the mistakes that beginning professional speakers make. But I would urge you to go to his website and check that out in more detail and look for the postings that we'll go over. More questions in just a moment.

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And by the way, this is a special edition. As I mentioned, all the questions today are coming from my colleague and someone I respect as one of the leaders of the industry, Dr. Nick Morgan. But normally this show is entirely about your questions. If you have questions about public speaking, speaking to the media, speaking during a time of crisis, all you have to do is send them to me infoediatrainingworldwide.com or you can post it on Twitter. JWalker is my handle. Or you can post your comments anywhere. You find this show in social media, whether it's LinkedIn, our Facebook page or on the blog at Media TrainingWorldwide. Let's hop into more questions. How can I control or manage my stage fright? Very common question I get. Nobody likes my answer to this. They want to hear some quick gimmick. They want to hear put your hands on your hips and pose like Wonder Woman. They want to have some magic pill. They want to drink green tea. They want to hear a 10 second exercise on visualization. Visualize the standing ovation. All of those things, I think, are horrible advice. The number one way to control and manage stage fright is to practice your speech on video again and again until you actually love what you see. Until you get to the point where you say, wow, that's an interesting speaker. I would watch me if that weren't me. Once you do that, it becomes virtually impossible to get nervous or frightened about speaking on stage. Now Nick has some other techniques. You're going to want to search out his blog on that as well. Next question. How can I improve my presence on stage? Presence is one of these words. It's kind of like charisma that you've heard me talking about in previous podcasts. It's one of these words that's so delightfully fuzzy that people can get tangled up in it and frankly, waste a lot of time. I think presence simply means coming across the way most people do when, when they're having a conversation with one person and they're relaxed and comfortable. The problem many people have is they get on stage and they're in front of a larger audience than usual. If you're used to speaking to five people, standing up, speaking to 10 people makes you nervous if you're used to speaking to 100 people. But now you got to speak to a thousand people. It's an elevated stage. Now all of a sudden you're nervous. And the problem is most of us change ourselves when we're, we're nervous. We become scared little bunny rabbits. We freeze our hands, our face, our body, our feet, and we start doing mechanical things and our voice becomes monotone. So the whole presence issue is solved. Again, nobody likes my answer to this. You've got to practice your speech on video in the venue where you're going to be. If it's on a big stage, you need to get there earlier that day or the day before. One of my clients who I just trained is speaking at a TED conference in Geneva today. Well, he didn't just show up five minutes before his speech, he showed up a day and a half earlier and he gave a practice rehearsal the day before and videotaped it and the morning of. So by the time he gave it, he was really comfortable and gave a great speech by the way. So that's how you improve your presence, is you've got to actually look at it, practice on video and watch the video without listening to it for one take. And if you see yourself fidgeting with your hands, playing with your ring, going from one foot to the other nervously, well guess what? That's what everyone else sees too. If you want to improve your presence, stop doing those things. Start doing the things that people do when they're comfortable and relaxed. Now here's the beauty of presence. It's not like me saying, okay, you want to be a great basketball player? Go to an NBA game and just watch what they do. Well, I can watch an NBA all star twirl in the air and dunk basket. It's not going to help me dunk a basketball. I can't dunk a basketball. Never could, never will. Unless it's a six foot basket hoop. But when it comes to presence on stage, there's really nothing any world class speaker does with their hands or their body or their legs that you can't do. It's not like a difficult gymnastic move. It's just moving, not fidgeting, gesturing, walking around a little. So that part is in fact incredibly, incredibly easy. Now you're hearing a lot of questions here. Let's not forget this is always an opportunity for you. How to do it. So here's exactly how you do it.

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, senior CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Ms. Universes. Send your questions to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter jwalker.

Next question from Dr. Nick Morgan. Should I start my speech with a joke? No, you shouldn't. I not saying it's always a bad thing. The problem with starting a speech with a joke is that people may be expecting it. Their expectations are higher. It seems like you're trying too hard and if it's not an instant reaction to something else that just happened in the room, it can seem manipulative. It's kind of like, okay, I know I have to laugh now because the speaker just made a funny. Far better for it to seem spontaneous or to bring in humor in the middle of your speech at the end of your sprinkled throughout rather than doing it because you kind of feel like you have to and everyone expects it. Now, if you're naturally funny and the joke is on message and is a part of what you're about, by all means do it. I've never heard any audience leave a conference saying, I hated the way that speaker was so funny and made jokes that were great points that help me with my business. I've never heard anyone say that. I've heard a lot of people say, God, that person was horribly boring. But first and foremost, focus on saying something interesting. The problem most people have with their beginning of their speeches is not that they didn't have a great joke or that their joke wasn't just right. The problem they have is most people start their speeches with the same old boring. Good morning, I'm happy to be here. My name is this. My title is this. Before I start, let me tell you about the history of my company. Today I'm going to talk about X, Y and Z. And then I'll go to A, B and C. I mean, that's how most people start a speech. Boring. Awful. Next final question. How can I get a standing ovation? I'd like you to check out what he has to say on that. Here's my take on standing ovations. Focus first and foremost on delivering the greatest value to your audience. Standing ovation is about me, me, me. Aren't I great? Look at how everyone admiring me and telling me how good I am. Look folks, we all have an ego. It's nice to get a standing ovation but that shouldn't be what you're focused on. Your focus should be, how can you help your audience the most? How can you give them the ideas that are the most interesting you possibly can in the way that's the most memorable as you possibly can do that? And the standing ovations might come, they might not. Sometimes people I've seen get standing ovations. And if you ask anyone in the audience five minutes later, what did that person say? They'd say, well, I have no idea, but wow, I love them. Other times, people are talking about a speaker they saw 10, 15, 20 years ago, but they remembered an insight that changed their life. That speaker didn't get a standing ovation, but they really delivered an insight that helped someone. That is what I believe should be your primary goal I'd like to thank again Dr. Nick Walker for sending us his commonly received questions on public speaking. I'm linking in the show notes below. Go to publicwords.com read his blog regularly? I do, and believe me, there are an awful lot of public speaking blogs that I don't consider up to snuff. His is up to snuff. Great insights on a regular basis. Check out his online courses as well as his upcoming course in April for those of you wishing for a live public presentation workshop in the Boston area. So thanks again as always. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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