Ep 61 Is It OK to Use a Negative Head Shake in a Presentation March 1 16

Should you ever use a negative head shake in a speech, presentation or meeting?

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

This question comes from Tamlin, one of my online training students. She says, Mr. Walker, a question for you. Should we ever use a negative head shake or should we only nod positively? Let's hop into this.

Body language.

Shaking your head is a form of body language. It can be very powerful. I think what Tamlin's referring to is I often caution people about being negative, too negative. Because if you say 10 positive things in a speech or media interview and one negative thing, often people will only remember the negative thing and it can overwhelm an otherwise positive message. But I don't want to give you a blanket right rule, because the problem with blanket rules is they just don't work in every situation. There may be times, if you really want to stress a negative point, that it's perfectly fine to shake your head. Now, for those of you listening on the audio podcast, I'm shaking my head back and forth. So when I'm asked in a speech or if I'm talking about it during the speech, I will say absolutely, do not wing a speech. It won't help you. It will not help you need to rehearse on video. And again, those of you listening on audio, I was shaking my head negatively to express my negative feelings about this idea of winging a speech because that isn't the way to get better. You won't be less stilted or contrived. You'll just be worse and you'll be lazy. So I think it's perfectly fine when it's appropriate to shake your head no. Now, there are some nuances I want to delve into here a little more deeply. Keep in mind different cultures have different ways of shaking their heads. Now, I am here in New York City area. I grew up in North America and the United States. I train and travel people from six continents. But I am an American. We all have our own cultural biases and what we think is normal. But there are parts of the world. I had a close friend a dozen years ago when she shook her head yes, she shook it side to side. Again, apologies for those just listening on the audio podcast, I'm shaking my head in a way that to an American and many people in Western culture, it seems like I'm shaking no, but I'm actually shaking it yes. For people from Tibetan culture and Nepalese culture and in some Indian cultures and some people in India, do It like that too. So they're shaking their head in a way that's not what we think of as up and down. In a straightforward way. It's side to side. Up and down can be very, very confusing. So when you're speaking to a multicultural audience, you need to be aware of that. And I'm not always perfect at this, folks, because in certain countries, for example, if you do the okay symbol, your thumb and your index finger together and the others up a okay, that I did it wrong. But that can be considered an obscenity in some cultures. Same with thumbs up. Thumbs up. And forgive me for those of you who are watching this from cultures where that's considered rude, thumbs up means very, very positive in US Culture, most Western cultures, in some cultures, it's considered an obscenity. So you do need to be keenly aware of what your body is doing, the messages it's sending. It becomes more complex when you have a multicultural audience, even more complex if you are going to another country and everybody in that audience is from the same culture and you're from a different culture. Now, I have spoken in Asian cultures. In fact, I'm about to speak and train in Thailand, but I haven't spoken in Japan, for example. In Japan, my understanding is it is much more common for business speakers and professionals to hold their hands together and to not move their hands. Even though most of the time I advise that that's bad advice. You should move your hands there. It's such a part of the culture, it can look a little odd if you don't do it. The other thing that's different there is. It can be seen as a sign of respect for an audience member to have their eyes closed because they are allegedly intently listening to you and they're showing that what you're saying is so important to them. They are closing their eyes in concentration, perhaps shaking their head. To a lot of Westerners, seeing that for the first time, that's considered, uh, oh, rude. I'm losing them. They're falling asleep. Trouble. And in fact, it's not necessarily trouble. It's a sign that you're doing things right. Other cultural differences, some cultures, it's just not considered rude to talk in front of a presenter, even if you're on the front row. I remember the first time I was doing training and giving a presentation to a large group of political figures, governors, attorneys general, senators from the country of Nigeria. And I noticed that they were talking a great deal throughout the training. Throughout my presentation, the organizer said, hey, tj, I Think you're losing them. You better wrap up early. So I finished early, and what do you know? They gave me a standing ovation, rushed in front of me, wanted to get my autograph, and were fighting with each other to get their picture taken with me. Now, that may be the response they give to any speaker or any business speaker, I don't know. But it showed to me I was wrong. It showed that I was wrong to conclude just because they were talking that that was a sign of disrespect or that was a sign that I wasn't interesting, or that was a sign that I was boring. So that's my challenge. You can't always know in advance. Although these days with the Internet and with YouTube and with Amazon, it's pretty easy to find out what the cultural norms are of people you're speaking to. So you can always do a little due diligence in advance. But the other thing that is important is to have an open mind. So if you see something in an audience or a speaker in a different country and it's not what you're expecting, don't instantly assume that you're wrong or the audience is wrong or the other speaker is wrong. You have to somehow just suspend judgment. And that's hard to do. And there are times when you have to alternate. So, for example, I always advise people, when you're starting a presentation, don't start off by saying, good morning, I'm happy to be here today. But there are exceptions to that rule. I'll explain in a moment.

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I believe when you start a speech presentation, you're best off just saying something instantly interesting to your audience. That's in fact how I try to start every one of these podcasts and every one of these TV shows by saying in one sentence something interesting for you to sort of hook you in so that you'll stay after the opening credits and listen to the show. I don't start off talking about myself. Typically I'll wait in this case seven minutes into the show before I do anything self promotional or that tries to talk to you about me. And I think that's a good rule of thumb whether you're giving a speech, a presentation, a podcast, or a video is start by saying something interesting to the audience. Again, there are exceptions. I used to do a great deal of training and Speaking in the U.S. virgin Islands, St. Croix in particular, and I gave my generic advices I just gave you and I had someone tell me, T.J. it's just different down here. Everybody starts off a speech if it's earlier than noon with good morning. Good morning. If you don't start your speech by saying good morning, people will think you're rude, people will think you're hostile. It'll leave a bad taste in people's mouth. And I heard this not just from one person, but from several people. So you know what? In that case, ignore me, ignore the so called expert and listen to your audience. Ultimately, it's not about what I say or any one public speaking expert says. Ultimately, it is about what works on your audience. If you do something that right away offends the audience, then that's going to impede your ability to communicate the ideas that were most important to you. Well, don't do that. So in that case, I reversed myself. I said forget what I just said over here. If you're giving a presentation here in St. Croix or another Virgin Islands, start off by saying good morning if it is morning, or good afternoon if it's the afternoon. You want to be different when you present, but you don't want to be different in a way that's instantly going to ruffle feathers or make anybody upset. Please, please keep that in mind.

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.

Folks, I don't typically do this, but I'm in a good mood and I normally am. So I'll toss this out to you as well. If you have a question and you don't feel like typing or finding my page, my web blog or my Facebook page, you can always just call, leave a voicemail. If you don't get me directly, you can call me at 212. That's in the U.S. so. Plus 1 212-764-4955 if you have a question for me that you'd like me to address on this program or you have a topic you like me to address. So this show is an experiment, folks. We are now 60 shows in I have done public speaking videos, really since the 1990s and regularly on YouTube since YouTube was founded or maybe I started eight months after YouTube started. So I've done 10,000 videos. But this show was a Little bit different. It's not just a quick how to public speaking tip of the day or a critique of something stupid a politician said today. It's an attempt to actually give you a quality show and to do it with tremendous regularity. To do it seven days a week. You might not want to listen. For those of you who have the podcast seven days a week, that's okay. You might not want to watch every day. For those of you who subscribe, YouTube, that's okay. You get to pick and choose as you want. And what a lot of people do, I know, is you subscribe to my newsletter. And in the newsletter, once a week on Wednesday, I send you the titles of the last seven shows that have been produced and distributed in the last week. And then you can just pick one, maybe two that interest you. There's no one right or wrong way to use this program. I experimented by turning it into an audio format because I had a lot of you say, well tj, I like tips, I want to keep learning. I realized that public speaking isn't really that well suited to just text because it's about speaking. But who has the time for video? I really can't see myself watching more than a couple of minutes on video. And then I ask people, where do you absorb longer content? And a lot of times they said, listen to podcast. I've got an hour and a half drive in my car if you factor in both ways to work. So I've got, you know, an hour and a half a day times five. Well, that's seven and a half hours that I listen to podcasts. So I saw that as the opportunity because it's just a lot easier, more convenient for many people to absorb content in an audio format. You can be going from walk, you can be at the gym, you can be on a train or plane in a way that video isn't necessarily as convenient. The other reason frankly is I have had and continue to have fairly decent following all over the world. In many parts of the world, India and other places, the bandwidth, the high speed Internet connections are just not consistent enough to be able to watch video easily on YouTube or elsewhere. That's the beauty of audio is it just, it's a much smaller file, it's easier for streaming and it's more convenient. So this, this is actually the 60th show. So we've been doing this for really two months now. I've enjoyed it tremendously. I appreciate all the response. If you have any other suggestions. Doesn't have to be a question, but suggestions on how to how to make the show more useful to you. I'd love to hear from you. Now. One suggestion I have gotten over the years and I will address that is tj, wouldn't it be nice if you could show video clips of newsmakers doing a great job, CEOs doing a great job, and then commenting on their speeches? The problem with that is getting the rights. If I just steal it from YouTube or a corporate website, put it into my own, then YouTube can shut me down, iTunes can shut me down, the corporation can sue me. It's very, very time consuming and expensive to really set yourself up as a news organization getting news footage. And I'm just not equipped to do that. So that's really the only suggestion I know I can't implement. But if you have other suggestions on what would make this program more useful to you, something you'd be even more inclined to share with co workers, friends, colleagues, other people you work with, then by all means let me know. You can post comments whether you're watching this or listening to this on our Facebook page, on YouTube, on the blog@mediatrainingworldwide.com you can also just write to me infoediatrainingworldwide.com and everyone comes directly to me. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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