Ep 73 Donald Trump's Public Speaking Secrets for Success March 13 16

So what is Donald Trump's secret to successful communicating?

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

Okay, folks, a couple of caveats. I am creating this podcast and this video and this program today on March 3, 2016. So at this particular time, Donald Trump has won most of the Republican primaries so far, is way ahead in the delegate count. He's way ahead in all the polls. I do try to design these podcasts and, and these video shows so that they are evergreen, meaning there are certain principles here that if people go back to it and listen or watch it two years, five years, 10 years later, they'll still learn something. And it's not just commenting on the news of the day. So I am well aware that six months from now, a year from now, Donald Trump may have done something to make people conclude he's the worst communicator of all time or the worst politician of all time. So, having hedged my bets and cleared my throats, let's hop right in, because I am asked constantly by clients, friends, family, others, what is the secret to Donald Trump's success as a communicator? Because he has risen to the top of the political pecking order in the gop. He has bested very serious political opponents who've had decades of experience in high national, state, federal offices. And he's done it primarily because of his strength as a communicator. So I do think it behooves us to look at what he's doing, what's working for him, and also what is transferable to others. Now, I'm going to contend today that there are a number of things that Trump does well that anyone can learn from. But there are also a number of things he does that are unique to his own brand, to his political environment, to the fact that he is running for political office from a particular party in a particular year, and it's not transferable to others. Now, a couple of more caveats. Some of you who have been longtime viewers and listeners of mine realize I used to talk about politics all the time. I rarely do now. And it's because so many people have the inability to understand you can praise or criticize someone's communication skills. It has nothing to do whether you're praising or condemning their politics or their views. So with all that said, please keep in mind, I am not endorsing Donald Trump. I'm not denouncing him. There's a lot of other websites to do that, a lot of other podcasts if you're really interested in my political views, call me up and take me out for coffee. Or I'll take you out for coffee and we can talk politics. That's not the point of this podcast, so forgive me for that long introduction there. But let's hop right into Donald Trump. First of all, what fascinates me about Trump is he violates many of the rules of traditional good presentation skills, media skills. Let's talk about a few of those. For one thing, all of my competitors and in fact, what I have traditionally taught all my clients is don't ever lie to the media. If they catch you telling a lie, then your goose is cooked. You'll be destroyed, vilified. You'll be run out of office. Your campaign will falter. Well, Donald Trump has shown again and again and again throughout his career, not just this campaign, that you can lie. Now, I'm sorry some of you think I'm just on Hillary's bandwagon, nothing to do with it. Demonstrably, anyone who actually cares about the concept of, of truth, lies, facts, fiction, fact checking, everyone concludes that Donald Trump is a serial liar. And yet he gets away with it. It doesn't seem to hurt. I don't advocate that most of you do that because most people you're running for local office, you are an entrepreneur, a CEO of a publicly traded company. For that matter, if you are caught blatantly telling falsehoods, it can often end your career. Donald Trump is also not afraid to use profanity, although he's done it a little less recently. He is not afraid to call people dummies, stupid and to do things that seem out of character for him. It works for most politicians and most CEOs and most executives. Most of the time it does not work. So I do want to caution you if Donald Trump is your role model as a communicator, you got to be highly selective regarding what works and is transferable to other situations and what is unique to his own situation. So let's start off with some of the other things that he does that may or may not work for you. His followers like to say he's not politically correct. He says what he thinks and certainly coming across with candor does help most politicians most of the time. Now with Trump calling people fat and ugly and disgusting and pigs and short and low energy works for him. His supporters like that. I'm not suggesting that you call every one of your competitors fat stump stupid, ugly. But the more you can sound like a real person the way real people Talk, but in a style that's fitting of the office you're in or you're running for or your position in a company in general. That does work. It's one reason why Howard Stern has been so successful for so many decades, because people feel the sense that he's saying what they would actually think if they could talk to celebrities or models or other people in the news. Donald Trump does benefit from that. Something else he does extremely well is maintain consistency. He has a brand now. I have, like a lot of you, I've followed Donald Trump since the 1980s, when he first really hit the national scene with his Art of the Deal. But truth be told, he has been a major media hound since the early 1970s, and he was profiled in the New York Times in 72 or 73 for the first time. So he's been around a long, long time, and he is consistent. He has consistently said, I'm great, I'm rich, I'm wonderful. Everybody else is sort of a dummy. Don't you want to be like me? And you can debate whether or not those are good messages. You. You can debate whether those are messages you want in a politician or a president, but what you cannot debate is it is consistent. Now, those are the same sort of messages he's conveyed on his TV show, the Apprentice, for so many years, but he was doing it long before that. And the consistency comes down to image and how he looks, too. He basically has the same hair style that he had back in the 80s and even the 70s. And he takes a lot of grief for his hair, but it obviously isn't hurting him too much. He's very, very consistent with his image. And you don't see him in casual wear one day a sports jacket, another a bathing suit one day. You pretty much always see him in a traditional full suit, not a sports jacket, a full dark suit, a tie. His tie is long. It elongates his body takes emphasis off of girth there around the midsection. And his suit is generally always perfectly tailored. So it's a consistent image that he's using to try to convey, I'm success, I'm rich, I'm powerful, and I'm successful. I'm not suggesting you always wear Briony suits when you're giving a speech, but there is some value in having a consistent image, so people just feel more comfortable with you. Certainly, many of his supporters in the political campaigns are supporting him because they feel like they know him and they know who he is, and they know what he's about. Even if they haven't read a particular position paper on an issue that they might care about other things he does well. He has a core message that has worked well for him for 40 years. Therefore, it was easy to translate that message into all of his campaign speeches. His message is essentially, I am a ruthless winner. I'll do whatever it takes for me to win. That is his message. Again, some of you can find that an appalling message. I'm not endorsing that message, but it is a clear, clear cut, consistent message that he's delivered not just in the last six months on the campaign trail, but for really 40 years. Certainly for the dozen or so years the Apprentice has been on the air, that has been the message. So when he went to the campaign, it was a minor tweak. It was basically, hey, all of you know me as the guy who's a ruthless winner, who knows how to get the deal done to make myself rich for the last 40 years, I'm now going to do that for you. And for those who don't look at the fine print too closely on his actual business successes and failures, that is a message that worked. Other things he does well, he is funny. And folks, again, I'm not endorsing Donald Trump, but there is simply no doubt about it. When he mocks people, when he ridicules people, he sometimes does it in a vicious, mean spirited way, but sometimes he does it in a highly funny way. Comedians like John Oliver have commented that indeed, Donald Trump is highly funny. That's one reason why his tweets are always picked up is because they're typically, they've got some humor. They make you laugh even if you don't agree with Donald Trump. And humor is something most politicians avoid. Most politicians want to avoid controversy. And so much of humor is about making fun of someone and attacking someone. And that creates controversy. So that's one way he stands out. Something else that I believe is working for him in his current political campaign is he actually has a different message. His message, ideologically and from a policy standpoint is in many ways completely different from all of his opponents. Not just the ferociousness of his anti immigration policies, but the fact that he's not spending a lot of time talking about tax cuts, less regulation and protecting America abroad and starting more wars. He's very, his policies are very, very different from George Bush and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. And anytime you're communicating in a crowded field, and initially there were 17 prominent Republican candidates for president, when you have a different message and It's a message that there's an audience for. It's going to help you communicate, it's going to cut through the clutter and it's going to stand out. And I believe that because his message is actually so different from what a lot of the other Republican politicians are saying, that's why it's standing out. Something else he does extremely well. He can be short and pithy. He's not someone who's going to stand up and give a two hour speech on foreign policy. You can say that might make you less comfortable with him as president, but in the age of Twitter, he can put in 140 characters short, pithy comments where he instantly tries to destroy anyone who's criticized him and he tries to get out his own positions. He does it extraordinarily effectively because he understands not everyone wants to hear a politician give an hour speech. Sometimes you have to sum it up in 10 seconds. And that is the beauty of becoming a real master at Twitter. And 140 characters, just a sentence or two, forces you the discipline of being pithy. Now, the number one thing Trump does that helps and hurts him, and in this particular political context certainly appears to be helping him, is he attacks. When you attack, you generate controversy, you generate interest, you attract news media attention, you get people to pay attention. You sound different from other politicians because most politicians want to play it safe. They want to say the same pieties, same things that have been poll tested and that they know have complete resonance with their audience. Donald Trump doesn't do that. He's not afraid to attack former GOP standard bearers like Mitt Romney. He's not afraid to attack John McCain. He's not afraid to attack a lot of things that people feel like. You can't do that. The interesting thing about it is he does it in a non ideological way. He's certainly viewed by most American pundits as now conservative and authoritarian and in many ways far right. But when you look at many of his attacks that have gotten so much media attention, you cannot position them to the far right on the ideological spectrum. So for example, when Trump says that, why are we saying George W. Bush protected us? You know, he was the president during 911 more Americans died on US soil during George Bush's presidency than any other president. You know, he didn't, he didn't protect us. He deserves blame. That's something that conservatives simply never say. It's also something that most moderates and even most Democrats don't say. That is seen as a Critique more common with far left political spokespersons. And that's what makes him unpredictable. A good communicator is someone who, who is interesting. And part of what makes someone interesting is a little bit of unpredictability. And that is certainly something that works in his favor. But the basic principle of attack, when you attack, when you say, this person's a dummy, all the politicians in Washington's are fools, idiots, tools, it generates huge media attention and you are essentially singing music to a lot of voters out there who feel exactly the same. Am I telling you to run around attacking your competitor or other people in your company or every city councilor you work with? No. What I am saying is that when you attack in a speech, in a media interview, you get a lot more attention. You cut through the clutter. You're going to have a lot more people hate you and dislike you because. But you are going to attract people. Now, you've always got to figure out that balance in politics. If you're running with 16 other candidates or even with four other candidates, if 75% of the people hate you, but 20, 25% love you, well, you can still come in first place in a primary. If you are the CEO of Coca Cola and you want the whole world to drink your product, you can't necessarily play that strategy. You can't run around saying, well, Pepsi tastes like poison and you'll die if you drink Pepsi, that would come back to haunt you in a profoundly negative way and in a way that doesn't affect someone like a politician, like Donald Trump in a political environment. Folks, I'm going to go over more strengths of his. He is a fascinating character. Whether you abhor him and think he is a demagogue of the most vicious, virulent strand, or if you think he should be a President of the United States, he is no doubt, absolutely fascinating. We're going to go into this in more detail in just a moment.

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Other things, and I gotta be careful the time here, because I could talk about Trump for hours, if not days. One of the things Donald Trump does that I believe helps him as a communicator is he obviously loves it when you see him at a debate. He just exudes the sense that there's no place else in the world I'd rather be. When you saw other competitors of his, especially someone like Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush, when he was on the debate stage, looked like he would rather be anyplace else. Speaking and speaking to the media, debates, all of that. It's one of the few things in life where simply acting like you're having fun helps. There's a crowd psychology. Related to that is the fact that one of the reasons Trump is, I believe, so comfortable speaking is he's done so much of it. Trump is someone who, as far as I can tell, has never said no to any speaking opportunity. Now, exaggerating slightly, I'm sure, because of scheduling conflicts, there are times when he said no. But I do know for a fact that for decades, he. He has said yes to numerous, numerous speaking opportunities, even when they don't pay him. I've seen him speak at the Public Relations Society of America when I know he did it as a favor to a top PR executive who worked with him for years. I've seen him speak at Chamber of Commerce events here in New York City. This was a few years before the Apprentice started. And he simply loves to speak. He loves the limelight. Now, you can say perhaps he loves it a little too much, but that's one of the things that makes him a good communicator in that sense. You can make the case no different from that one habit I'm talking about from Martin Luther King or Bill Clinton, because both of them spoke or speak 300 speeches a year. Donald Trump speaks a lot, and he certainly is not someone known for turning down a lot of TV opportunities. When you see him speak, and I remember this from 15 years ago, 10 years ago, he would tell the same stories. He loves telling this story about how in the 90s, he's walking down the street and the particulars change. Sometimes it's with Marla Maples, sometimes with different wives. Sometimes the story is with his daughter. He's walking down the street, and the wife or the daughter, depending on how he's telling it, says, oh, look at that homeless bum over there. And Donald says, that homeless bum is worth $8 billion more than I'm worth. What do you mean, Donald? That bum doesn't have anything. That's right, because I'm $9 billion in the hole. It's basically the story he tells some version of that. Now, you can debate whether or not that story reveals positive or negative traits about him. But what struck me is he's used that story so many times, and he realizes that when he's giving a speech, he is giving a performance. He gives people what he thinks is his best. He's not coming up with lots of new stuff. New policies, new substance every time. That's actually a good thing. As a speaker, the final thing that he does well is when he speaks, he conveys the sense of complete, utter confidence. Now, you could say the same of conmen, but you could also say the same of the greatest leaders in the history of the world. When you saw or heard Winston Churchill speak, you didn't get a sense that there's a lot of doubt in his voice on what he wanted the Allies to do during World War II. To that extent, it is exact. And folks, believe me, before you start with a hate mail, I'm not saying Donald Trump is a Winston Churchill. But with respect to confidence, what Trump does extraordinarily well is he speaks with absolute confidence. You look at his body language, you look at his eyes, you look at his head, you look at his hands, and everything says, I'm right. I can't believe how right I am. You never get the sense that he's thinking, I might be wrong or I'm not quite sure about this or maybe this isn't a good idea. Because if you express doubt in yourself when you're speaking, you're going to destroy your credibility with your audience, let other people attack you. Certainly plenty of people attack Donald Trump. But when you're speaking and putting your ideas out there, you're much better off exuding the sense of confidence in your own ideas. Now, it can be done without coming across as arrogant. Certainly many of those consider Donald Trump, myself included, to come across extraordinarily arrogant. But if you had to choose between being too confident and some people thinking you're arrogant versus coming across as insecure, I would not go the insecure route, folks. We'll be talking about him, I suspect, for years to come. He's been on the scene as a communicator for for more than 40 years, and something tells me we'll be covering him again. If you do have questions or for that matter, disagreements with my analysis, feel free to share it to me on Twitter jwalker. You can post your comments on the blog@mediatrainingworldwide.com as always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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