Ep 80 Never Wing a Speech the Sam Smith Way Public Speaking March 20

Singer Sam Smith shows why you never ever want to wing a speech.

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

Singer Sam Smith was awarded for Academy Award in 2016. He was not considered the frontrunner for this musical award. Apparently he didn't think to prepare a speech. So when he actually was named the winner, he got up and he apparently decided to wing it. He said, oh, I've been told that I'm the first gay man to ever win an Oscar. And he went on and on about the fact that no gay man had ever won an Oscar. The only problem is it's not true. Lots of gay men and gay people have won Oscar award. Elton John, all kinds of gay people have won Oscars. Now if he had done a little bit of homework, he would have figured this out. Now, it is true that no gay person has won a best actor, a best actress award. No openly out gay person. But that's not what he said. In the process, he was roundly ridiculed, mocked. I would say deservedly so. We'll go into this in more detail in just a moment.

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Folks, it's never a good idea to wing a speech, to just get up and say the first thing that pops into your head. But it's especially a horrible idea if tens and tens, if not a hundred million people all over the world are watching you. The Oscars are about as big time TV as it gets. I understand their ratings were down in 2016, but still, it is a huge, huge, huge audience. And for many performers it will be the single greatest audience they ever face in their careers. So far from winging it, this should be the performance they prepare for more than anything else. Now this is a classic example of what happens if you decide to wing it because you can hear some snippet of something and kind of forget the important details. In this case, Sam Smith had heard another famous actor bemoaning the fact that no gay person had ever won the best actor, best actress awards in the Oscars. But that's not what he quoted. He sort of remembered it, misremembered it in a way that made it so general as to apply to all Oscar awards. And it is just factually untrue. It makes it appear as though Sam Smith doesn't even care about gay people. If he never bothered to figure out accomplishments and successes of other gay people, it makes him seem insensitive, and it comes across as thoroughly unprofessional. My recommendation for anyone who's nominated for anything, have a speech, practice it out loud. In these days, with the, you know, the common ingredient of everyone having a cell phone. Practice your speech on your cell phone, capture on video, and then send it to five friends you admire and respect. I guarantee you Sam Smith did not do that. If he had rehearsed his speech on video and sent it to half a dozen friends, pretty sure one of them would have said, wait a minute, there are a lot of gay people who've won Oscar award. You can't say that. And he would have avoided a whole lot of humiliation and a whole lot of criticism. Sam Smith has a great voice, I think. I'm not a huge fan. I never bought any of his music. I've never been to one of his concerts, but certainly seems like great singing talent. And you can make the case of, okay, singer, you're not an actor. Maybe it doesn't matter as much how much he presents. You know, your reputation is your reputation, and it's the sum of a lot of different elements. Certainly your singing is one of those things. But how you speak, how you come across, how you carry yourself, how you deal with challenges in your career, how you respect your audience, these are all things that factor into your overall impression and your reputation. Is this going to ruin Sam Smith? I mean, he'll never get another album. No, I'm not saying that. Is it going to dramatically cause his record sales to plummet? No. But it is something. A night where it should have been a highlight to his career and now it has a sour taste. Why in the world would you want to do that? So my advice to all of you doesn't matter if you're nominated for the Academy Awards or for volunteer of the year of your local Rotary Club or Kiwanis Club. Assume there's a chance you're going to win. Assume you want to do your best. Prepare a presentation, practice it on video and have a couple people look at it. No, it's not going to jinx you. I promise you. If you prepare a speech in practice and you don't win, it's not going to be because you prepared a speech and showed respect for your audience. That simply is not how the universe is. Events in the universe are dispersed. So please don't use that as an excuse. That is an excuse for laziness. That is an excuse to show contempt for your audience. So I'm begging you, please don't get up and wing it. And if you do get up and wing it, don't just pull some little snippet of something you read somewhere on the Internet and present it as fact when tens, if not hundreds of millions of people are watching you. So Sam Smith will continue listening to your music, but for goodness sake, next time you win a major award, do a little due diligence. Do just a little practice, please.

Your questions.

Folks. A reminder, your questions are taken here every single day. There are other public speaking podcasts in the world you could be listening to. Some of them do five, 10 shows a month. Next month they do three. Next month they do one. Next month they're gone. Now these words, of course, could come back to haunt me. We're in month three of speaking with TJ Walker. But since I started doing this show, I've delivered. I'm here for you seven days a week, even leap year. This year, we're even here for you on February 29th, when need be. And we're here to answer your questions. So any questions you have about public speaking, speaking to the media, speaking on panels, speaking during a crisis, we'll answer them. I'll answer them that way. This is not some big, huge, huge institution organization. It's me. I will give you the benefit of my insights of having worked in this world with tens of thousands of executives and politicians and leaders in every kind of public and private institution over the last 32 years. So if you have a question, all you have to do is send it to me. You can email infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter jwalker. You can post your comments. If you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening to it on itunes, go to the blog or you can go to our Facebook page and post your questions there. You can also post comments and disagreements on anything we've discussed so far as well. Okay. Item in the news that caught my attention this was in the Sunday Post, a prominent British newspaper. They're commenting on a Member of Parliament, Marie Black. And forgive me if I'm mispronouncing the Member of Parliament's name, she is the youngest mp and she was quoted talking about a recent media training course where we were taught how to look at the camera, where to put our hands, and so on. One of the guys taking the course said, if you as politicians ever find yourself in a difficult situation when you realize you're in the wrong and you need to get through an interview, just start talking about what you want to talk about. Now. The Headline to this article was that politicians taught to ignore questions. Folks, that's not really what good media training does. And it's more of a Hollywood version of ignore the question and say whatever you want. The problem with that advice is it's too easy for the audience to hear the question, hear what you're saying, and conclude that you are a shifty, double talking politician who is lying and afraid to be honest and authentic. So it really is not as simple as just ignore the question and say whatever you want. You know, every profession has some kind of a stereotype that plays out in Hollywood. You know, if you looked at Hollywood, you would think the only thing anyone in PR does is go to parties and drink champagne till midnight like the Kim Cattrall character from Sex and the City. That's not what 99.99% of PR people do. If you see a TV show about cops, you would think that every single police officer shoots a gun about three times a day. The reality is most police officers can go their whole career without ever shooting their gun. So there's always some version of a profession that you see in the mainstream media are caricaturized or that's played out in TV shows and movies and it's just not based on anything in reality. This is one of those. Although I say that with a caveat, there are in fact some bad media trainers out there who do give politicians advice. Ignore the question and say whatever you want. I don't think it's anyone who's really knowledgeable. It's not what I advise. There's some subtlety involved. A lot of what we talk about here on this program, there is some subtlety, some subtleties involved. There's some gray space. If you are asked a question and it's a tough question, and if you answered it 100% in a logical, linear, rational way, there's a chance you would be quoted. To make you look stupid or defensive, then that's not the best way to answer it. It doesn't mean you have to dodge the question, but you do have to answer it in a way that protects you more and makes it less likely that you're going to be quoted on the defense. So I'll give you an example. Some of you have heard this before, but for example, when I am in a foreign country, as I often am, and I'm training a president of a country or a prime minister or a Nobel Peace Prize winner, someone like that, reporters may come up to me and say, don't you feel guilty teaching somebody how to lie and spin and obfuscate. That sounds like a tough question, doesn't it? So how do I answer that question? Now, I don't teach people how to lie, but I don't want to say to a reporter, I don't teach people how to lie because that would be the quote that would look very defensive. And it kind of sounds like what someone would say if they are a professional lying teacher. So I don't want to say that I don't feel guilty about my profession, but I don't want to say I don't feel guilty about my profession because that kind of sounds like I've got something to feel guilty about. Or that's the quote you often see in a story about an exotic dancer or prostituters. I obviously don't want to be associated with that. So how do I answer this question? I can't answer the question until I reframe the question and can focus on some aspect, some assumption that I can buy into. This is not the same thing as dodging the question. The real art to this is in rewriting the question to neutralize it. Now, I realize some reporters may look down their nose at this. Some public, members of the public may look down their nose at. I'm telling you, there is absolutely no way you can be a successful politician and get elected to anything if you are 100% not honest. I do believe you can be honest. If you are literal and answer questions to the media in the same way you do in normal conversations, you would have no control. So how do I answer this again, this hypothetical question I've actually received in real life? TJ don't you feel guilty and ashamed about teaching politicians to lie and spin and obfuscate? I don't agree with the final premise of lying. I don't agree with the middle premise of feeling guilty. What part of this question do I buy into? Can I answer where I'm not spending my time rebutting premises? Feel? All the reporter is really asking me is, T.J. how do you feel about being in your profession? Now it's a neutralized question. Now I don't have to spend time rebutting premises. Now I can answer the question in a straightforward way. I feel great to be in a profession where I teach leaders how to communicate effectively. Now, the reporter might not love my answer, but the reporter cannot ethically or in good conscience claim that I dodged the question. And there's no way the reporter can quote any part of my answer to make me look defensive or stupid or negative or a part of some shady narrative. So I've protected myself. And that's really a summary of what smart politicians and smart CEOs and smart media operators do everywhere. You have to listen carefully to the question and then you have to rewrite it in your own mind so that a fair minded person, when hearing your answer, feels like you answered it at some level, that you didn't dodge the question, but that you answered it on your own terms. The classic example when did you stop beating your wife? If you answer that in a logical way, I never beat my wife, then that's the quote to allegations of wife beating and defense I never beat my wife. It's completely negative and it reframes a negative about how horrible you are. That's the problem with answering questions in a completely, completely logical, linear way. By the way, the correct answer to that is whether you're a man or woman and whether the question is about beating your wife or beating your husband. The correct answer for that is my spouse and I continue to have a wonderful, loving, mutually respectful relationship. And again, I'm assuming that the allegations were just made up and it was just a nasty, gratuitous question. That's how you answer that question to protect yourself where no fair minded person could claim you're dodging the question and there's no part of your answer that can be edited out to make you look defensive, negative or stupid. Thanks for joining me. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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