Ep 83 How to Give a Speech on World Peace without Sounding Trite - Public Speaking March 23

So how do you give a speech on a topic as big and as broad as world peace?

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

So this question comes from one of our regular listeners and viewers on LinkedIn. Odriseva writes in TJ, I'd like you to address a topic about stopping any war ASAP and creating a more peaceful world. How do you talk about a subject like that? Well, Odre, I have to confess, when I first saw the question, I kind of rolled my eyes. Oh, a speech about world peace. But then I stepped back for a minute and I thought about it. This is actually a topic that a lot of my clients talk about all the time. Now I have a lot of clients who work for the United nations in various agencies that have to deal with nuclear testing, detecting nuclear bombs, detecting chemical warfare, and with diplomats all over the world. And so that is what they actually talk about. Here's the key, and here's why I rolled my eyes. When you say a speech about why I want world peace, the first thing that comes to people's minds are these sort of bubble headed, vacuous, empty beauty pageant contestants. When asked the question, you know, what do you want to do for your year? Reign as Miss, you know, Watermelon Queen or whatever, I want to speak out on behalf of world peace. And it just sounds completely empty, insincere, meaningless. That's what you have to avoid. So here's the big challenge. If you want people to pay attention, you have to tell them something interesting. You have to tell them something they don't know already. And it can't just be, why can't everybody be nice and sweet and loving like me? Because unfortunately, that's what happens sometimes when people want to just give a generic high school speech on world peace is it just comes across as, I'm good, I'm a good person. Everybody else who disagrees with me is bad. Now, there certainly are bad people in the world and there are evil dictators in the world, but I can tell you, nobody who is in a war or is a part of a combat feels like they're the bad person. War is typically never anyone's first choice, and I'm not here as a war apologist, but if you want to actually create a more peaceful world, the challenge to you when speaking out is you've got to come up with solutions. Now I'm coming to you. I'm recording this in early March of 2016, and there are a lot of bright, well educated people all over the world trying to figure out a peaceful solution to what's going on in Syria. I don't know what the answer is. I can tell you this, there aren't any easy answers. It's not as simple as let's just put down our guns and forgive and forget. It is a wildly complex situation. Many wars are not all wars. Sometimes there is very much a clear cut aggressor who is just out for power and one side is bad and one side is good. That's not the case in Syria. For anyone who is spent more than two seconds looking at the situation, there's not a clear cut, easy solution for any one actor involved doing it. Whether I don't care if you're the United States, if you're the un, if you're Russia, there aren't easy solutions. So, Audrey, when you're giving a speech on this topic, the first thing you've got to do is show that you've given real thought and show that you've come up with some idea that other people haven't thought of. Too often when people want to give a speech like this, they just want to cast themselves as morally superior to everyone. And when you start off any speech or any presentation by talking about how you are morally superior to most people listening to you, you're not convincing, you're off putting, you're not going to actually change hearts or minds. And therefore the whole thing looks and sort of sounds like an act of stuff. Self indulgence, more in a moment.

Crisis communications.

By the way, I do have to share this with you. I have worked with many beauty pageant contestants over the years. Miss, several, Miss Universes, Miss Teen usa, probably a hundred beauty pageant contestants in Europe, and Miss Russia, you name it. I don't say that to brag folks, but I'm simply telling you I've never once in my entire life heard any beauty pageant contestant or winner saying I'm in favor of world peace. It's one of those stereotypes that I don't really know where it started, perhaps in a movie caricature. To me it's one of those things like, oh, nervous people move their hands way too much and their hands are flying around. I work with nervous speakers all the time. I've never actually had a client of mine move his or her hands too much. So sometimes cliches and stereotypes are based on an exaggeration of something that really happens. Sometimes it's just kind of out of thin air. I will tell you beauty pageant contestants, I find are kind of like any other profession. You have a whole range of talents and smarts and intelligence. Some of the most intelligent people I've ever worked with have been beauty pageant contestants. And some of the most shallowest people have been beauty pageant contestants and winners, big winners. You just, you never necessarily know. But enough about the beauty pageant stuff. That's very, very tiny. Less than 0.01% of my client base. So I don't want to sound like I'm turning this into a beauty pageant advice contest. Back to the central issue of how do you talk about a subject that you may feel passionately about? And you feel that others, if they're on the other side, are almost beyond the pale? How do you do that in a meaningful way so that you don't seem off putting to me? The starting point is you have to come up with some new idea, some new way of looking at an issue. So you jar people out of their status quo thinking. You have to get them to look at something in a new way. If you can't do that, maybe you're not ready to give a speech. I need you to actually give some thought to that prospect. If you have nothing interesting to say, if you have nothing new to advance, maybe you ought not to be speaking. You've got to gauge your audience. It's one thing if you're giving a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City and it's a highly sophisticated audience and everyone has PhDs in foreign affairs, very different than if you're talking to a group of fourth graders at a school wide assembly. It's just a different audience. And you have to realize you may have ideas that some people haven't thought of. The others may write it off. That's okay. Some of you have heard me talk about my own frustrations when I've been at Toastmasters conventions and I've heard people stand up and give speeches. And the gist of it was, let's all take more time to hug our children and be nice to our puppies, because that's what's really important in life. And I kind of rolled my eyes and thought, wow, what a trite cliche. I learned nothing from that speech. It was just warmed over platitudes, was completely uninteresting. Yet this person's speaking skills were good, their techniques were good, but they could have read the phone book and frankly been as entertaining. That was my reaction to many of the Toastmasters speeches. And yet everyone else in the audience loved it. Wild applause, standing ovation, cheers So I wasn't reached out and connected with for that speech. But you know what? That speaker did connect with a lot of other people in the audience. So you've got to figure out what is it that will work on the audience you're talking to to seem meaningful to them. Beyond that, the biggest challenge is, as with any speech, how do you keep from just dumping a lot of data, dumping way too many concepts, instead, slow it down, narrow it down to just a handful of principles, and then give highly, highly specific examples, case studies and stories to make the ideas come alive. So if you're talking about a particular war and you're trying to get people in a certain region from being bombed and you want to put a human face on it, that's a perfect time to actually use a PowerPoint presentation and put up a picture of a young child who was perhaps injured or even killed if you want people to see who it is. Because there are a lot of people in the United States and in every country where if you just say, look, they are enemies, just bomb them, carpet bomb them, just clear out the whole area. There's a certain instinct in a certain percentage of people who would just say, heck yeah, that's the way we got to be tough, we got to protect ourselves. But they completely flip, they completely switch to the other side. If you show a human face of a three year old girl who was bombed or could be bombed, because this is the target for the military campaign. So putting a human face on it. The more I'm involved with different people in different industries, different issues, different subject matters, the more I see the similarities are far more important than the differences in speeches. If you want to convince somebody of something, whether it's why they should be against a particular war and in favor of your policy outcome, you got to follow the basics. Don't data dump. Focus on a handful of ideas in your presentation. Give examples, case studies, tell real stories involving real people and wars, have real people in them and let people know what you want them to do, what can they specifically do to just have a generalized feeling of, oh, I'm a good person, I'm against war, doesn't really do much. If you need people to pressure the politicians to change policies or to vote for a new set of politicians, tell them exactly what, what you want them to do. Otherwise it can come across frankly as an exercise in navel gazing and in just sort of telling people how wonderful you are and how good you are. That never comes across well for any speaker. Folks, I'm TJ Walker, thanks for spending some time with me. I appreciate those of you who write to me and let me know that you are enjoying the podcast. You're finding it useful that you've recommended it to colleagues in your organization, perhaps right there within your office or in your counterparts offices around the country or around the world. I'm always trying to refine the show and make it better. Most of what we do on this show is answer your questions about anything to do with public speaking, presentation skills, media skills, crisis, communications issues. So if you have a question, don't hold back. You have a disagreement, don't hold back. You can post your comments anywhere you are listening to or watching this program. By the way, this is available on itunes. For those of you who like to listen, on Stitcher and all the other podcasting platforms. For those of you who prefer video, it's on YouTube, Facebook video, Flickr, Dailymotion, Vimeo and other sources as well. So try to be as available to you in any format you want other than text. Because I don't have time or don't frankly want to spend the money in having the whole thing transcribed. So we don't have it in text. But if you like text, go to Amazon, search my name. You'll find plenty of books on public speaking and media training. Thanks again for spending some time with me tj. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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Today.