Ep 85 Is Media Training a Function of Videotaping and Critiquing Mistakes - March 25

Is the secret to media training being videotaped and then having your flaws pointed out by the trainer?

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

This question comes from one of our regular YouTube viewers, Banor Banor writes in TJ, Is it true that a part of this media training process involves people getting media trained, are interviewed, recorded, and afterwards they're told everything they've done wrong or should correct or should do better by showing them the video and pointing out where they messed up? Certainly that is the perception of what media training is about and that is a part of it. But here's where it gets complicated, folks. Like a lot of things in life, there can be an element of truth in it, but if that's all you get, it fundamentally distorts what's really going on. When I do a media training with someone, for example, I'm going to take you behind the scenes. When I do, for example, media training, typically someone, I'll ask them to show up by 8:45 for a 9am start. As soon as they walk in, before they even had their first coffee, I say, hey, can I just ask you a few questions? I interview them on camera, standing seated, then I turn the light off, drop the mic on the floor, act like I'm not recording, and I ask them a few questions, how it felt, and then I turn the light on again and ask them what they want to get out of the day. So I actually have four separate interviews I've done with them, and then we're ready to start. I tell them we're going to watch the video, I want them to critique themselves. I say, I want you to be a harsh critic of yourself. Watch it, take detailed notes. And I want you to be a harsh critic, but I want you to be a fair critic. A fair critic points out not just the bad, but also the good. So I have them watch it, have them take notes, and my first question always is, can you tell me what you liked about what you saw? And of course, everyone wants to instantly talk about what they don't like. Their flaws, their mistakes, their blunders. And I say, no, that's not what I asked. You did hire me for my expertise, so I'm going to ask your indulgence, let's do it my way. I want to know, for starters, what did you like? What worked well. And so that's the first part of the process that I have to stress. And Bernard, you probably don't hear if you're Seeing a media training in a movie or a TV show, they don't have time for that. It's too complicated. It's much funnier to sort of do an interview, make a monkey out of someone, and then stop the tape and point out where they're a monkey and tell them, don't do that. Unfortunately, I don't have any evidence that that actually makes someone better. It's funny, it's entertaining, it's interesting. It doesn't build a new skill. So you have to do that at some point in the training day. Typically, what I do is I've done the first four interviews. I get them to focus just on their strengths. I will then demonstrate everything wrong to do with the media. How to look bad, how to look stiff, how to be frozen, how to sit back and look like you have a double chin, all of these things so that they can point and sort of laugh at me, and then I can show them exactly what to do to avoid those problems. Then if I'm working with a group of, say, five or six people, I'll have them all stand up and I'll ask them, speak to the camera. Now, say whatever you want, but I just want you to focus on doing one thing better than the last time you were on camera. Focus on eliminating one flaw. Don't try to change 10 things. Focus on improving one thing, and don't tell me what it is. Don't get advice from me. Just focus on one thing. We record it, play it back, and I go around. I say, okay, Sally, I'm not asking you if you fixed everything. I'm not asking you if you eliminated every flaw. I'm not asking if you love everything you see on video. Now. I just want to know what was the one thing you were trying to do better and did you succeed? And I can tell you of my clients who literally focus on One thing, about 95% of the time, they improve. So that's actually the most important lesson in the training, which is if you practice on video, focus on one thing at a time and keep practicing, you'll get better and better. That's how people learn a skill. That's how you learn how to ride a bike. That's how you learn math, typically, is you keep focusing. You know, you learn addition before you go to subtraction. And ideally, your parents are rewarding you. When the first time you say two plus two is four, your parents are saying, that's smart, that's great. They're not saying, you big idiot, it's not three. That's not how you teach people, whether they're children or 80 year old adults. And that is my philosophy when it comes to media training. So I'm glad you asked the question because that is the perception, but it is such a tiny part of it now, walking you through a typical training day with me or I think any reputable trainer, it's all about getting you on camera enough, critiquing you enough, you critiquing yourself, honing your skills, refining it. The way I define a successful training is that when you can look at a video of yourself and love it, if someone at the end of the day says, tj, this is the greatest training ever. You were so smart, so brilliant, so interesting. I learned so much. You demonstrated every media skill perfectly. Then I know the day was a complete, utter waste of time and money. And I tell every prospective client who calls me that that if that's what people say, then, you know, your money was completely wasted. What really has to happen is at the end of the day, and by the way, media training does take a day. Anyone who says, I want to do in an hour, you're fooling yourself and you're wasting your time. At the end of the day, someone needs to point to the video screen, having gone through their version of a tough interview. And when I stop the video every 10 seconds and say, how do you feel? That's the only 10 seconds that gets on NBC tonight, or that's the only sentence that ends up in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow or the New York Times website this afternoon. And they say, well, that would be great, T.J. that's how I want to look, that's how I want to sound. If it's on tv, that's the message I want, and that's the quote that I want. That would be fantastic. No matter where I stop the tape when that happens, then you know, an actual training took place, an actual skill was built. And I realized that that's now taken me 7 minutes and 38 seconds to explain, which is why you don't see it portrayed that way in movies and TV shows. And people can't talk about that when they're on a webinar and they're covering every aspect of priority. It takes a little time. But if you actually want a new skill, an awful lot of new skills in life take time. So that's really the bottom line. You got one part right. But seeing in isolation, it's actually not helpful at all.

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Learning how to be a better speaker or someone who speaks to the media. It's like any other skill in life. It's very easy to take a detour and go down a wrong alley and get yourself tangled up in things that really aren't that helpful. If you wanted to be a world class chef or just a much better cook for your family, you want to go from cooking frozen dinners to cooking nice healthy meals, you could, I suppose, spend a lot of time and money going after varying qualities of sea salt and various shakers that will crush the salt so that it's somehow fresher. And for someone who's a real salt expert and a salt aficionado, they could tell you all the ins and outs of, well, the black sea salt is this and the regular sea salt that. Morton is bad because there's all sorts of things you could go into. But I dare say you would be hard pressed to find anyone who teaches beginning cooking to people that they should obsess or spend a great deal of time worrying about the salt. Now, there are a lot of menus where you have to have salt. There are plenty of dishes where if you don't have any salt, it's just going to be too bland. And if you put way too much salt, that can be a problem. But there's so many other things you need to learn. Basics, fundamentals, you know, how to roast vegetables, how to fix a semi decent omelet that you would want to learn before you got into all the subtleties of rock salt and all that. I think most of us have some sense of that. And if you want to become a real expert on all the nuances of salt, fine, but learn all the other fundamentals first. The same situation happens with so much of public speaking. I see people, well meaning, who want to improve their speaking skills, but they end up fixating on things that in my mind are as irrelevant as rock salt versus sea salt versus salt from some other ocean. They fixate on things that are so irrelevant. Now, I'm going to offend a few people out here now with what I'm going to say, but I'm just going to go through my list of them. One of them body language. Now, I'm not saying body language doesn't matter. If I were to come out, those of you watching on video, if I came out every day and twiddled my hands as I'm doing now, looking down, that would be pretty off putting. It would suggest that I'M nervous and uncomfortable. So I'm not saying that body language doesn't matter. What I am saying is it doesn't matter if your speech is really boring and awful in the same way that you can have the best, most expensive salt and a salt cracker that breaks open the salt so it has the zestiest salt flavor. You can have that. But if you're serving a frozen dinner that wasn't cooked long enough and it's still frozen in the middle and the ingredients aren't that good in the first place, it doesn't really matter how good the quality of salt is you put on it. Or for that matter, if you have the most expensive peppercorns and cracked pepper on top. If it's a frozen dinner and it's still frozen in the middle and burnt on the outside, it's just not going to matter the quality of salt you put on it. And. And it's exactly the same thing with body language. People will obsess over what do I do with my hands, and how do I get my hands right, and how do I hold the lectern just right? Meanwhile, their speech is so boring and awful, it just doesn't matter. Similarly with the ahs and ums, I see clients routinely fixate on uhs and ums. I'm not saying it's good to have a lot of uhs and ums in your speech. I'm not saying it's impossible to distract your audience if you have ums and uhs, but you can have zero uhs and ums. If your speech, if your presentation is boring, if you don't have any interesting ideas, it's not going to matter how many uhs and ums you have. And on the other hand, if you have a fantastic speech, interesting ideas, great stories, riveting examples, your audience won't care if you have uhs and ums. So again, it's one of those things like worrying about quality of salt and pepper when you're serving somebody a frozen dinner that's burnt on the outside and frozen on the inside. The other biggie on my list of fake problems, or just problems that could be real but get way too much attention, all out of proportion of their importance. Your voice, people will fixate on, oh, I don't like my voice, I want to change my voice, I want to speak lower. All of these things that I find ultimately do not matter in most situations. Yeah, you can point to certain research that says the presidential candidate with a lower voice wins, and somehow one class of people is discriminated against versus another because they have higher voices. I don't believe it. I think the biggest discrimination in the world is against speakers who are boring because what do people do? They pull their cell phones out and they start getting checking email. They're now discriminating against what you're saying by not listening to it, therefore not understanding it, therefore not remembering it, therefore not doing what you want. It is frustrating for me. I can tell you. I can do a video, one of these programs and it gives the best. It gives advice that people spend tens of thousands of dollars to hear from me, say in person over few days or a week. And I'm giving it away for free here. It'll have five views. I'll do a video on how to improve your voice, what to do if you hate your voice. And it will have tens and tens and tens of thousands of views. And I have some videos like that. So that definitely belongs in the hall of fame for me of things people waste their time on. That should be a lower priority. I have worked with thousands and thousands of people all over the world for 32 years. I've had maybe one client who really had an awful voice, but I've had thousands and thousands of people who gave awful speeches, who gave boring speeches. It's easy to fix your speech. It's really hard to fix your voice. Here's the thing, you can have a great voice. If your speech is boring and uninteresting, no one will remember it. If you have a great speech and your voice is a little raspy or you have a different accent, it's not going to matter. Now, I am coming to you. I'm recording this in early March of 2016. And the frontrunners and some of the top political candidates in both parties have what a lot of people would consider non mainstream accents. Bernie Sanders, who's not the frontrunner but is in the top two on the Democratic side, has what can only be described as a very strong Brooklyn accent. Doesn't seem to have hurt him. Running for president. Donald Trump has a queen's, what's called an outer borough accent. Neither gentleman has spent years and years and years going to a speech therapist to change their accent. Speaking in the world of politics, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Southern accents. So the idea that everyone has to have the same accent or have the same sort of voice, complete not. It's another one of these black holes that sucks people in. They waste time when they should be spending time having an interesting speech, having good stories, practicing on video. I'M TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. As always, I'm happy to take your questions. Any suggestions you have for topics for the show or questions, just send them to me. All the information is in the show notes below. Thanks again for joining me. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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