Give Your Child an Unfair Advantage in School and Life

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders.

Welcome to this mini episode this weekend mini episode of Speaking with TJ Walker. No guest today, but I did want to share with you some media training, public speaking, communications ideas, concepts and techniques that I use in my own practice and in my own life. On Friday, I conducted a presentation training session with my most important client, my most valued client. It was in fact with my daughter. She is three years old. As far as I know, she's completely normal, not better than any other kid. So what do I mean by that? Is this an example of another pushy, obnoxious parent? Well, I might be, but I don't think because of this particular exercise my daughter, 3 1/2 years old is in. I guess it's, it's either pre K or pre, pre kindergarten and they have show and tell. And it's very important to me that she get comfortable with speaking, build confidence in speaking. Because show and tell is for most people in the world, their first sort of public speech. That's public speaking might not be what you think of it, it's not PowerPoint, it's not speaking to the media, but it's not just talking to one person or to one friend. And it makes some people nervous. So here's what I did. This started three weeks ago. I heard she was having show and tell. So I said, let's just practice. I tried to make it very unstressful, fun. And all I did is just tell me what you want to tell the teachers and your fellow classmates. And I had her speak. I pulled out my cell phone and just recorded the video. I didn't bring her into a studio and have a gigantic camera and lights and make it some sort of formal thing. I did it really no different than taking video at an amusement park or at the pool. So I just had her speak to say what she wanted. I record it, then we watched it. Here's the trick though. Here's why I think I'm not being a bad parent and actually being helpful. I played it back once, let her look at it, said look how good you are. Then I played it back a second time and I just reinforced what I thought was good. So look at that smile. You look happy. People like hearing people speak who are happy. Listen to your volume. It's pretty good. A lot of kids get nervous and their volume goes way down. You have good volume. Look at the animation. Your body's moving, your hands are moving. That's good. Your voice is going up. And down, you're stopping and starting. It's conversational. You don't sound like you're frozen or stiff. So I just reinforced what I thought were good thing and I wasn't lying to her. I wasn't saying, oh, you know, you came in first place when you came in last place in the running race. Everything I said I believed, but I didn't. Didn't though go in and tell her 10 things or 20 things she did wrong. I don't want her getting obsessed. I don't want her feeling anxiety about speech. I just want her to feel good about it, to enjoy it, to feel confident and to know she's frankly got that under control. Now here's the thing that's going to confuse or maybe surprise a lot of you. I do exactly the same thing even when I'm working with a 65 year old CEO. And that is I start off with the positive. Quite often in my workshops and one on one trainings, I might not allow anyone, the trainee, the trainer or anyone to say anything negative. It's not because I think everyone's three years old and can't take it. I have just found that human beings don't really improve if you just fixate on the negative. They improve by fixating on the positive, trying to do more of the positive. That's what builds skills, that's what builds confidence, that's what makes people more comfortable with something. So my advice to you, whether you're working with your 3 year old or you're working with your 65 year old boss, get them speaking, record it on video. Really, really reinforce strengths and positives before doing anything else. Don't just start ripping someone apart. Now my 3 year old didn't ask to be ripped apart, but a lot of business executives think that's what's going to help them and they'll say, well, tell me what I did wrong, Rip me apart. They want to be ripped apart and criticized and critiqued because they believe erroneously that's the way to get better. It really isn't. Now, I had good the fortune the other day to speak to a professional colleague who's in a similar line of work. He told me he did this very same thing with his children who are now, I guess, college age. And I said, how did that turn out? Because there's part of me fearing like, oh, kids are going to rebel and they'll go quiet and, you know, not say any words out of their mouth for five years. And he said, no, it worked out really well. He said they Always came in first place at all the public speaking competitions in their school and in their state. So I think I'm on the right track. These days, we. We all have cell phones. Most of us are used to capturing video of our kids anyway. It just doesn't take long. Again, I want to stress, I didn't block out, you know, two hours that we could have been having fun. It was just really a few minutes. Now, here's the fun thing and the thing that makes me most excited. The first two weeks, I had to talking with my wife, sort of. So when is it? Let's do it. Let's do it now. I had to organize it the third week on Friday morning before school, my daughter comes to me, says, daddy, show and tells. Today she's essentially asking me to rehearse. And that's frankly, what I'm happiest about is at the age of three and a half. At some level, she's bought into the idea of. Of practicing presentations on video. Now, I don't know what's going to happen to my daughter. I'm going to try not to talk about her much on this podcast because I'm not sure she would appreciate it. And maybe she doesn't care now, but at some point she might. I don't want to violate privacy, but I do think there are lessons to learn here. And I got to tell you, I'm very happy if I can get her to buy into the idea of practicing any presentation, no matter how big or small, on video, even if it's just for 30 seconds, I think that's going to serve her really well. Whatever she wants to do, no matter what career path she takes, if she can speak effectively, with confidence, with authority, knowing she's coming across her best, I think it's going to be a huge, huge asset in her career, regardless of what direction it goes in. So that's my tip and lesson for the day. If you want to help your kids, it's not just about spending hours drilling them with flashcards or helping them with their math or rewriting their essays, as some people might do, help them speak more effectively. Because an awful lot of parents helping their kids with all those other skills. Very few parents help their kids become better speakers. How do I know this? Because I ask people all the time. Nobody does this. So if you want to give your kid a real advantage over all the classmates in school, help them become a better speaker. Practice every presentation, book report they have to give. Help them practice on video, but make it fun. Don't make them feel, feel like you're going to hector them and trash them and criticize them. Use that as an opportunity to just get them more familiar with the content, reinforce their strengths. You go negative and believe me, it's going to blow up in your face. Clients of mine who pay a lot of money will take criticism. Friends, family members, other people are just not going to take criticism. But you can still help by getting them to practice and watch themselves and to get to the point where they like their presentation. Thanks for spending some time with me. If you're listening to this the day it's released, it is a Sunday. I hope you can relax, have some fun. And by the way, if you are listening to this show on a Sunday, I appreciate it. I hope you listen every day of the week. We're going to come to you either six days a week or seven days a week. I'm just going to frankly look and see what the downloads are like, what the feedback is like. If you like having more shows, let me know. If you say tj, just stick to five days and just stick to interviews. I'd like feedback on that as well. Recently I switched formats from it just being me to doing long form interviews. And interestingly, while traffic continues to go up some, there's really no difference between me just speaking in an episode versus a guest. I would have thought it would be more interesting to people to hear other guests, but so far that hasn't been exactly the situation. I'd love to hear from you, get feedback from you, what you like of the new format, what you like of this format, what guests you've enjoyed. For that matter, what guest you haven't enjoyed. So feel free to send feedback tjediatrainingworldwide.com you can also post comments on our Facebook page YouTube if you're listening to it there, LinkedIn or anyplace else, please subscribe to the show. If you're just clicking on my blog and hearing it, that's great. But please go to the next step and actually subscribe. The next step, which would frankly be helpful is leave a review Please leave a review on itunes and better yet, share it with friends. Recommend it to colleagues if you think they could benefit by learning more about communication, not just from me, but from our guest. Thanks again. I will see you and talk with you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to Speaking with TJ Walker where the communication skills in practices of world class leaders are dissected.