TJ Walker introduces a section focused on learning presentation skills from ~50 prominent public speakers. He emphasizes studying role models to borrow techniques (not to copy), notes demographic and geographic biases in his selections, and asks viewers to watch provided clips and reflect in the course Q&A.
Chapters
In this section I focus on great communicators, great public speakers, people who've demonstrated excellent presentation skills and are known in many cases throughout the world. Just as great writers are constantly reading, other great writers and great musicians are constantly listening to their favorite bands and other great musicians. I believe people who want to be great when it comes to their presentation skills and their public speaking skills are constantly looking at other people they deem to be great speakers. Not necessarily to copy from them, but to learn from them, to get inspiration, to look at new techniques that are working, and to figure out how can you not steal from them, but blend in certain things they're doing with what you're doing. So in this section I'm going to look at 50 or so prominent speakers, well known people who are known as great communicators, great public speakers. Caveat. This is not meant to be a definitive list of the best speakers in the world. You're going to see some deficiencies here. Most of you watching this don't live in the United States right now. And and I want to apologize in advance. This list is based primarily on my own experiences. I am a white straight male who grew up in the United States. That does have a way of biasing me. So I apologize in advance. This list is not as inclusive worldwide as it could be or should be. But all I can do is give you my expertise based on my own experiences, having studied speakers for now decades. And I want to give you my sense of what I think works. I'm picking people who I don't necessarily agree with politically. I'm going to pick people all across the spectrum. I'm picking people who aren't necessarily good people. That one person on this list is on most people's list as the worst human being in the history of the planet. I'm analyzing just his public speaking skills and trying to derive lessons from what these people did well so that we can learn from them and possibly use not all, but some of those techniques. So you're going to see in this list it's going to be biased. A lot of Americans disproportionately, A lot of disproportionately white people and a lot of males disproportionately. So I apologize in advance, but I don't know how else I can do this short of spending another five years researching every single speaker and having it translated. So we do the best with what we can. I do think this is the most inclusive analysis of great speakers you're going to find in any course on this platform or anyplace else. So here's what I want you to do. I'm going to try to be as brief as possible at the beginning of each lecture, telling you what I find significant about this speaker. Things they do well, but that anyone can do well. And then below the resources, you're going to see a URL. Typically this will be to YouTube, but it could be to other places, too. I want you to watch the video, or at least a couple minutes of each speaker. Then what I'd like you to do is reflect upon it. Then go to the Q and A section of this course and type in what you liked about each speaker, but also what you didn't like. I could pick some people and you think, wow, I hate that person. That person rubs me the wrong way. I would never want to listen. That's okay. It's really good to figure out what you like and you don't like about speakers, but it is good to get a real range. Listen to people you don't agree with politically. Listen to people. Watch people you don't agree with theologically. Listen to people talking about subjects, whether it's cooking or phishing that you don't care about. You can still learn from their abilities to communicate effectively. So let's hop right in. In the next lecture.
