Surviving Speaker Disasters

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate.

If you speak long enough, you're gonna have a disaster. Hi, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. Today I want to have a little deeper analysis, a look at a meditation on speaking disasters, failures, blunders, and how that shapes someone's career. I know I've had a lot of clients come to me over the years and tell me that I had this horrible experience. I froze in seventh grade and I didn't speak again for the next 10 years in high school and college, and I was 25 before I could speak again. There are scarring experiences that do happen to people. It could be, you know, accidentally wetting yourself the first time you give show and tell in kindergarten. Now, that didn't happen to me, and I don't know anyone it's happened to, but it certainly must have happened to somebody at some point. And I doubt they've become a professional speaker today because of it. Sad to say. So all sorts of things can happen. There's no foolproof way of avoiding that. It really just comes down to how do you handle it, how do you deal with it, how do you react to it, how do you move on? Because here is what I've noticed about public speaking. Typically, there's no one bad speech that will destroy a career. Occasionally, a great speech will make a career. And some of you have heard me mention this before. But the 1964 nominating speech of Barry Goldwater by Ronald Reagan did make his career. That's what propelled him to be seen as a serious candidate for governor of California. He won that, became president. If he had not made that one speech, I seriously doubt he would have become president. Similarly with Barack Obama. If Barack Obama had not been asked to give the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, I seriously doubt he would have gotten the nomination in 2008 and become president. So a great speech when all the stars align can make you. But can a bad speech break your career, destroy your career? I would argue not. And there's just countless examples from history. Barbara Corcoran, many of you know her from Shark Tank, where she's a regular, wildly successful real estate entrepreneur, sold her company, made hundreds of millions of dollars, has gone on to media success, other entrepreneurial success. Well, she talks about the first time she went to give a speech at a major real estate conference. She went up to the stage, was behind the lectern, stood up to speak, nothing came out of her mouth, complete panic and she just was mortified, ran out of the room. Did that destroy her career? Apparently not. She sold her business for hundreds of millions of dollars and I haven't. So things turned out okay for she's on primetime television and is a bit of a TV star by speaking out. I mean, she's not singing or dancing on Shark Tank. None of those panelists are. None of the judges are. They're speaking. They're listening to other people speak and give pitches, and they are judging the pitches by speaking themselves. So she is a wildly successful communicator now and paid a lot of money for speaking. She overcame that initial disaster of a speaking performance. Sometimes it happens in the middle of someone's career. Bill Clinton famous. I know. I was at the convention. Bill Clements. Bill Clinton famously bombed at the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta, where he gave the nominating speech for then Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. And the speech went on way, way too long. He was booed. The only cheer he got was when he said in conclusion. And the speech was just ridiculed, mocked. So did that ruin his career? No. He got the Democratic nomination four short years later, became president and was reelected. So one bad speech. And I do put in a category of speeches versus media interviews. I have seen a bad media interview destroy people's careers. The there's no doubt about people get fired for saying awful things in the media or having quotes that are twisted to make them look ridiculous. Tony Hayward's I want my life back. It's America. There's frivolous lawsuits. I do think played a large role in him getting canned as CEO from BP with the whole Gulf spill disaster. But that's a different category. I'm talking about giving a speech, giving a presentation, a talk. I deal with a lot of corporate executives all over the world, institutional executives. I've never heard of someone say, yes, my employee's speech was so bad, I fired him or her. Now, I do hear people say all the time that they didn't promote someone because of their speaking skills. In general, being a bad speaker consistently will get you marked as non executive material as someone not worthy of a promotion. That's definitely a real problem. In fact, it's often the number one differentiator between those who get stuck in middle management versus those who rise to the very top, whether it's a CEO or president or managing whatever the hierarchy is within your organization. The difference between the top person with the most power, influence and income and those clustered in the middle is often not the iq. It's not necessarily the work ethic, although it could be, but it's typically not. It's not necessarily knowledge or expertise. It's quite often the ability to communicate. Because if you want to be the CEO of a company or the president of a company or managing director, typically you have to spend the vast majority of your time communicating, speaking to all the employees, speaking to the biggest clients, speaking to customers, speaking to investors, speaking to the media, speaking to shareholders stakeholders. So if you don't build the skill of speaking, it can certainly be a career. I won't say ender, but your upward ascent up the career ladder can stop. That ladder is not going another notch. People talk about a glass ceiling. I do. With respect to women in the workplace, I. I do think there's a communication ceiling. If you're not comfortable communicating to more than a couple of people and your direct reports and the immediate people you work with, you are going to hit a ceiling in your career. And that's why it's important to try to improve, try to get better. Listen to programs like this. I hope you occasionally get tips on how to speak more effectively. That is in part what this program is all about. But if you're listening to this when the show is originally released, it's a Monday morning, it's a new week. It's a start to something new in your own profession, new professional work week. So all I ask is that you look at your speaking opportunities from a fresh perspective. You may have given a lousy speech last week. You may have given a lousy presentation just Friday at noon. Guess what? You can't get in a time machine and go back and change it. But you can change people's perceptions by giving a much better speech, a much better presentation today and tomorrow and this Friday. And if you just keep improving your speaking skills, ultimately that's going to be your reputation. Not your last speech, but your next speech. I believe. And I know that part of this sounds like just generic feel good motivational speaking guru. And I'm not trying to be the next Anthony Robbins folks. I just want to talk about what's real. Not pie in the sky and public speaking skills. Real. Doing a horrible job at speaking is real. That's why I hate it when people talk about public speaking as a so called soft skill. Like it's a little puppy, like it's not real. Public speaking is every bit as quantifiable as any aspect of accounting, mathematics or physics. If you want to see if you or anyone else is an effective speaker, very easy to measure it. You have the person speak. Afterwards, you ask everyone in the room what they remembered, any messages that are remembered, you now have evidence you were successful. If they don't remember your messages, then you have empirical evidence that you failed miserably. It is a real skill. It can be improved. If you were lousy last week, there's nothing that is going to define you as lousy forever. And that's not true with a lot of things in life. If you are just physically very unfit and you're entering a swimming competition and you don't have short legs and a long torso like Michael Phelps, and really flexible feet, no matter how much you practice, you're really not going to win an Olympic gold medal. I hate to tell you. Sorry if that disillusions anyone. Speaking is different. It doesn't take any unique physical talents, doesn't take any unique rhythm or eye hand coordination. If you have basic intelligence and you're willing to practice and willing to improve and to put in a little work, you could become a great speaker. You really can have a Great Week. I'm T.J. walker. See you tomorrow.

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