TJ Walker discusses a survey finding that the top indicator of professional success is how often you're asked to give presentations. He points to CEOs, Bill Clinton, Warren Buffett, and Elon Musk as examples, and argues that mastering presentations is how you get asked to speak more.
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Warning, you might be seeing confirmation bias here. Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker. So, folks, let me be careful here. I do believe confirmation bias is a real thing and we can all be guilty of it. So I may be guilty of it here, but someone sent this to me. The good folks over at InDesign, the website. This is from a study from Public Management magazine. They did a survey and it reports that the number one indicator of success in any profession is it's not how well you speak. You might have thought that I said that it's not how much you enjoy speaking, according to this magazine, it's how often you are asked to deliver presentations. Now, I have to confess, I never really thought of it quite that way, but when you think about it, it does add up. How many people do you know who are not very good at their profession, not respected, and are asked to speak all the time? I can't think of anyone. This doesn't mean there aren't public speakers out there that you don't respect, but at least somebody does. Somebody's respecting them and probably paying them a lot of money if you have heard of them. And they don't work right next to you in the cubicle next to you. So it's really a fascinating way of looking at this. I, of course, as a presentation expert, have often said that communication skill is the most important skill you could have. And I. You're getting confirmation bias working. I can point to all sorts of CEOs who claim that they have to spend 90% of their time communicating. I can point, as other presentation coaches do, to Warren Buffett saying one of the most important things he ever did was take a dale Carnegie class 60 years ago. But this is a slightly different twist of how often you're asked to give a presentation. And I think it's the. It does open a window to new insights. So whether you love to speak or not doesn't matter. But if you care about your career and advancement, you should care about how often you're asked to speak. Now, someone like a president, former President Bill Clinton, or any celebrity and politician of that stature is probably getting 100 invitations a day to speak. They have to turn down the vast majority. Are you at the point where you have to turn down the majority of speaking invitations or even any one way to get more invitations? And it's just one way. One way is to actually give a great presentation every time you speak. The best way, unless you're an Elon Musk or a Mark Zuckerberg. And you've just created something so fabulous and created so many billionaires. One of the best ways to get invited to speak more is is to speak really well every single time you speak. Interesting observation. I'll try to dig deeper into the methodology. If I really think it's bogus, I'll let you know. But it did jump out at me. Post your comments here in the discussion section.
