TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

11 Jul 2016 · 2 min

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2:00

A short segment from TJ Walker's live-stream on communication and media training emphasizing that abstractions are ineffective for retention. Walker argues communicators must use highly specific examples and brief personal stories to make abstract points memorable and teaches that media skills are learned, not innate—illustrated by his own early-career failure that later informed his teaching.

Chapters

Abstraction is your enemy as a communicator. Human beings can understand abstractions, but they simply don't remember them because they don't visualize them. You may have to introduce an abstraction when talking to one person, colleague, an associate, an investor, or a large audience. But if you want them to really get it, you're going to have to flesh it out with something that isn't abstract. You got to be highly specific. Give examples. For example, when I'm doing media training, I always stress to people that being good at media isn't necessarily hard, but it's not a natural skill. Nobody is born knowing how to speak to the media effectively. Anyone can actually learn to be great, but anyone can be awful and mess up. Case in point, more than a quarter of a century ago, I was working for a member of Congress as an aide and a press assistant. I did an interview. The quote wasn't great, Member of Congress didn't like it, and I was fired. So here I am teaching people all over the world how to speak to the media. It just goes to show that no one's born knowing how to be great with the media. I'm not born knowing how to do it. These are learned skills, and you can learn. So what did I do there? A little bit of a story to simply flesh out the abstraction that nobody's great with the media, and it's a learned skill. The abstraction can be said in five seconds. To give the example, using that personal story took maybe 30 seconds. Doesn't have to take a long time, but it's always worth it. Remember, abstraction is your enemy. Whether you're communicating, communicating with a loved one, friend, family member, associate boss, investor, or an audience of 10,000.