TJ Walker says treat every speech like a focus group. Ask your audience what stood out, what they remember, how they'd tell a colleague. If they don't recall your main message, that's on you to fix it.
Chapters
This week's tip builds off of last week's tip in the previous episode on how to improve your speaking by getting feedback from others. This time, it's after your speech. Now, if you talk to more than 20 people for a presentation, a speech, a talk panel, typically someone's going to come up to you afterwards and say, oh, good job, Good presentation today. Good speech. If you're like most of us, when that happens, you say, oh, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Glad you enjoyed it. Big mistake. You just threw away highly valuable focus group research. That's right. Every single speech you ever give should be seen as a mini focus group. For your next speech, use this feedback. It's highly valuable. And guess what? It costs nothing. So here's what I'm suggesting you do. When someone comes up and says, hey, nice speech, good presentation, ask them. First of all, say, thank you, be gracious, and then ask them. So tell me, what stood out? What do you remember? What sticks? How would you tell a colleague who wasn't here today what this was about? And then listen? Because if someone just said, well, tj, you were great, professional, really smooth, a real pro, then I know I was a complete failure. You've got to hear exact messages, exact stories, exact slides that stick. This is highly valuable. Now, if they're telling you what you want to hear, that's great. It means you've prepared the right way, you executed, you delivered, and it's good to get feedback that things went according to plan. If it's just very general and fuzzy, that's an indication that you didn't prepare the right way, you didn't deliver the right way. Now, in an ideal world, your best messages, stories, things you really cared about, stuck. But also, there may have been something you said during the question and answer session that really resonated and stuck. So you now know that when you have to communicate that point, the example you gave and an answer to a question works. So, for example, there's that magic phrase, those of you who listen to all the episodes. For example, I was giving a keynote speech to a bunch of high school students not that long ago, one of them asked me a question about what I like about my job. And I thought for a second, I bent down and forgive me, those of you listening on itunes, I held up what I'm now holding up now, and I said to the student, I, I like the fact that I can wear my Crocs on most days. Because even though you see me, those of you watching on YouTube and video formats see me in a suit and tie. I'm actually wearing swim trunks and Crocs on my feet because I can work from home in a home based studio and can be out at the swimming pool at a moment's notice or just relaxing outside. So I like and there was tremendous laughter. In fact, the feedback people liked that. They thought it was funny. Now, my job isn't necessarily to be funny when I speak, but if I can get people to laugh and help communicate a point of why it's great to communicate through online speaking and speaking through Skype, well then that's a bonus. So it helps me there. So that's really the big tip. Ask people what they remember. If they're remembering your messages, the stories, the slides you really care about, you are succeeding. If they're not, it's not the problem of the audience. It's never the audience's fault. It's always your fault. You get all the blame if it doesn't work. But if it does work and they remember your messages, you get all the credit.
