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

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate. Welcome to another special weekend edition of Speaking with TJ Walker. No guest today, it's just me and you. This is often the time where I take your questions about public speaking, communication, presentation skills and answer them in detail. This program, as all of our programs, brought to you by Media Training Worldwide. If you have an upcoming speech presentation, job interview, talk show appearance, and you want to get better, you might as well start preparing. Go to our toolbox section on the website. It's listed in the show notes below. And you can get, at no charge, our online public speaking and media training courses sent to you, plus a few books. So it's a great toolbox to have around the house, around the office, so that you can be ready for your next presentation. Here's a question that came in from one of my online students. I'm not going to mention his name. I certainly never want to embarrass anybody on this program or in my trainings. But he was asking if I have any prepared speech texts that he can use to practice on. And we went around and around in circles on this for a while. I have to say he has set in his own mind that speaking is a skill that's just, I guess, almost like typing, where it's a purely technical skill. And certainly there are some technical aspects. But what I wrote back to this particular student was you need to come up with what you want to say. And to simply read someone else's speech is frankly a waste of time, unless you're trying to learn how to be a newscaster. Now, if you want to learn how to read teleprompter effectively, well, sure, you can just read something right out of the newspaper if you want to. You can read a phone book if that's what you want. But for most people in the world, learning how to be a better speaker, that's not the skill you're after. Now, Aristotle wrote thousands of years ago about how great speaking is really about three things. It's who you are, what you're saying, and how you say it. So you cannot just focus on how you're saying something. You've got to really focus on the style and the substance. So my recommendation to this student was you pick the topic on something you want to talk about, come up with a handful of points you're trying to communicate, come up with some stories to make those points come alive, have a simple outline that'll fit on a single sheet of paper, and then Speak to that, practice it on video, listen to it, watch it, figure out what you like and don't like. And this particular student just didn't like this idea. He kept on coming back saying, well, yeah, but I know, but what's a text you can give me? Here's the problem with working from a text. Once you are wedded to a text, it basically destroys a huge, huge percentage of the things you need to be doing. If you want to be a good speaker, it's destroying your eye contact, typically makes you flat and monotone, destroys your ability to alter your speed. Again, if you're a trained actor, if you're a trained newscaster, or if you're trying to train yourself to be a newscaster, fine. By all means, read other people's scripts, because as a news anchor, you'll have to do that. Although as a host, you're not going to be a good host unless you do know how to think on your feet and actually have a conversation with the people you interview. And that's really the challenge here, is you've got to learn how to look at people, how to talk in a conversational way. And did you hear what I did a second ago? I paused. If you want to come across as believable, as compelling, as interesting, when you are giving a presentation to someone, you have to pause. Sometimes you have to speak a little faster, sometimes a little bit slower, sometimes louder. Sometimes you have to know when to whisper. It's this constant variation in tone, speed, pitch, volume that is going to make you sound like a human being. That is why I think it's a horrible idea to practice public speaking with somebody else's speech. Are there exceptions? Sure. If you're in a public speaking class in high school or middle school and it's Martin Luther King Junior's birthday celebration, and the homework assignment is give Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech. Well, by all means, there's nothing wrong with that. If it's President's Day and you're given the assignment of giving the Gettysburg Address. Well, there's nothing wrong with committing to memory something that is influential as the Gettysburg Address or Martin Luther King's I have a Dream Speech. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But in general, for most adults and folks, this. This podcast is meant for everyone, but our focus really is adults in the work world. If your goal is to be a better communicator speaker, far better not to work from someone else else's text, someone else's speech, someone else's word but your own. The Best speakers in the world are not people who simply memorized or learned other people's speeches. Unless you're talking about Broadway actors or movie stars, that's a different beast altogether. The best speakers have the substance and the style, and the substance has to come from within. Am I saying every great speaker is so brilliant? They have completely different ideas, unique ideas. No, I'm not. I'm not going that far. Some level. There are no new ideas in the world. Yeah, yeah, but still, you've got to come up with some new twist. You have to come up with something to get people to think. Hmm. Never really thought of it quite that way before. If you don't do that, it's hard, if not impossible, to get people to really pay attention to what you're all. What you're about. Other questions. Now, here's a question I didn't think would come up in my lifetime, but because of recent events in the presidential campaign, it is a question that's come up. People have said, tj, have you ever walked in on naked contestants at a beauty pageant? And the answer is no. This has come up because of the revelations that Donald Trump did in fact walk in on contestants at the Miss Universe pageant. At the Miss USA pageant. I have worked with Miss Teen USA's, I have worked with several Miss Universes, and this is during the time that Donald Trump owned the pageants. I never met Trump. I wasn't at the pageants. The contestants were sent to me afterwards, and everybody, believe me, everybody kept their clothes on. Okay, so hope that answers that question. I do remember asking one of the Miss Universe contestants how she won this because she was very reluctant, did not want to be on camera, claimed she'd never seen herself on camera before, had never been in a pageant before. But some friends signed her up for a local contest. She won that a week later, she was international contest, won that like a week later, she won Miss Universe. And she had absolutely no background in any of the things you would commonly associate with contestants and that world. I said, well, how did you win this? She says, well, Donald Trump thought I was really pretty. Now, I didn't probe beyond that about any interview process, so don't ask me anymore, you know, as much as I do at this point. But I will say the whole Donald Trump thing, I think, has put pageants in an even more negative light. I have mixed feelings about them, to be honest. Someone has asked me, would I want my own daughter to be in beauty pageants? And frankly, the answer is no. It's not that I think they're that awful or that ridiculous or that sexist, although there are certainly elements of that. It's just for my own daughter, I want her to focus on things that are more directly related to her passions of excellence. And she's three and a half. So at this stage I don't know if that's going to be ice skating or being a world class gymnast or being the best tattoo artist. I have no idea. All I can tell you is I'm going to be encouraging her to create in whatever is her, you know, her easel, whatever is the board she wants to write on. I don't know if that is sports, performing arts or mathematical theorems, I really don't know. But I want to encourage her to create and to take that to its as far as it will go. That's really my goal for her. What other questions do you have about speaking, presenting, communications, whatever it is you do, or whatever it is I do. This is the forum for it. So you can post your questions on the blog, you can send me a tweet J. Walker on Twitter, you can always just send me an email. All that information is linked below. By the way, A few scheduling notes I'm looking forward to some appearances soon. I'll be appearing in Geneva doing some work with the United nations and I hope to schedule a few public events there where I can meet with some of you, talk more about speaking and answer questions. I'll also be appearing in Bend, Oregon soon in the next month for some private trainings there and will be some time to connect with some of you listeners there as well. I'll be back in Budapest for the third time this year. Beautiful, beautiful city. The fantastic public baths. Interestingly, the New York Times put in a story just today about top 20 destinations around the world people should go to while in their twenties. And Budapest made the cut now. Unfortunately I didn't get there when I was in my 20s, although I would have enjoyed it. But now that I'm in my still early 50s, I'm glad I'm going back to Budapest for the third time. So I'll be back there next month. Looking forward to seeing my friends colleagues in Budapest and speaking and doing training there. Also coming up next month in Maryland right outside D.C. the Bethesda area, doing some speaking and training with Park Services and other government organizations there. So looking forward to seeing my friends colleagues in the greater Washington D.C. area. So going to be a very, very busy month. Hope to continue coming to you live every day with the podcast. Some will feature guests. Some will be. But either way, I want to continue the conversation with you right here on Speaking with TJ Walker. Thanks a lot. We got a great interview all lined up for you tomorrow with Francis Rios. Looking forward to speaking to you then. Thanks. Thanks for listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. SA.