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

2 Dec 2016 · 3 min

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2:37

A short live-stream segment by TJ Walker offering public-speaking advice: speeches should spotlight a few important messages rather than relay easily-searchable facts. Walker emphasizes that effective speaking relies on judgment—choosing what to highlight and using facts only to support a central argument or call to action.

Chapters

Does your speech consist of a bunch of facts that anybody could find if they just went to Wikipedia and plugged in a word or two? If so, you are really wasting everybody's time. Every medium has certain strengths and weaknesses. A book is great for giving lots and lots of message points. And text, a webpage can give lots and lots of facts, data points. Speeches really are not good for that. Speeches are good for putting a spotlight on something that you think is really important, that you think people need to act upon, that they really need to know for some reason. It's a great way of letting people know what you think is truly important. That's why you can't start your speech off with, well, here's the facts, here's the population of Syria, here's how many Hindus there are in India. People can find facts everywhere, and if you're telling them something, they can just pull up their phone and Google in two seconds. It makes them wonder, why are they listening to you? So much of being a good speaker has nothing to do with the hand gestures or the eye contact. It's about judgment. You've got to figure out, where do you want to put people's attention, what facts are so important that you need them to look at it in a different light, that you need them to really put them in perspective so that they make new judgments about what they should do. That's the role of a speech. Sure, if you're in second grade and your teacher says, do a book report on Sally, Dick and Jane, it might be just the facts. But for people in the business world, adults, people who work in government, the United nations, other places, you've got to focus your speech, your presentation on a handful of messages. And then when you are putting up facts, you've got to use them to really build the case for a particular message, a particular argument you're making. Facts in and of themselves don't mean anything. So that's the tip of the day. Do not get up and just start giving facts about your business, your organization, your problem. You've got to more quickly hop in to a particular message that people need to understand and remember, then weave in the facts only as necessary.