TJ Walker critiques Amy Cuddy's public speaking advice, arguing it prioritizes personal comfort over audience engagement. He contrasts her approach with Harvey Weinstein's behavior to illustrate how presentation philosophy shapes real-world conduct.
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What does Harvard psychologist and business lecturer Amy Cuddy have in common with alleged rapist Harvey Weinstein? Now, I realize that's a provocative sounding title, but I feel like I have to address this. Harvey Weinstein famously has basically terrorized almost every woman in Hollywood for the last 30 years. Amy Cuddy, very well known for having the second most popular TED talk speech ever with some 30 million plus views. She famously talks about standing in a Wonder Woman pose to give someone confidence before speaking and they'll be a better speaker. The reason I lump these two together is I think if you really buy in to Amy Cuddy's viewpoint, then it sort of makes sense that Harvey Weinstein gave business presentations essentially in his underwear and in his bathrobe. Hey, it made him more comfortable, made him feel more powerful. Why not? Well, the reason why not is beyond being against the law for attacking people and raping people, it makes an audience profoundly uncomfortable. You would be uncomfortable now if you. You've been coming to this page every day for years and now all of a sudden I'm naked. Believe me, you wouldn't feel comfortable. The reason I point this out is I think it shows the fallacy of Amy Cuddy's thinking. It shouldn't matter to the speaker if they're comfortable. If I'm comfortable standing like Wonder Woman, but I'm so boring, I make my audience fall asleep. What good have I done? Now? It's better than being like Harvey Weinstein and physically attacking people. I get that. But if all you're doing is thinking about me, me, me, me, little me, will this make me feel comfortable? Will this make me feel powerful? If you're not actually focusing on making your audience feel more powerful and engaged and connected and giving them useful ideas, well, you're not as bad as Harvey Weinstein, but you're really not that much better. As far as the impact on the audience, nothing good will happen. So my recommendation, again, it's not about you. It's about the audience. Don't dress for yourself. Don't stand for yourself. Do the things you think are going to help your audience understand your ideas and feel comfortable with you and your ideas. Do that and you will be good presenter. By the way, there's huge irony in this. If you look at Amy Cuddy's speech, she actually does all the things that most good speech instructors, myself included, say you should do. She has a narrow, small number of ideas she illustrates with a story. Great, compelling story, good body movement, emotion. She actually does technically all the things perfectly. But you can't do a TED Talk and get 30 million views. Giving people basic, simple advice like that so it gets dressed up with this nonsense of standing like a wonder woman. Anyway, I'm T.J. walker. Yes, you can tell I'm a little bit annoyed that I don't have 30 million views for my video, even though I think I get a lot better advice. If you would like more information on how to be a better speaker, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com you can get several of my books at absolutely no charge, plus learn information on upcoming workshops, seminars, and our online courses.
