TJ Walker argues public speaking is a hard skill, not soft. Speakers should set five or fewer clear messages and measure success by what the audience actually remembers. Slides people forget are worthless.
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This is a question I want to toss out to my fellow public speaking trainers, presentation trainers and media coaches. What do you think of when people refer to public speaking skills as a so called soft skill? Oh, those are soft skills trainings. I have to tell you, it annoys me to no end because to me, when someone calls public speaking a soft skill, it, it's denigrating, it's making it sound like, oh, it's a 20 minute class on how to wrap a Christmas present a little better. It's about how to pet a little puppy or something and it suggests that it's all sort of imprecise and touchy feely. And feel good. No, I couldn't disagree more. In my mind, when done correctly, public speaking is as quantifiable as, as any aspect of physics, accounting or chemistry. If someone's giving a presentation, you go in with the objective of communicating five or fewer messages. When the speech is done, you test members of the audience. If they remember the messages, the person succeeded, they were successful. If the messages were not remembered by the audience, the speaker failed. It's exactly the same thing with PowerPoint slides. Give your presentation when you're done. Ask your audience or your test focus group what slides they remember. Any slides they do not remember in detail what the message is. You now have quantifiable evidence that the slide is worthless. Throw it in the trash can and start over again. So I do believe that you can hold speakers, business speakers, technical presentations, financial presentations, any type of presentation. I do believe that the skill is measurable, it can be held accountable, and that it is absolutely no different from learning an Excel spreadsheet capability. It's no different from learning QuickBooks. It is quantifiable in my mind. It is a hard skill in the sense that it is serious, it is vigorous, it is measurable, it is accountable. And I think people use this to put us in sort of a ghetto in the training department. It's not really as important. It's sort of a nice to have, but it's something we don't really know what works and what doesn't work. I think that's a big problem for us in this profession. What do you think? I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to comment whether you're watching this on YouTube or my blog or my Facebook page or anyplace else. Thanks so much for your time.
