TJ Walker responds to a student's criticism of his presentation training and on-camera backdrop. He explains why he froze the video loop to reduce distraction and defends his focus on concrete advice: repeated video practice, narrowing your message, and using real stories instead of gimmicks.
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Nobody likes criticism. But if you want to become a better presenter, you need to listen to all criticism, not react to all of it. Not always change, but at least be open to the possibility that there's something you can do better. I'll share with you some recent criticism I received. So this is criticism I received from one of my students who was taking one of my online presentation training courses and he wrote a fairly thoughtful critique. I just want to share it with you. TJ exudes conf and he did the pros and cons. He starts with the pros, which is a good way of doing it. T.J. walker exudes confidence. Clean cut with bright white teeth. Very adamant on practicing by videoing oneself, reviewing, sharing, learning by doing. I'm very happy that the person mentioned that because that is something I'm adamant about. Promotes practice, practice, practice. Offers one on one help Direct access, video response, emergency phone number, and even substantial guarantee for success. Has short videos, downloadable books for reference, etc. The cons topical treatment, generic content vague advice. Although he says I give slightly more concrete advice in the books Distracting TV studio lookalike background well, let me address those things. I'll start with the last one. I have received criticism from a bunch of people because of my background. Now I should point out, I've always received criticism on any backdrop I ever have. So I finally gave up and said, you know what? It doesn't matter what backdrop I use. People are going to criticize because there's always something to dislike. So I finally came up with this one because it sort of fits with my media expertise and what I'm about helping people with media interviews. So I figured, why not have a media backdrop? But for whatever reason I've been getting, I've used this for more than a year. I've been getting more criticism lately. People find it distracting again. I just don't have the time to continually look for more and more backdrops and have people criticize. However, Joseph, I did listen to you and I've done one thing before. The backdrop always flashed. It flickered because it's a video loop. This is just a TV screen. What I've done today is I just hit pause, so now it's frozen. In theory, it should be less distracting. So I'm going to try this for a month or so and see if I can just reduce the level of criticism. It may be that I don't get criticism from people saying it's distracting anymore, but I might now get criticism from people saying, look at that fake background of a TV Studio. He's trying to fool us. It's clearly just a picture. Well, it is a picture. It's a video image. So we'll see. So again, I do try to improve, I do try to listen to critics. Now, some of the more substantive criticism that my advice is vague. Well, part of it is I am trying to reach an audience all over the world, in every different sector. So someone hires me for a day and it's one on one training. I can obviously be a lot more specific. I'm a little bit amused though. The person starts off by saying, I'm very adamant that you have to rehearse on video again and again and again. I frankly don't. That's to me pretty specific because I don't see other people giving that advice. I see the advice to use video practice on video. The advice I give is very, very specific for speech or a media interview. Practice on video, watch it, figure out what you like, figure out what you don't like. Do more of what you like, do less of what you don't like. Do it again, review again, keep doing it even if it's a hundred times, until you get to the point where you love what you see, every aspect of style and substance and as the critic mentioned, share it with other people and get their feedback. Folks, I don't know how to be any more specific than that. That is as non vague as I can possibly imagine unless I'm working with you, one person on your industry, your particular speech. It's also advice I've never seen in any other public speaking book. Again, plenty of people say practice on video. To me that's vague advice. If you practice on video once, it doesn't really help. So to me, that is the least vague piece of advice and the most helpful piece of advice I really do give people when I can't be there face to face with them. And I apologize if I sound like I'm being overly defensive because certainly I can do better. We can all become better with our presentations. Here's my frustration though. I have found in the public speaking world a lot of things in life. People want to avoid advice that is simple and they want something complicated. People want to be told, you know, here's a pill to eat. Don't just exercise and not eat gigantic entrees of 10,000 calories. Eat a magic pill and you'll become thin. They don't want to hear basic advice of exercise more and eat less. When it comes to body language, there is a so called body language expert out there Saying, if you stand with a Wonder Woman pose, that solves all your problems. Complete, utter garbage. So I'm constantly amazed about so many different fields of it. Whether it's weight loss, body language, public speaking, people will often latch on to some gimmick. I probably would make more money and be even more successful if I told people, if you want complete confidence in your next speech, you need to put your pinky and your thumb together, hold it behind your back, and that's the TJ clutch and think. Hold it for three seconds and you'll be confident throughout your whole speed. I'd probably make a lot more money that my videos would probably have a lot more views because it's like, ah, I never thought of that. Wow, I could do that. It's a kind of a cheap little gimmick. And I just made a decision a long time ago. I didn't want to go down the route of cheap little gimmicks. So some of my advice can seem ordinary and simple and simplistic. My question to my critics, though, is, it's so simple. How come nobody does it? One of the biggest pieces of advice I give. Narrow your messages in any business speech, financial presentations to five ideas. Simple advice. Nobody does it. One of my pieces. Although you will find that advice in other books, one of my pieces of advice illustrate every important point you have with a story involving a conversation with a real client, colleague, customer, prospect. Simple advice. Nobody ever does it. It is true that you will find that advice in other places, but I find again and again and again, it's these big picture simple things that 99.9% of the world just doesn't follow. And that's why their speeches are awful. That's why their presentations are awful. So if I can help them by getting them to avoid the most basic blunders, it would be irresponsible to start talking about, you know, hold your thumb like this and, you know, hold your eye contact for 4.2 seconds rather than 4.1 seconds, which, by the way, is not good advice. So that's my challenge and I guess, dilemma. I certainly want to be responsive to critics. I certainly want to improve. But sometimes you can't give critics what they want because they want the eat three chocolate sundaes and don't exercise diet plan. They're asking for something that's gimmicky and doesn't really exist. What do you think? Does the critic have a fair point? Post your comments right here. Whether you're watching this on YouTube, Facebook or any other forum, I'd like to hear from you. Also, if you have any questions yourself on public speaking, I'd love to hear from you. You can send questions anytime to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or post the questions right here. Also, if you would like a free no obligation public speaking training course, click below on the link. It will give it to you. Or you can go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and sign up for it there. Thanks.
