TJ Walker urges parents and students to enter public speaking competitions instead of focusing solely on sports. He placed second in an Optimist International contest at 13 and credits Boys State at Wake Forest in 1980 as transformative for his speaking skills. Speaking competitions through 4-H, FFA, and Toastmasters teach abilities that matter for life.
Questions this video answers
88th year
40th anniversary
About 13 years old
He mentions 1975, then corrects to 1976 (mid-1970s).
Summer of 1980 at Wake Forest (campus)
Chapters
Your child may be involved in athletic competition, but what about public speaking? Competition.
Speaking, the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.
Wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to what I think of as great organization, Optimist International. They are now celebrating their 88th year of holding an oratorical contest for students. This is a St. Louis organization. It's a nonprofit, It's a service organization. Now forgive me, as some of my information seems dated. I'm not an optimist. I've never been a member, but my father was. So I grew up every so often going to the Optimist club meetings, helping them with their annual Christmas tree sales drives where all the money went to help young people. And by the way, sorry to seem overly indulgent and overly personal. This is the 40th anniversary since I won a public spe or came in second place in an optimist public speaking contest. This was pretty much my first taste of public speaking. I believe I was 13 years old and the year was 1975, or excuse me, 1976 and I would have been 13 years old and I came in, I'm ashamed to say, second place. Not first place, but second place. The Optimist oratorical contest in Charlotte, North Carolina. I have no idea what I talked about. I do remember I got a nice little trophy and it was something that helped build my self esteem as a speaker. Here's my challenge to those of you who are parents. Because look, I'm a parent. I have a three year old daughter. We all want to be good parents. We want our kids to fit in. We want them to do what other people do. I do think there's a problem in our culture where there's just an automatic default assumption. Well, of course your kids have to do little league baseball and football if they're boys and gymnastics and ice skating if they're girls and swimming and all of those things can be great. Although got some caveats on the football. But why not have a similar attitude towards competition of public speaking and debate? Because that's seen as sort of a rare, almost eccentric thing. You go to a typical high school and there's a thousand students and maybe 900 of them have been on some form of organized sport team in their Life and maybe 12 have been in the speaking competition. There's something a little bit out of whack there because I can tell you firsthand the skills I learned playing football in fifth grade with a coach screaming obscenities. At me and me trying to avoid getting hurt is not a particularly useful skill that I use at all on a daily basis. My skills as a public speaker, in part that I learned from the Optimist oratorical contest are skills that I use every day, sometimes seven days a week. So if you're a parent, I'd highly recommend that you encourage I wouldn't force a kid, but encourage your kids to enter oratorical contest. So it's not just optimist. 4H club has them, the future farmers of America. They have speaking competitions when you get older. Toastmasters has competitions for people of all ages. So why not do it? Because it really is a skill that you can use the rest of your life. It's a skill that you can get better at the rest of your life. Try being a 50 year old trying to get better at tackle football. That is not going to happen. That is a prescription for broken bones and concussions. And I'll leave the concussion debate to another podcast for another day. One other note about Optimist, I do think that they are an organization that doesn't get as much attention as Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club. They're a little more low profile. Some of the men's and they used to be just men's service clubs. I do believe most of them have integrated now and have men and women. But some of these clubs used to be highly selective. Oh, you want to be in Rotary at least the way it used to be. We can only have one CPA in Rotary. You only have one of this. They're trying to make it really big on business, networking. The one thing I liked about Optimist is people didn't really seem to be there hustling business that much. It was more about fellowship, enjoying people's companies, having a joke and service back to the community. I don't ever remember my father telling me, oh, I'm going to get this promotion or I'm going to get this new contract from somebody I met at Optimist. All I remember him talking about is this weekend we're going to refurbish used bicycles to help kids who don't have bikes. This weekend we're going to be selling Christmas trees and the money is going to go to an orphanage, things like that. So I do want to commend Optimist International for what they do and frankly for playing a role in my own speaking career. So Optimist, keep up the good work. I have more news about another organization that's really just for I won't say children, high school students. And that's pivotal in their speaking development as well. In just a moment.
Speaking is brought to you by Media Training Worldwide. For all of your media training and public speaking training needs, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com.
So folks, one of the things I do so you don't have to is I have Google alert settings for various phrases like public speaking, media training, crisis communication. So anything that's in the news, any new product, any new service, I can look at it and figure out, is this something that you need to know about? And something that popped into my news alerts this week, something called Boys State and Girls State. Now this may seem anachronistic and sexist to hear about this and for all I know they've integrated it somewhat. But the American Legion as an organization has sponsored this for goodness knows how many decades. Where in the summer, top leaders from high schools in every state are selected. It's typically one or two students from every high school and it is segregated by sex. To my knowledge, it still is. So for example, Boys State will have one or two boys from every high school in the state selected. They get together for one week, often at a prominent university, and they recreate the entire state government. They have people run for legislative positions, mayors, governor, speaker of the house, etc. And you do have kind of a whole bunch of student government nerdy types. And they get together people. It's generally people who really love student government. They love politics, they're on student government, they're really into this and they get up and they give speeches and they're talking to people who are really, you know, these are going to be the people who are in the state legislature, a very high percentage of people. Famously, Bill Clinton was a superstar in this and he was seen as I think a 15 year old boy shaking hands with John F. Kennedy. So it has a long, long tradition of fostering leadership. I don't know what year they started a Girls State, but it was around when I was around. So believe it or not, I was a part of Boys State, I believe in the summer of 1980. Now, 36 years ago, this was held at the campus of Wake Forest. Forgive me for being so self indulgent. This show, I try not to be, but I'm hoping there are lessons there for the rest of you, namely to encourage your children or if you are in high school, to seek out these opportunities because they are everywhere. But they're not as easy. Is just the little league football team, basketball team and baseball team, which is thrust in our face all the time. Boys, State is a great opportunity to speak in front of a lot of people. Hundreds in most states are invited to this, and you're speaking in front of people who are very ambitious, often the best students in school, often the people that are going to end up in law school with you and other places. So it's a great opportunity. I know that. I think I started off running for governor in Boise State, didn't make that, but ended up as the speaker of the House, which, you know, memory can play tricks or time can play tricks with your memory. I remember that as being the third ranking official in the whole state. So I was happy with my time there. The most memorable thing that happened to me at Boise State is, is one of the students filled a balloon, a water balloon, with something that was not water that should not be spoken about throughout the window and I believe hit a faculty member, a bit of a scandal and a bit of nastiness. I also remember as strikingly beautiful as the campus was at Wake Forest University, the food was so awful, I lost £10 in one week. And I think I went from, you know, 165 to 155 in one week. But I had a great time, did a lot of public speaking at age 17. So, folks, you're never too young to seek out opportunities to speak. You're also never too old. Just look at the current crop of US presidential candidates. The presumptive nominee from one party is 70 years old. The presumptive nominee from another party is going to be 70 in the next few months. You're never too young or too old to work on your speaking skills. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.
Speaking with TJ Walker is the number one rated daily streaming TV and radio show devoted to all aspects of speaking and communication. If you received value from this show, then please subscribe to it@mediatrainingworldwide.com Please review the show, leave comments and share it with your friends and colleagues today.
