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

Change. It is everywhere. Every industry, every field. Technology changes things. Culture changes many times for the better. Are you keeping up to date on your communication skills and your speaking skills? Everybody has to change or you can just get stale. You can get musty. I have to change. Many of you who've been with me for a long time may remember I used to always wear a suit and tie for these videos. Now I was wearing shorts and the swimsuit from the waist down. But when making videos to speak to you, I felt the need to be formal and businesslike. Well, I've changed because so many other people in culture and business are more informal. So I have to keep up with the times. I used to have sort of a big fancy TV newsroom backdrop with all sorts of TVs. It just struck some people as dated. I listened to you, so I went with a simple, clear backdrop. What are you doing to change for the better? It's easy to get stuck in ruts now. Fundamental communication has not changed. You have to have something interesting and valuable to your audience and say it in a memorable way and in an engaging way. But little subtleties can change all the time. You have to be attune to that. For example, many of you joining me today are coming from my old newsletter list. I used one newsletter provider for the last 15 years. Wasn't working very well. I had to switch to a new one today. So thanks for making the switch with me. Thanks for jumping over with me. Some of you are watching this because you're on one of the online training platforms that I've been on for the last five years. And that brings up another area of change that's just different in the modern world. We all have to be incredibly conscious of feedback to our presentations, feedback to our communication, because it doesn't take long for negative reviews to just destroy our reputation if we don't listen to people. Just earlier today, I saw a note on a Facebook page. I have to support students for one of my online platforms. And the note from Facebook said, this student has complained about inappropriate content on this Facebook page. I thought, oh, I didn't say, well, I hate these complainers. Let me ignore it or unfriend him or kick him off. No, I instantly tried to see what it was because I was hoping another student hadn't posted something defamatory or pornographic or something like that. So I went to see what the offending post was, and they were pictures of food items this person had cooked. And so my first thought was, hmm, this doesn't really have anything to do with public speaking and presentation skills. This is inappropriate. But then I clicked through and I saw that the person who posted it had a good reason. She was giving a speech, a presentation on her cooking. It was a demonstration, which is exactly what she should have been putting in this forum. And she was demonstrating cooking these items. And other students had said, wow, your presentation is so engaging. We want to see the final product. We want to see what you actually cooked. So she responded to them by instantly posting the video. So I give her a lot of credit for doing that. So I didn't remove the post. I then went to the student who complained and said, hey, I understand why you did that. I was confused at first too, but when I looked at it, here's what I concluded. I hope you find that reasonable too. So I haven't heard back from that student yet, but I'm pretty sure that that student is not going to be angry with me or complaining or trying. Trying to get me kicked off a learning platform because I listened, because I responded, because I tried to address a specific concern. The communication wasn't just me pushing my ideas out and how dare you question me. I had to change. I had to look at something and figure out, see what might work. Now, it could have happened that something inappropriate was posted and I hit delete too. It doesn't always work out that way. But the communications lesson is we have to listen to our audience more so than ever. We have to be able to react to them in almost real time. Because if someone posts criticism of you and you don't deal with it for a day or two, it can fester, it can get worse. Now, a lot of people, perhaps my age and older, like having to deal with this constant feedback and, you know, these youngins tweeting and texting. But it goes both ways. There are young people who are, let's say, 23, 24 years old their whole life. They're used to communicating just by texting with their friends. In high school, college. Text, text, text, text. Don't set up a voicemail. Would never leave a voicemail. Think it would be insane for someone else to leave a voicemail? Well, now you're a junior account executive in a corporation or an institution or a government entity, and you're dealing with people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, and they're calling you, and they expect you to call back. They call you and want an answer. They don't want a text back. They want you to actually speak. So young people have to learn too. We have to all learn constantly. We have to change and evolve with all of our communication and our speaking if we want to stay relevant and if we want to connect. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me.