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Samsung announces it has a new virtual reality program to conquer the fear of public speaking.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So Samsung has announced it has a brand new program, a virtual reality program to help individuals with their fear of public speaking. As you've probably heard, various polls over the years show that a fear of public speaking is the number one fear. Number three, number top 10 on most people's list of fears. You've heard me talk about this before. I take some of this with a grain of salt. I do think there are bigger fears in life, but there's no doubt people do fear public speaking. I am linking to a video that does demonstrate the program and let you take a look at it. I wanted to give you my thoughts on this. First of all folks, I don't want to sound like I'm negative on everyone else's products. I frankly can't stand self serving experts who think they're the only ones with good ideas. So I'm a little reluctant to just sort of pile on. I'm going to give you a mixed review of this product. I do certainly have some concerns. Anything that sort of gets people up and in the arena and speaking I think is good. So let me start off with the positive. If you do have a fear of public speaking and you put on one of these headsets for the virtual reality program and it actually gets you to start speaking, well, sure, that's a good thing and I applaud that and I welcome that. Now a little full disclosure. I created what I called a virtual reality program for public speaking, oh about eight, nine years ago. And really all it was, it certainly wasn't as sophisticated as what Samsung came up with. But what I did is I just projected on a wall a video clip of an actual live audience. And it was just probably a 10, 15 second clip. So you could see people moving, blinking, and it obviously wasn't just a picture. And I would have my own public speaking students speak in front of that audience. They might have some real colleagues in front of them and then behind them was this video and the camera was in front capturing them for their practice speeches. And frankly it was kind of a gimmick I used in marketing my media training workshops, especially the public workshops. Did it hurt anyone? No. Did it actually help anyone get to be a better public speaker? I really don't think so. In all candor, did it dramatically reduce anyone's fear of public speaking? No, I really don't think so. Now you could make the case that if it were, if it had been a one on one training, did it make it a little more interesting for the person to look at people on the wall rather than just have to look at me or one of the other trainers? Maybe. Here's my big concern with a virtual reality program to help people conquer their fear of public speaking. If it just gets you used to speaking and seeing other people, it's not actually giving you evidence that you are a better speaker. You've heard me say this about Amy Cuddy's work and other so called experts to help people public speaking. But I believe that if you actually want to get over your fear of public speaking, you have to address the underlying cause. One of the big causes is you fear actually giving a lousy speech. You fear boring people, you fear not being interesting, you fear not being memorable. If you could actually cure the underlying problem, the other surface problems would melt away. So if you can actually solve the problem of not being interesting and turn yourself into an interesting speaker, turn, turn yourself into a memorable speaker. If you know you're giving a great speech, if you know people find the information you're giving is useful and memorable, it becomes virtually impossible. There's that word, virtually to be scared or nervous. So that's why my approach is focus on actually giving a good speech. The problem I have with the virtual reality headsets is it's all focused on you see the audience and how do I feel? Me, me, me, me. Oh my. I don't mean to be totally dismissive of people's feelings, but I am a big believer that if you want to be a great speaker, you need to focus on the feelings of your audience, not you. If you actually focus on your audience being interesting to them, being memorable to them, they will have a very high opinion of you and you're going to feel great about your speech and your speaking abilities. More on this in just a moment.

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What I have not yet seen in a virtual reality program. That would be helpful for any of you virtual reality creators and producers out there is not just the reality of an audience of people looking at you or staring or any of that, but a way for you to constantly record your practices and see it from every direction, see your speech from the actual perspective of an audience member. That would be helpful. I haven't seen that in a virtual reality program. For those of you who are delivering PowerPoint presentations. Man, oh, man. Would this be helpful for you to actually see your presentation from the audience's perspective from the last row? Now, I have been to countless, countless conferences, seminars, conventions. You go into a breakout session, and there is someone delivering a presentation in the front of the room, and it's a breakout session. It's not the large auditorium. There may be 150 people in the room. Relatively small room, low ceilings. The projector is on a screen that starts from the floor or two feet up. And guess what? Nobody in the back half of the room can see the bottom half of the slides projected. So I would love to see a virtual reality program created that would show you how your audience in the worst seats of the room are actually experiencing your PowerPoint. Now, this particular program, from what I've seen, doesn't do that. It really just shows audience members looking at you, getting you used to speaking in front of people. Again, I don't mean to be overly dismissive of that. There's some value to just getting comfortable with standing up and speaking, but it's just a frame first. It's like teaching someone tennis and saying, okay, imagine holding a racket. Imagine a ball comes over. Imagine swinging through the ball. Okay? If you want to spend the first five minutes on the first day of someone learning to play tennis doing that, I don't have a problem with that. But at some point, you got to put an actual racket in their hand and use an actual ball and have them hit. They need to see that they can hit the ball to you and that it comes back. Now, the analogy with speaking, you need to see that you can actually speak to real people. And then when you ask them, what did I say? What was my speech about today? They can actually tell you what your speech was about. And if they say, well, I don't know, but you look professional, then really, that's not much different than continuing to play tennis with a pretend virtual ball. I guess it's better than sitting on a couch doing nothing if you're standing up. But it's not really tennis. Similarly with speaking, if you get comfortable because you've been in this virtual reality world and you're now really comfortable and you've gotten over your fear of public speaking. But if your speech is no good, if it's still a boring data dump, if everyone is still asleep, if everyone is tuned out and they're now checking their email because your speech is so boring, what good is it? That's the big issue. As always.

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Folks, if you have a new product or a new service or you see one out there and you want my opinion, my professional critique I'm happy to look at. Seems like in the first three months of this program I've been somewhat negative of new products, software products and other devices and what I would call gimmicks to help people get over their public speaking. I hope that doesn't seem self serving because it's not as if I'm selling, you know, one magic camera or one magic solution to public speaking. What I have found in doing this for 32 years is the far and away the easiest way to to get over your fear of public speaking is to actually become a good speaker and to do that by practicing on video, narrowing your points down to a handful, having good stories and examples for each one, and practicing your speech on video. And it can be any video. It's not the TJ Video cam. It's any video camera, your cell phone, your iPad, a webcam. I mean these days you can go to a grocery store and get a webcam for $7 and simply practicing your speech out loud until you like what you see is that far and away the easiest way to build your confidence in speaking and to get over your fear of public speaking. I am going to try to remain open minded to new products, new services from others, virtual reality and others. And if it's something that inspires you to get going, fine. But what I don't want is for you to say to yourself, well, I have a fear of public speaking and I want this new fancy virtual reality program and headset and it's $800 and I don't have $800. So let me postpone all speech. That's what I don't want. That's what is a tragedy. And that's why if you come to this podcast every day, whether you're listening to it or watching it on video, you can improve for $0. And of course I have workshops and seminars and online training courses. I sell. I have to make a living. But you don't really have to spend any money if you want to get over your fear of public speaking, you could start doing it today by following the principles we talk about on this podcast and simply practicing on video. Thanks for spending some time with me today. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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