TJ Walker presents a short live-stream talk about balancing authenticity with discretion in public speaking. He contrasts excessive candidness—exemplified by public figure Rodrigo Duterte’s admissions of extrajudicial killings—with a personal anecdote about being fired decades earlier after a candid media remark, and advises speakers to be selectively authentic to avoid damaging their credibility. He closes with calls-to-action to his Facebook page and training services.
Chapters
We live in an era of authenticity. Everyone wants to see the real you. But is there such a thing as going too far of revealing too much? Well, yes, there are some places you probably shouldn't go. Case in point, earlier this week, Rodrigo Duterte, the president of Philippines, the Philippines told the world that he killed people. And he didn't seem that discriminant about it. If he thought someone might have been a drug dealer, boom, put him in the head, just put a bullet in the head. And he seemed to suggest that it's perfectly okay to kill people in a democracy without any due process, without any legal representation. And frankly, that scares people. That is chilling. And I have to think that for many, many world leaders who are ever going to have a chance to share a stage with Duterte in the future, this is the first thing they're going to think about. It's such a powerful message. It's going to blot out anything else he does, any other accomplishment. So I think that's a blunder. Now, a lot of us make this mistake. I've made this mistake. No, not the mistake of killing people. I've never killed anyone. And if I didn't, I wouldn't tell you. But no, I've never killed anyone. But I do remember early in my career I was giving a speech to bunch of officials at the United States Department of the Interior and I was talking about media training and I gave the example of how just a couple of years earlier I had spoken to a reporter and ended up getting fired. Now, I thought I was being authentic, I thought I was being real, I thought I was being personable and I thought that I was telling a story to display a larger principle of what to do and what not to do. When speaking to the media, I made a basic soundbite blunder of saying or repeating a negative and saying my boss's legislation was unclear and that was quoted and that got me fired. The problem was it was so recent and the audience didn't know that much else about my background that when the evaluations came back, people wrote, why are we paying this guy? Why are we hiring him? He gets fired. So I didn't use that example for many, many, many years. Now it' quarter of a century, it's so far in the past. Plus I have so many other credentials, presidents of countries, prime ministers. I've worked with World Records and Guinness for speaking, numerous books I've written, and more online media training courses than anyone in the world. So now when I talk about it, typically I don't have to worry about destroying my credibility because I have so many other credibility factors my favor. And it's so long ago, 25 years ago. So now it actually works. Now I don't get any negative feedback or criticism for using that story. So be selective. Yes, people want the authentic you, but you don't have to reveal every flaw, every wart. Be real, but make sure it's not going to ruin your reputation in the eyes of your audience. I'm T.J. walker. Thanks for joining me. If you want more tips on how to be a better presenter, please like this page on Facebook. It's facebook.com tjwalkerinteractive. You may also want to check out some of our online courses or in person media and presentation training workshops@mediatrainingworldwide.com.
