Weekend Edition, Matt Lauer, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and More

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders. Welcome to this special weekend edition of Speaking with TJ Walker. If this is the first time you're tuning in, I'd ask you to stop a minute and look at yesterday's show. Five days a week, Monday through Friday, here I have an in depth interview with a world class leader about communication, how they prepare for speeches, media interviews, what makes them nervous, how they really excel at communication. The weekend is a little bit different. This is where I answer people's questions about public speaking. I analyze newsmakers, what they're doing right and wrong in the news. So it's a little bit different. It's just me. If you're okay with that, let's proceed. All right. The big story of the week was the not presidential debate but forum on NBC hosted and anchored by Matt Lauer. Donald Trump was there, of course, and Hillary Clinton. It was by all accounts an unmitigated disaster for Matt Lauer and NBC. Now folks, it's tough talking about politics because if you ever say something positive about somebody that someone doesn't like, then they hate you. If you say something negative about their person, they think you're a partisan hack. Of course I have political opinions, but that's not the point of this show. So if you're okay with that, let's dive in. I'd love to hear your opinions on this. You can weigh in. You can post your comments on the blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever you're listening to this program, I'd love to hear your view. The consensus is that Matt Lauer really blew it. And in this case I agree with the consensus. I do think he did a horrible, horrible job. He started off Hillary asking her question after question after question. After this inane controversy, which I happen to believe is a phony, fake, non story about emails and folks, it's not because I think Hillary is perfect, but according to any historical definition or standard of scandal I've ever seen, somebody has to have been harmed by something bad. A politician did and somebody has to have gained some way in an illicit fashion. Nobody has yet made the case that there's a single shred of evidence regarding Hillary Clinton with this email thing that anyone's been harmed or anyone has been gained. But that's a side issue and that's an example of how Hillary has really not defended herself very well. Matt Lauer asked question after question about something where no one has even made the case that anyone has been harmed. Then when Secretary Clinton was Asked a question about Iraq and ISIS, she was told, Hurry up, you got 30 seconds. Basically, so issues of war, death, where tens of thousands of people potentially could lose their life. She's told, hurry up, gotta cut you short, let's get on with it. But then there's all the time in the world to talk about phony fake scandals. Then Donald Trump comes up. Everyone in the world has known for a year that he's claimed to have been against the Iraq war. And yet the only time he ever went on record in 2002 on Howard Stern, he came out in favor of the Iraq war. Everyone knew this was coming. And Hillary Clinton even reminded people in the first half an hour of the show that, that Donald Trump lies about this issue. Sure enough, Donald Trump continued the lie and Matt Lauer didn't call him on it. So it's striking an awful lot of people that there's a double standard where Hillary gets grilled, interrupted, raked over the coals for things that historically in either party, by anybody's standards, would not have been a scandal. And yet things that are traditionally career ending, campaign ending scandals for most politicians. Donald Trump doesn't even get a follow up question. I think Matt Lauer has severely harmed his reputation. Is he going to lose his job at the Today show? I don't know. Is it going to harm him economically? This guy is so rich, it doesn't matter. He's got to have a net worth in the seven, excuse me, eight figures, not seven figures, fabulous wealth. He's got mansion after mansion in the Hamptons and you know, good for him. I don't begrudge him that. And he's good at the soft sell celebrity interview on the Today show. And he has done, in fairness, he has done hard hitting newsmaker interviews before, but wow, did he ever flub that. Now let's move on to Hillary. You may think I'm this huge, huge Hillary apologist because of what I just said. I think she has a lot of room for improvement. Personally, did I like her substance more in the interview? Sure. But I do think she comes off as defensive and brittle on this whole email thing. What she needs and what she's done a very poor job of is a simple 30 second answer. To defuse this issue and to move on, she needs to say something like, when I was appointed Secretary of State or when I was confirmed Secretary of State, I consulted a wide range of experts. Colin Powell himself told me he had private email suggested I really need to keep things private. I listened to a whole lot of people the consensus was it would be safer and easier for me to have one email run through Clinton household and family would be more secure. In retrospect, you could say a better decision could have been made, but I had no indication it was illegal. I had experts across the political spectrum saying that that's what I should do. And there's not a single shred of evidence that anyone has been harmed or anyone has gained illicitly from me having email on one system. And this is yet another situation of fake phony scandals. We've heard it about Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, I allegedly killed Vince Foster. I've been in public life, in the spotlight for a quarter of a century. I've been attacked every single day for fake issues, impugning my integrity. There's never been a single one that has shown to have any merit. This is another case. So I've said all I'm going to say. That's all there is to it. Next question. And if you want to keep asking me questions, I'm just going to repeat what I said. Now, that was more than 30 seconds and it might not be a perfect answer, but Hilary needs something where she can state her main points in a positive context, defend herself without seeming defensive, put this so called scandal in a larger context, not act defensive and just move on. Would that solve all of her problems? Maybe not. But if nothing else, it would force reporters to switch to another topic because it would just be boring after a while. She said, well, nothing to add from my previous answer. If she just stuck with that, at some point they would in fact have to move on. Okay, one other programming note. You're hearing some repetition here from things on my YouTube channel. Now what I used to do for the weekend show is just cut and paste my YouTube videos, put the audio and put it in here. What I found is the audio quality just wasn't that good. It frankly took more time cutting and pasting and editing than just redoing the show. So that's why I've decided I'm gonna just do audio for audio, video for video, and not try to cross one medium into the other. Now the other thing, and I'd love to get some feedback from you, is I have a whole new studio setup. I've gone from a relatively inexpensive microphone. Those of you who are techies make here it's the Blue Snowball. And now I have the Heil PR 40, which is considered not the absolute top, but near the top of the line for professional podcasters and broadcasters. It's supposed to have much, much higher quality and will create a better listening experience. So you won't have the snaps, crackles, pops you occasionally got from the lav mic that I was using for my video. So if you can notice, if you even care, I would love to hear from you. Drop me a line tjediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter J Walker let's go to the questions. Faresh is from India. He's one of my online students and he writes I want to run a successful channel on YouTube. I feel it was easy to make basic videos, but I realized I was wrong all along when I tried to shoot myself on video camera. I hope to be confident enough to talk without reading through the entire script. I have this confusion of how to come up with a script for a simple tutorial video, how do I memorize my script and how much do I record in one shot? Varesh I applaud your efforts to create your own YouTube channel. So many people talk about it, think about it, plan it, wish on it, but never actually do it. So the biggest hurdle for most people is just doing the first video and then after you do the first handful and you don't become a viral video sensation continuing to do it. My advice on scripts is it's perfectly fine to have a brief outline, but I wouldn't try to read a script unless you really are doing a traditional newscast and you have a full staff of writers, producers, camera people and all that. But for Most people on YouTube doing videos, how to videos, you're much better off focusing on one idea and just talking about it with the first words that come to you. Memorization is really hard. I'll be honest, I can't memorize anything. I have a horrible memory. I've had times when I've been asked to do TV commercials and given a 14 second script and I just couldn't get each word just right because they weren't my words. On the other hand, I've had days when I've shot 120 videos in one day and 97% of them were in one take. Doesn't mean they were perfect, but they were good enough and it got my gist and it got my message across. I recommend for most people doing how to videos tutorial videos on YouTube and elsewhere, just pick the topic. Really think about what the most important ideas are. If you want to have an outline with just a few bullet points, I mean three, four points, two, three words for each point and you occasionally glance down, then do that. Second, you try to memorize for Most people, you destroy the quality of your voice that makes you sound like a real person. You can start to sound canned, phony, fake. Your speed becomes too consistent, your volume too consistent, pacing too consistent. And you hear how I now sound like a robot. It sounds awful. Don't do that. That's the problem with memorization when you are following a script. It puts so much pressure. One word off, and you flubbed. If you're just having a conversation with one person, talking to them, sharing them ideas, then the whole concept of flub kind of disappears. That's essentially what I do with all of my videos and interviews, for that matter. I'm not scripting this. I may occasionally have a few bullet points. Every once in a while, I may have a question or two that I've written down. But for the most part, I'm trying to simply have a real conversation. Whether someone's asked me a question or I'm imagining that someone has asked me a question, Saul has written in and says, what do I do? I was interviewed recently. It was a tech entertainment reporter. There was only one video camera. The reporter is talking to me. I'm looking at the reporter. But when I look at the video, all you see is the side of my head. Because the camera is straight on looking at both the reporter and me. And I'm just wondering, should I be looking at the camera? Because it just looks awkward. So here's the thing. You really can't go wrong if you just look at the reporter or the host. That is my recommendation most of the time. Now, if you can see there's clearly only one camera and that the camera person is not walking around to catch your full face. What I would do and what I do in those situations is I ask the reporter, should I occasionally look at the camera as if I'm speaking to a third person? And quite often they say, sure, that's great, and it can look more natural. But they might say, oh, no, we don't like that. It's sort of our style, our grammar. And the camera person may be moving around. You don't really know if the camera person is moving around when you're in the middle of the interview. And this doesn't work in a studio situation because you can have three or even four cameras on. You don't know which one is capturing you. So the basic rule of thumb, if you only see one camera, ask if it's okay and just treat the camera as if it were a third person in the room. If you don't know or you don't ask. The safest, simplest thing is to just look at the reporter, look at the host. If you do that, you really can't go wrong. By the way, any question you have, I'm happy to devote not only a segment on the audio portion of the podcast, speaking with TJ Walker, but also the video portion. There are some questions that are more visual in nature and do lend themselves to showing what to do and demonstrating whether it's with hand movement or where to look for cameras, things like that. So feel free to send me a question tjediatrainingworldwide.com you can also post it on the website, on the blog, wherever you are watching this or listening to this, and I should say listen because this is a, this is purely an audio format. Although my distribution system, Lipsyn, has an automatic function now where it takes the audio, the podcast audio, and converts it into a video and places that on YouTube. Now if you're on my YouTube channel and you just see my logo and you hear stuff, that's what it is. I didn't sit there in front of a camera, record it and block out my face to put the logo. It's, it's a new automated system. So that's what's going on there. Is it the best video? Is it viral video? Probably not, but it's yet another distribution system. I have noticed that there are some well known podcasters like Marc Maron and they do this as well. And some of their videos, which is just the video version of their audio, you can have 80, 100,000. So apparently there are some people who don't mind talking to or, excuse me, listening to audio when they are watching video. So that's, that's just what makes things a little bit different. Also in the news this past week, Greta Van Susterman, the longtime primetime host for the Fox News Channel, unceremoniously left the network. Now, apparently she had decided she wanted to leave. She had a clause in her contract that said Roger Ailes ever leaves, then she can leave. And she was in the process of some kind of negotiation. Fox got mad at her and basically packed up her stuff and tossed it out on the curb and didn't even let her say goodbye to her, her fans. Now, I must confess, I'm not a fan of Greta Vanza. I don't dislike her. I don't think she's horrible. I've just never heard her say anything particularly interesting or insightful. Part of it is the topics she covers, often crime related, just didn't really interest me. But I do think she is a fascinating example of a number of trends that I think don't get enough coverage when it comes to how people plan their careers, their media careers. And I'm going to say a few things that may strike a few of you as indelicate. I apologize, but I have to play it straight with you and tell you as I see it, Greta Van Sestren has had a wildly successful career at CNN for many, many years. She first rose to prominence as one of the guest experts when O.J. simpson murdered his wife. I well remember it. She was a staple on various networks. CNN was seen as such a good, reliable free pundit. They made her a paid pundit and she did that for a while and then she got to co host a show, did that for a while and then she got to host her own show. So she really worked her way up the media food chain. And then she went from at that point, I guess a second or third rated network to the number one rated network, Fox News. And she was a part of their rise to the top. I think they had just, just gotten to number one around the time she made the switch. But here's what I find fascinating. We're told over and over again in tv, in order to be successful, especially on Fox, you have to be a really good looking blonde woman, yet to be rabidly conservative. Gran of ancestry was neither. Again, I don't mean to be petty. I'm 53 and I'm not good looking by most people's standards these days. So I don't say that as holier than thou. But Greta Van Susteren, compared to Megan Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, she's not one of the so called lookers Roger Ailes was always after and harassing. And yet she was still wildly successful in prime time for 14 years. She also was not a fire breathing conservative. She wasn't constantly pushing the Republican line, trashing liberals and being just like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. And yet she was still successful. Beyond that, she did not in any way have what most people would consider a pleasant voice. Her voice is sort of screechy, irritating to some. Guess what? Didn't let it bother her. She just kept on doing what she did. So she stuck to her niche. Analyzing high crime stories, looking at legal issues. She stuck to what interested her. Yes, she did have a facelift right before she went to Fox. So I'm not saying she never made any compromises. But for the most part she didn't try to change her certainly didn't change her voice didn't change her politics that much and had a fantastically successful career. And as far as I know, she may be on her way back to CNN or MSNB or MSNBC or someplace. So to me, the whole the real lesson here is don't worry about being like everyone else. Don't worry if your voice isn't perfect. Don't worry if you don't sound like everyone else or have ideas exactly like everyone else. If you have a point of view, if you have expertise, if you're willing to speak out every day, you can still be wildly successful. I want to thank you for listening to speaking with TJ Walker. We've been doing the program now daily since January 1st this year. We have switched formats a few times. Would love your feedback. What I've settled on in the last month is Monday through Friday shows being in depth interviews with world class leaders about how they communicate, tips, tools, tactics on not only what they communicate, how they communicate their particular expertise better than other people, and lessons for the rest of us. So if you have suggestions on people you think would be great interview guests, I would love to hear from you. There is someone I would have loved to have interviewed and unfortunately I can't do it now because she passed away this week. I'm speaking of course of Phyllis Schlafly, the longtime conservative political figure, media figure. She has been around since the 1950s. She died at age 92, almost single handedly stopped the Equal Rights Amendment. Now those of you who've listened regularly or who know me, this will not be any big surprise. I was not drawn to her because of an affinity for her actual political values, philosophies or policies. But I do think she was way ahead of her time and was a real media master, master at communication. She truly understood how traditional news media work and increasingly new media. And she did not wait for people to just call her. She was constantly initiating, looking for ways to get her ideas out there. She self published a book, A Choice not an Echo in the early 1960s that sold 3 million copies. Now these days you hear people talk about self publishing. Everybody self published. I've self published. But it was really hard back in the early 60s, massively time consuming, expensive, complicated. And she pulled it off. She also hosted radio shows, segments, TV shows. She was a regular commentator on CBS in the early 1970s. But she just never gave up. I mean she was at it till the very end. She had a column printed just a couple of days before she died. And I gotta tell you, I'm not Hoping to go anywhere anytime soon. But I want to go out the way Phyllis Schlafly did, which is speaking, writing, traveling, being a part of the political process, the issues of the day, until the day I die. She wasn't somebody beholden to any one medium. She wrote books, newsletters, websites, radio, commentaries, tv, video. She did it all. And she did it all in her style. Not my style, not Gloria Steinem style, but she did it in her own style. She was massively, massively influential. When I speak of style, she. She gave thought to this, down to every hair on her head. She had a style in some ways similar to Margaret Thatcher, but she had it for decades before Margaret Thatcher had that style. It was a very, very rigid, conservative and refined sort of elegant. I don't know if you call it a bun, but a very particular hairstyle. If you don't know what she looks like, take a moment and Google Phyllis Schlafly and you should recognize her even if you've only seen her once every 15 years. Her image doesn't really change. And that's why I think it's just fascinating to me because people think of new media gurus and they think of people who are media entrepreneur. You think of someone like a Mark Zuckerberg. Well, here's this woman, 92 years old. She's been at it for basically 60, 70 years, constantly innovating. Now, did she create some platform like a Facebook? No, she used traditional media platforms, but she did it in her own way. And she did it by constantly innovating and by doing it in her own style. And that's, to me, what makes the big irony, of course, is one of her big messages is, you know, women should be in the home. Women should be taking care of their husband and kids. And here she is traveling all over the world, speaking out on public policy issues. So not at the jury level, but at the de facto level, you could make the case she was the ultimate feminist fantasy and role model of a woman who is active, powerful, wealthy, having major influence, speaking out on the issues of the day. So other than the fact that her political views were anathema to liberals and feminists, she was in many ways the ultimate feminist ideal. And look, folks, we all have some contradictions, but it is a fascinating, fascinating life she led. And I don't want to sound. I don't want to sound trite or insincere. I can't personally tell you she'll be missed, at least by me, because I didn't know her. I didn't have a personal relationship with her, but she will be missed on the political scene as a very consistent and forceful voice. Folks, I appreciate you listening to this podcast program. Note reminder, I do have a half a dozen other podcasts and they're very segmented. So, for example, if you go to your podcast app and you type in Public Speaking Tip of the Week, you can get my Public Speaking Tip of the Week. It's typically one to three minutes long right there in itunes. There's no charge and it's just a simple, focused tip. There's no extra, there's no fluff, there's not even introductory music. Same with PowerPoint. There's a PowerPoint tip of the Week. Just search for that in your podcast app. There is a media training Tip of the Week and a communication Tip of the Week. Just put those in your search and podcast and they're all a little bit different. The last one I'm especially excited about. It was interesting because it culminates a lot of lifelong fascination for me is I have a podcast called Leadership Communication Tip of the Week. And that's where I look at the history of people like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and put a spotlight on some aspect of how they prepared to speak, where they learned their weaknesses as speakers. So for those of you who are history buffs and are fascinated by that, I think you'll find that interesting. I do believe that the single most important strand of leadership that is not given much news coverage and not given proper attention is the role of communication. It's not seen as glamorous as their religious values or their political values. Certainly those things can be important, too. But when I look at great leaders throughout history, to me, the most consistent trait that binds them is not whether they are religious, whether they are teetotalers or drunkards, whether they get up early or late, because all of those things vary. The one thing most of them do have in common is they were really, really good at communicating, at least to certain audiences in certain ways. So that particular podcast, I think will be of interest to you. So Leadership Communication Tip of the Week. Look for that in your itunes app, on your phone, your podcasting app. Folks, thanks so much for spending time with me this week. I do appreciate your time. If you like this show, please do a couple things for me. Number one, subscribe. Number two, and this is a little bit more of an ask on my part. Leave a review. The more reviews you have, the more credible you are to a lot of people. It helps with getting guests. Everything else. 3. Share it with friends, Facebook, LinkedIn, other places. Number four, go to the App Store and download Speaking with TJ Walker. The app, it doesn't cost anything. And that way you don't have to sort of fish through all your other podcasts to look for this. You just have the app anytime you want is right there. Finally, I am actively looking for more truly interesting guests, people that are going to fascinate you. What I don't want to do is just interview another PR practitioner or public speaking coach and go over the sort of the same old handful of tips you've heard a million times. That's not going to be the focus of the show. It's going to be. And nothing wrong with those people because I am those people. But I want to focus on really putting a spotlight on some of the most interesting people in our culture and in the world today. Their ideas of what they're doing to change the world and how they do it, when they speak, how they prepare, what do they do to get that extra edge. So if you have any suggestions on guest, please let me know. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much. Hope you enjoy your weekend. Thanks for listening to Speaking with TJ Walker where the communication skills and practices of world class leaders are dissected.