Why are the Brits so Eloquent? - Alan Stevens

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders. He's one of the true international gurus of public speaking and media training in the world. I'm very happy to have with us our guest today. He's the author of the Exceptional Speaker. He's also not a father, but I guess a grandfather. The whole podcast movement. Many of you may have started listening to his Media Coach radio show podcast more than a decade and he's still at it consistently, speaking out every single week. Alan Stevens, thanks for joining us today.

TJ what a pleasure to talk to you. What a pleasure to talk to you, my friend.

You have been in the public speaking and the media training business for years. You are widely published. By the way, your most recent book, the Exceptional speaker is out. We're linking to that in the show notes. People definitely need to check that out. We'll link to where they can get it in Amazon. But how did you get into this whole business? Because people ask me, how did you get into it? Very few people at age 8 say I'm going to grow up to be a media coach.

No indeed. Well, it really came about through working in the consumer world. I was working for a company called Witch Magazine, the consumers association in the uk In America that would be Consumer Reports, which many people will know. And what we used to do is exactly the same business. I know many of the people that worked at Consumer Reports in New York. We used to test products and then we would go on the radio and television and we talk about them. And that's what I ended up doing. I ended up going on and talking about the products that we tested. I got involved in the digital side of things very early. In fact, I got involved in creating an Internet service provider back in 1996. In fact, the 20th anniversary of the Internet service provider we created, which online comes up in November this year. So having been 20 years, that's a shocking statistic to me. Actually, having been 20 years in the Internet business too is an interesting one. So basically my background is in consumer journalism and consumer reporting and from that I graduated into working with some large companies. I set up my own organization some years ago, mediacoach.co.uk, and I now work particularly in the area of media training and speaking and I tend to specialize in crisis communication as well for large companies.

And we should point out you're coming to us from London, England today and you are seen as basically the dean of the media coaching industry in London, even though that's A pretty big industry. It seems like every retired BBC reporter puts out a shingle and says, I am a media trainer now. Well, that happens.

Yeah, that does happen, T.J. of course, the difference, as far as I'm concerned is that I've been on both sides of the camera. When I was working for the magazine, of course, I was often an interviewee, but I also ended up presenting shows as well, co presenting shows. So I know what it's like to be on both sides as well as being a trainer. So that's the kind of uniqueness that I bring to it.

You have a different perspective, living in a different continent. What is your perspective of speakers in the United States? Because you come here often. You and I have met at the National Speakers association conferences in the US you're here frequently in the United States. The perception is that everybody in England is wildly articulate and smart. That's the bias people have. And when we think of the best public speaker in the world, we think of Churchill. We think in the last 15 years, a lot of us think of Tony Blair. I understand the politics around him, but a little bit different there locally. But what is your perception as high level communications expert of America, and what do you think the perception is of people in your country, of Americans and American speakers?

Well, my personal perception, as you say, I've visited America often, is the standard speaking, professional speaking and public speaking is high. I think there are some excellent speakers, well, all around the world, but specifically in America, I think some of the. I'm not going to get into politics, obviously that's a matter we shouldn't wander across. But certainly some of the political speakers that you've had over the years have been absolutely extraordinary. Jfk, Martin Luther King and so on. People like Reagan, a great communicator, Bill Clinton. I think there have been some tremendous speakers and in the profession itself, the business that we've met through, there are some very, very high quality speakers indeed. And whenever I come to a convention in America, I'm just in awe of some of the great speakers that we hear. So that's my personal perception. But I think you're right to point out that there is perhaps a national perception that people with different accents tend to be different from us. So I know I have an advantage when I come to the States and I do, I must admit, and my daughter tells me off for this, I do play up my English accent a little when I cross to America.

Well, the difference is the differences in accents can have a positive or negative association. So for example, When Donald Trump, and we're not a political chef, but when Donald Trump says Mexicans, you're sending us are you're rapists, I don't think he means their Mexican accent is seen as an asset. Again, without having you wade into our bilious, petty politics here, what is the perception of people you deal with in not only Great Britain, but in Europe when it comes to the phenomena of a Donald Trump, not just as a speaker, but as a political force?

Well, of course it's interesting. And up until we had our referendum on the membership of the European Union, I would have said we haven't had anything like that happen here. But of course, it was a great surprise to many of us that we did vote to leave the European Union, so called Brexit. And many people were likening some of the leaders of the Brexit, the leave campaign to politicians like Donald Trump. We had a politician here called Nigel Farage who recently spoke at a Donald Trump rally over in America. And he's seen as a similar, not quite the same, but a similar kind of figure, very outspoken, very much somebody who will say what he thinks regardless of whether it's strictly factually correct. And that has struck a chord with people. So it may be that in different parts of the world, both in Europe and in America, we're seeing a trend towards people gravitating towards people who are just very outspoken, even though what they're talking about may not be verified in detail. But it's interesting that, I mean, Nigel Farage, if I can comment on him for a moment, was caught out in something that was clearly wrong. And he said, well, just read my Twitter feed and see what my supporters believe. Which for you and I, as professional communicators and professional trainers, is an extraordinary thing to hear because we deal in the truth and helping people communicate that truth. So to hear somebody say, well, the truth is what I say it is and what my followers believe is something rather extraordinary. I think probably the same sort of thing is happening with your Mr. Trump.

Very, very similar. It is a new era and it does bring up, I won't say it's an ethical question, but a curious question for people in your profession and my profession, because traditionally media training rule number one is don't lie to the media. It's always bad and it will always come back to get you. You'll always be punished. And about 10 years ago, I started telling people that's not really true. I don't advocate lying because I think it's morally wrong, but I Can't in good conscience tell people that it's a bad media strategy. Case in point. I started telling this maybe six years ago and seven years ago in many public forums that I said, look at Donald Trump. Everything out of his mouth is basically a lie. And he's been rewarded his entire career. NBC didn't just give him airtime, they gave him his own show and showered him with hundreds of millions of dollars. So how do you deal with that issue? We don't want people to lie, not just as media coaches, but as citizens of our country, citizens of the world, presumably. But it does seem as though people can sort of use enough of the other skills we teach. And certainly Donald Trump does have some communication skills, confidence, bravado, humor, force that they can say anything and get away with. How do you deal with that?

Well, I think then we come to the ethics and morality of what we do. And I've certainly had people ask me, I've had people in the political arena ask me if I will help them not exactly cover something up, but deliver something which isn't strictly true. And I decline. My view is you don't have to tell the whole truth all the time. I mean, we're not in court, we're not being cross examined in the way that we have to tell the whole truth. But what we have to do is tell the truth, in my view, in the way that is most appropriate. And sometimes people call us spin doctors and look at our profession in a way that, that suggests we're doing something underhand. Whereas in fact, I think what you and I, what both of us do, is to help people communicate what they need to communicate in the most effective manner. But I will draw the line at untruth, I'm afraid. I'm very, very strong on that. I will help people to deliver the information they need to deliver. But if they're looking for somebody to help them lie effectively, I won't do that. And I've had people say to me, to me, well, I'll take the reputational risk. And I'll say, but I won't. You can, but I won't, because I've got to keep working. And if it became known that I'd help somebody deliver something which wasn't true and that gets found out, then at some point things always get found out. It may be a long time ahead, but they always do. Eventually that would reflect badly on me.

Now, you mentioned Brexit. If you could go back in time, what would have been your advice to David Cameron, other leaders who wanted to convince people to stay with the European Union. How do you think they could have communicated more effectively?

Well, I think my first piece of advice was we don't have the vote, but I think we were way beyond that. It wasn't a necessary vote, but given the circumstance that the vote was taking place, I don't think that the side, David Cameron and most of the government that campaigned to stay in did themselves any favors. I think their campaign was poor. They allowed themselves to be known as Project Fear. I think the Brexit side, the OUT campaign, were clever or lucky in the way that they branded the Remainers as Project Fear and kept highlighting what they called their lies or their exaggerations. Whereas, in fact, there were lies and exaggerations on both sides, as there often are in political campaigns. And I think that the Brexit campaign, by accident or design, communicated their message more effectively. I think there was also perhaps some complacency on the side of the remainders, too, that they kept looking at the polls and the polls kept indicating there was a 5 or even a 10% margin of victory expected. And I think they. They didn't really put the effort in, either in terms of feet on the ground or particularly, which is our concern, particularly in terms of communication. So, in short, I don't think they got their message across very well, and as a result of that, the campaign went against them.

What were their. I mean, I followed it, but from a distance, not to the level that most savvy voters in England would have. What were their three main messages, other than you should fear this because things will get worse? And what do you think their top three messages should have been if you were running things?

You mean the message of the Remain campaign?

Yes.

Well, the Remain campaign was basically saying, Britain, the United Kingdom would be better in Europe, particularly financially, because, as we know, because we've both been around a little while, that it's often about the economy. The economy is what often makes the difference between people voting one way and another in any particular campaign, in any election. So I think they. But it was a vague message and I think when they tried to be specific, it wasn't hitting home. So, in other words. And also, people weren't taking on board the comments they were delivering. In fact, basically, I think they underplayed it. I think they should have used some specific examples. As you and I both know, storytelling is a very effective technique for getting a message across. And I think what they should have done was to get some. Some examples of people who had benefited from European Union membership and would lose that benefit if we left the European Union. I think they signally failed to do that. There was very little storytelling in their campaign. I also think they failed to deliver a consistent message. I think some people were talking about social justice, some people were talking about the economy, and that's partly because you had a disparate group of people on both sides, to be fair, where people were coming from different political parties, focused behind a common aim, and yet their colleagues in the same party were opposed to them. And I just think people found that very uncomfortable. And I think it's probably easier to oppose something under those circumstances than to go with the status quo.

And if you have a new message every day, even if it's a great message, it typically isn't going to resonate because it just lands with. Or it never really lands because you've moved on to the next.

I think, actually, tj, that's a very, very good point. I think you make an excellent point there. That the Brexit campaign was just saying we want our country back was a line they came up with, and they pushed that line consistently. Whereas, as you rightly say, the Remain campaign kept saying, well, we're campaigning on agriculture today, and then it's the economy tomorrow, and then it's jobs and then it's houses, and as a result, dissipated their message.

How important was the alleged lie about the number of millions being sent to Europe that could have been spent on the health care of people domestically? Well, that did get a fair amount of play here afterwards.

They painted that on the side of a bus. It couldn't have been more blatant in terms of what the Brexit side said about that. And it was untrue. The figure that they quoted, the £350 million a week was about double the net contribution from the UK to the European Union. So that was completely untrue. And there was no possibility of it was being spent on the National Health Service. So there were two lies on the same bus. However, the interesting thing was it didn't seem to have made much difference, because even people that listened to the argument and said, well, I know the figures aren't really true, but I think it's a principle went with it. So I think it was an extraordinary example of people presenting something which was demonstrably untrue. And yet, as we've said, when we talked about other people, people taking it on board and saying, well, fair enough, I'll go with that.

You're listening to speaking with TJ Walker. This is the show where we interview world class leaders and really dissect their communication skills, how they speak to live audiences, how they speak to the media. Our special guest today is Alan Stevens. He's known as the media. He is one of the deans of this industry. You can find out more about him by going to mediacoach.co.uk and that's linked to in the show notes as well. By the way, I always mean to ask people, why do you need a.co.uk, can't you have just a.uk or. It seems like an excessive link.

I don't know how the domain naming system came up with that one. TJ I would love to have had AlanStevens.com but it turns out that's a roofing company in Cedar Rapids who just got there first and it's not even run by Alan Stevens, it's run by Alan Benson. And I contacted him and said could we exchange links on our homepages? And I said, by the way, why did you call yourself AlanStevens.com rather than Alan Benson? He said, I preferred the name. It's the weirdest thing that my name was stolen by somebody who doesn't have it.

That's the one time where I did get ahead of you because I did by tjwalker.com I believe in 1995 or early it would have been 1995 hosting a talk.

I did get alextevens.net so I didn't fail. But yeah, close. Well done you.

But you have been ahead of the curve and ahead of me in a lot of situations with your own Internet ventures starting 20 years ago, starting in the podcasting world. I mean, everyone's talking about podcasting these days. You've been in the game for 11 years, delivering quality content, insightful interviews, even interesting music week in and week out for years. And you also have gotten into the online training game a little deeper and a little more thoroughly than a lot of other Johnny come lately. Tell us more about your coaching program.

Well, thank you. Yes, I have a coaching program which runs for a year for people who are either in the speaking profession or in industry and want to become more powerful speakers. So I'm working with people who really want to raise their game and I do that by working with them monthly for about a day, a month, over an entire year. And what we do is we set targets at the start of the year and we pick up those halfway through the year and then make sure they're achieved by the end. And a lot of that is done. It's done face to face if I have a chance to meet the individuals. But it's increasingly being done online via Zoom and Skype and whatever the technology of preference is for people I'm dealing with and it's turned out to be for me very enjoyable and for the people that I'm working with, thankfully, very effective.

Now our listeners are familiar with Skype and I'm on Skype 10 times a day. We're doing this interview through Skype. What is Zoom and what's the difference?

Well, Zoom is very similar to Skype in that it delivers video and audio over online links. I found the quality of Zoom to be very good indeed and it's particularly effective when you've got multi user video. I've been on conference calls with 24 people all on screen at the same time. Obviously only one person talking at a time, but you can see them all, you can see the movement and everybody can hear and see very, very clearly. So Skype works very well. Zoom I think is also very effective. But I tend to use the technology of preference for the person I'm coaching, person I'm working with. And it's going to be one or the other, quite frankly, because you need to be able to see somebody if you're coaching them. And I think Skype or Zoom video is very effective for that.

And I found that yes, you do have to see them, but even more important they have to see themselves. So the hard part for me with the online training was getting to the point where I could record someone's speech or interview, play it back for them to do it. It took me a while to figure that out because just talking to someone or they see you and you see them, I frankly don't think there's much value in that. But I want to know your coaching program. Do you have a group of 10 people who come together in the same room on the last Friday, or each person has a separate day with you per month?

Each person works separately. I work with them all individually and that's quite important because some people want to be coached confidentially. If you're dealing with people who are dealing with important issues or maybe a professional speaker forming a new speech, they don't really want a group of people in on that process. They want to do that privately. So I work with all of the individuals on a private basis so far, indeed, we haven't all come together as a group. Many of them do know each other through the profession or through industry, but it's, it's very much a one to one intense, high level coaching operation.

Now I'm curious because you've mentioned professional speaking a time or two. You are a media trainer, a presentation coach. You're also the past president of the Global Speakers Federation. You've been a part of and president of the Professional Speaking association of the UK and Ireland. But you're also a podcaster. You're also an author. Like a lot of us these days, you have a lot of different health. That's true. How prominent is the hat? Do you even see yourself as a professional speaker? Because certainly 30, 40 years ago there were people and that is all they did. In fact, the guy who taught me how to speak was a guy named Bill Gove who was one of the founders of the National Speakers Association. He had a speech and that's all he did basically. But where do you see yourself?

I think as you rightly pointed out, it's more a of a portfolio rather than a specific profession. There are only a few people in the world, a few people that I know, some in America, some here in Europe, who make a full time living from being professional speakers. Many of us combine add different types of expertise. So I do do speeches, I do do professional speeches. In fact, I'll be delivering one at our own professional speaking convention in Nottingham in a few weeks time. So I do do on stage speaking. I also do emcee work, as many of us do. I act as a professional mc, which is an interesting one that, because a lot of people say they're MCs but in fact they're reading the name of the next speaker off a card. And as you and I know, there's a lot more to it than that.

Well, you can be, it's like anything, you can be a writer or a good writer, you can be an emcee or a good emcee.

So to answer your question about professional speaking, it's something that I do enjoy. I was doing speech last week and I like, like many of us, we like to be on stage. I think there must be an element of ego with that, but nothing wrong with that. So we like performers. I also get involved in a bit of stand up comedy as well. I run a stand up comedy night at our national speakers convention here in the uk that's coming up again in a couple of weeks. Wow.

Now I respected you before. Now I really respect you. As a lot of our listeners know, I often maintain that stand up comedy is the hardest type of public speaking because you go to a business convention, you give A speech. As long as you don't bore people to death, they love you. You get one chuckle out of them. They're talking about you for three weeks as the best speaker at the convention. In stand up comedy, your audience is saying, if you don't make me laugh every 10 seconds, I hate you. So I have tremendous respect for anyone who enters that. That's the one realm of speaking I feel like I've never mastered.

It's a very tough one. Tj. You're right to be wary, I think, because I've probably got a dozen or so acts. I emcee the whole thing and do the crowd warm up and that sort of thing and link it together. Being a stand up comedian is different from being a professional speaker because the stand up is more combative. It's not quite aggressive, but it can be. It's almost against the audience rather than speaking, which is more inclusive and with the audience and interesting, what you say. I was coaching somebody this very afternoon. It is afternoon here. I can say that. Anyway, today I was coaching somebody on their stand up routine. And I was saying to them it is set up punch. Set up punch. You don't have time to develop a story. What you've got to do is deliver setup punch. And one of the greatest examples is the one that I always quote, was a sitcom set in New York, which you may have heard of, called Friends. For me, the writers, the ensemble team who wrote that, were absolutely superb professionals at doing setup punch. Every line in that show for years and years, whether it was a setup line or a punchline, it's absolute genius.

I was more of a Seinfeld.

Oh, well, that was good too.

Fan at the time. Although I just saw just two months ago an evening with believe it or Not, Don Rickles, one of the great old times stand up. He's 90 years old. They cart him out on like a crane, a wheelchair and a crane. But his wit, his timing, everything else was still great, which is. You always hear the old joke, I guess it's not even a joke, it's just an observation that poets die or kill themselves at 40. Comedians live to be 100. They're laughing all the time. It takes the stress away. I do think there's something. There is. There's got to be something to that. You're listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. This is the program that analyzes communication practices of world class leaders. Our special guest today is Alan Stevens. He is a media trainer, presentation coach, master of ceremonies, stand up comedian, podcaster, and he's the only author of the Exceptional Speaker. Alan, I don't know about you, but I find it increasingly difficult to write about public speaking myself. Because you go to Amazon, you type in public speaking. Last time I checked, there's 12,000 books. So much of my advice comes down to practice your speech on video, look at it, figure out what you like, don't like, keep doing it until you like your own speech. And I do find that that actually solves the problems for the 99% of the world. But people don't like that advice. They want to be told, put your hands on your hips and pose like Wonder Woman and all your problems will go away. What techniques or tricks do you have that we haven't heard before? Because it's a pretty savvy audience of communicators here. What do you have that's different or unique, that isn't quite as gimmicky as hands on the hips posing as Wonder Woman?

Well, I think for me, when I'm working with people who are presenting speakers and so on, I always try and get them to actually throw about half their material away. And then when they've done that, I say, now throw away another half. Now let's see what we've got left and maybe we'll throw away a little bit more. It's a paring down process. And I'm very, very keen when I'm working with people to get to the essence of what they're about and then build it back up again. Because I always find that when somebody approaches me and they say, I've got a speech and I need to work on it and I listen to it and I think there's about six or seven different speeches in there trying to get out. So I think the essence.

But Alan, the deck we worked on for six months and it's gone through legal and investor relations has signed off.

That's right, we have.

And the graphic artist had been paid.

The slides have to be this complex. Believe me, tj, I have been there. I'm thinking a very specific example of a global CEO that I work with that had that exact response. And he said, well, we can't change all of the slides now. But in the end we did because I managed to convince him that the important thing was for the people in the room to go away understanding what his message was and why it was important. And that was really the only criterion of success as far as he was concerned. He ended up speaking to a. Well, it was an audience of global customers. They all came together in London, a couple of thousand. He'd never done that sort of speech before and I think he was to an extent hiding behind his material.

It's one of those things that it seems safe. Oh, if I stick with the pre approved script that everyone signed off on, no one can criticize me. It's actually in my view, the riskiest thing you could do if it's a bad speech. But I want to know. Our audience wants to know because a lot of them are people who are creating speeches, presentations for CEOs. How did you convince this person that the speech they were going to give was presumably a boring data dump and they had to get rid of the slides?

Well, what I did, I used a technique that I often use and I asked him about other experiences that he'd had. I asked him about cinema, I asked him about theater, I asked him about going to a concert. And then I said, imagine you're meeting somebody a week later, a week hence, and you're going to tell him about your experience. I said, let's take an example. You've just been to see a play in New York. He traveled between New York and London quite a lot. I said, tell me about it. And he told me in no more than two sentences, probably one sentence. And I said, so you've just summarized three hours of your life, an experience you enjoyed in a sentence or two. And that's exactly what people do when they listen to a speech or any form of communication. When they meet somebody who didn't have that experience, who didn't listen to the communication, didn't see the speech, they summarize it in a sentence. And I say, that is the essence of communication. You've got to be able to make sure that that summary is the summary you intend. That's all there is to it. And when I talked that through and he realized that that's in fact how he did communicate his own experiences, that it would make sense if people who communicated his experiences acted in the same way.

Alan, in your part of the world, who do you think the best English speaking presenters speakers are? When I ask American audiences, quite often I hear Bill Clinton, maybe Oprah Winfrey, certainly Ronald Reagan, if it's in the last 25 years. But who do you and people you deal with the most respect the most of non Americans?

Well, I think there are two questions in there. I and people I deal with respect the most. I have the greatest of respect for two political speakers in particular, neither of whom is necessarily universally popular. One is a Scottish gentleman called George Galloway, who I've worked with on radio and I know because I've spoken to him and I've interviewed him, studies classical rhetoric and I'm a great fan of classical rhetoric because the Greeks knew a thing or two about speaking and they understood and analyzed how this stuff works. And George, for me, was a tremendous speaker. He is a little known in America. He came over and spoke to a congressional committee about various issues in the Middle east, shall we say? He's a little bit to one end of the spectrum as far as people would be thinking politically. But I think he's, in pure technical terms, which is how I'm judging it, the best political speaker we have. And we also had a speaker, William Hague, who was a former leader of the Conservative Party, that led it at the wrong time for him because he wasn't very successful when he was leader. But he's still around in politics and he is the most effective after dinner speaker in terms of politics that I've met for a long time. Another one in politics would be.

Now what I'm curious, what makes someone especially effective as an after dinner speaker? Is it the better use of humor? It's not quite stand up, but it's more of a humorist. You've got to have a light touch.

We often say for after dinner speaking, the ideal length is about 20 minutes and the ideal number of gags is 20. So 20 laughs, 20 minutes and you're gone. That's a nice little formula for speaking. People want to hear stories, particularly if you've got somebody who's been involved in the great events in history. They want to hear a bit of the background, they want to go behind the curtain. So you've got to offer them some of that, but you've got to offer it in a humorous way because people after dinner want to be entertained as well as enlightened. So I think if you can do 20 minutes and 20 laughs, then you'll be a very, very successful after dinner speaker. And William Hague is like that. If I could just veer out of politics for a moment. One of my favorite speakers outside politics is Bob Geldof. Sir Bob Geldof as he is now, who created Live Aid and Band Aid and did a tremendous amount of for Africa in terms of raising money. And I think he is one of the most marvelous speakers, but he's not to everyone's taste either.

And he said, when I have a very firm image of who he is, what he's about, his accomplishments, I don't have a firm image of actually how he sounds when he speaks. But he's certainly been on the international stage for a long time and is credited, I believe rightly so, with being a great humanitarian as someone has raised a tremendous amount of money for good causes.

He has. So I tend to judge people by their speaking ability and their effectiveness and they don't always go hand in hand and certainly Sir Bob, as you say, has been very, very effective. But I also enjoy speaking. He's got an apparently random and ad lib speaking style, but it's actually very carefully rehearsed and planned so he knows where he's going to go. He may not know the exact words he's going to use, but believe me, he's very, he's very carefully planned when he does things.

So what do you think of Richard Branson? He is seen in the United States as very successful entrepreneur, respected, charming, dashing, media savvy. He's had so much great publicity. He's also an interesting person because he has dyslexia. When you hear him in interviews, the ah, ah, ahs are coming constantly but he doesn't let it bother him and it doesn't seem to really detract.

Well, he is an interesting, I mean a very, very successful businessman, very well known and rightly so, but very nervous when it comes to presenting in public. And I've talked to a number of people who have worked with him and he, if he, if he didn't have to do publicity, he wouldn't in a sense because he's very nervous about delivering speeches. Certainly as you, as you've pointed out, quite nervous when he's being interviewed on television or radio. And it seems to me, and again I've talked to people who work with him who say this, that when he's himself, he doesn't come across as confidently as when he's in character. If he's launching a new airline and he could appear in a pilot's uniform or if he's going in a balloon round the world or something. He's very confident because he's playing a role. But I think like many successful people, he's a bit of an introvert and I think that comes across when he's being pressed on various issues. However, I would say that he's somebody who delivered what I think was one of the greatest ever crisis communication interviews a few years ago. And I use it as an example when I'm training people on crisis communication because I think he was almost perfect.

Spell it out for us.

There was a train crash in the north of England, a Place called Greyrigg in Cumbria, in the north of England, just south of the Scottish border. And a Virgin train, one of his trains had crashed, rolled off the tracks. A lady had been killed, unfortunately, a number of people injured. He was helicoptered to the site from holiday, appeared there in front of the cameras and asked the cameras to film him in front of the crash, which is quite unusual for a CEO. Very unusual. And what he said was two things. One is, it's a tragedy what's occurred. He spoke about the people. He said he was going to visit them in hospital and make sure they were properly looked after, which was the right thing to do. But then he said, if you look at the train, not a single window is broken, not a carriage has deformed, because our trains are built to three times the strength required by National Rail. Secondly, our driver was a hero. He said, we don't know what caused the train to derail, but it looks as though he stayed in his cab. He suffered two broken legs trying to save as many passengers as possible. He said, so the driver was a hero and our trains are as strong as they could possibly be. And the very next day, Virgin trains sold more tickets than any other day in their history on the back of a rail crash. And I think that's a demonstration of how crisis communication can be very effective.

And that is counter to some conventional wisdom. I personally believe that if it is a crisis where someone has been injured, the CEO needs to be the spokesperson, because ultimately only the CEO is responsible to regulators, lawmakers, customers, the public, the media. And I think it's a bit cowardly to hide behind a PR person, even though, hey, some of my best friends are PR people. And I've been hired to be a. I've been hired to be a spokesperson for companies, but I think a crisis is different. But I'm still amazed that about half of people in our profession seem to think, well, no, no, let's just use the person who's the greatest expert. So if you have an expert on train crashes, put that person out.

No, no, you've really got to take responsibility. If you're the CEO or MD of an organization, people want to see you because they want to be reassured. They want to know. Well, obviously people don't know what's happened and you can't always tell them. They want to know how it's going to be fixed. And again, you can't always tell them that. But most of all, they want reassurance that the people, anyone who's been injured is being properly looked after and that anything that's happened won't happen again. So the person to do that has to be the person in charge of the company.

I think we're in complete agreement there, but let's switch topics. That's boring when host and guest agree on everything. Ellen, a few moments ago you mentioned classical rhetoric. You're a student of rhetoric. You're a fascinating newsletter which we'll put a link to in the show, Notes, which people should subscribe to, often has quick summaries of classical rhetorical devices in the United States in the last hundred years or the last 50 years. John F. Kennedy is really the only one of great prominence who used classical rhetoric, and Ted Sorensen, his speechwriter, did that. Part of the thinking was that because Kennedy was so young, so unaccomplished, so callow, they wanted to instill with him a sense of gravitas. So you had these classic oratorical devices of ask not what you can do for your country, ask what you can do for your country. And I always forget the name of that conversion of what it's called. Sindeton. Yes. Now I talked to Ted Sorenson. I happened to be at an al Gore speech 15 years ago, and sitting in the chair in front of me was Ted Sorensen. So I said, well, I better grab my chance to talk to him. Fascinating guy. Ronald Reagan also thought that John F. Kennedy was a great speaker. But he told his advisors, he said, I believe in the modern age where the TV camera's on you and it's a close up, that using rhetoric is going to come across phony. Speaking like this, where you are speaking out to the crowd, sounds phony. So Reagan made a very conscious decision to be completely conversational and to not use traditional rhetorical devices. And it served him well as a communicator. So I'm interested in your take as to how much can a modern political figure or business leader drop in the occasional rhetorical device without seeming too like they're trying to show off too much?

Well, it's a very good question and I'd say they can do that. And I think occasional is the right use of the word there, because if you compose that entire speech as though it were built of classical rhetoric building blocks, using things like anaphora and tricolon and syndeton and so on, then you would appear a little old fashioned because people tend to be more conversational these days. However, I think there is still the case for using it. And one of the things that I do from time to time is that I do live analysis of political speeches. I've done this for some of our TV networks here where I'll pop up on the red button if you know what, you know, the interactive service in the corner and try and explain while the speech is going on what sort of devices they're using and how they're getting the message across and so on. And rhetorical devices do still appear in speeches because they have a certain rhythm, a cadence, a way of becoming memorable. And there's a terrific book called Lend Me youe Ears by Professor Max Atkinson that is a bit of a Bible over here for rhetoric. And in fact, Max has trained many political speakers.

I'm Max. He is a fantastic expert. In fact, his book, you, Master's Voices. Oh yes, that too was pivotal to my education. That was a dog eared copy by the time I finally lost it. Which by the way, if you talk to him, let him know I've been reaching out to him to get him as a guest on this show. I did write to him on Twitter, haven't heard from him, but he's someone I have immense respect for.

I'm just making a note of that.

I can put you in that, but I interrupted you. Tell us about the other book of his you wanted to reference.

Well, it wasn't his other book. It was somebody called Sam Leith, L E I T H Sam Leith, who wrote a book called you'd Talking to Me. And for me, that's the most approachable primer on rhetoric. It's an updated version. It was only written about five or six years ago. Sam is a journalist, a newspaper journalist. And the book you're Talking to Me, it covers classical rhetoric, but in a very, very friendly and conversational way. And I recommend that to a lot of my clients. Have a look at that. You can get it on Kindle.

We'll link to that in the show notes as well. I want to know, do you actually recommend to your typical business client to write their speeches out? I actually tell people you're far better off not writing your speech out. Instead I recommend brainstorm on all your ideas. Narrow it down to your top five, come up with a story for each one. If you're using a PowerPoint, come up with an image without text and put your notes on a single sheet of paper and talk it out. Practice once or twice and you'll be a thousand times happier with how it comes across. And it's so much easier than trying to memorize or read a speech. But I want to know what's Your advice? Do you even recommend a starting point being a written speech?

No, not really. I tend to work in the same way that you've described there, tj. However, it does vary according to the individual. There are some people who will only work with a written speech and that may be because they don't have a lot of time. It's got to go up on teleprompter, or autocue, whatever you want to call it, and therefore they don't have time to learn it, but they want to be correct. And certainly with politicians who don't have time to learn speeches, they sometimes need to have everything written out in long form.

Sure, that's definitely different if you're a politician in office.

Certainly for a professional speaker, I wouldn't advise them to write it down. And for most speakers, I would say yes, that story structure works extremely well. They create the story, they make the point, and then they give the audience an example in their world because that's what embeds a story to give you an example in your world. And that's why every speech is different whenever I'm working with people or whenever I'm delivering them, because the audience is always different.

Alan, when you were growing up, who were your role models, both as politicians, speakers or media figures, who did you look at and say, wow, that person is really great in politics?

It's a female politician called Shirley Williams, who. She's still alive. I've only met her a few times, but I admire her tremendously. And it wasn't just her speaking ability, although she was a terrific speaker and still is, but also her ability to encapsulate an argument which made perfect sense to me at the time, made perfect sense when I was younger and it makes perfect sense to me now. So I've always admired Shirley Williams as an example of a great communicator, in terms of other communicators, a gentleman called Alastair Cook, who maybe.

Oh, sure, everybody's heard of him.

Well, from When I was 7 or 8 years old, I would listen to what was called Letter From America and Letter from America, if you don't know. It was a 15 minute show that would explain America to Europeans, to people in the UK specifically. He was a journalist, he worked in Manchester, originally moved to the States at the end of the Second World War and he was, he, for me, America came alive through the words of Alistair Cook and he was absolutely extraordinary. So he was probably my journalistic hero.

I'd say, Alan, I'm going to put you on the spot. You have often been on BBC and other places analyzing political speeches. I want you to analyze for our audience Hillary Clinton as a speaker, what are her strengths? What are her weaknesses? How have you seen her, her evolve since eight years ago and when she was in the White House herself with her husband?

I would say that Hillary Clinton, she comes across to me as, if you don't mind me saying so, a kind of standard political speaker. I think she's got a nice style. I think she's been well coached because I think her speeches have improved. I think she delivers at a very good and friendly pace. I have to say, I don't think her messages always come across as effectively as they might. And I don't know whether that's because of the way she delivers or the way she's been coached, but I think she's. I would place her in the category of good but not brilliant, competent but not outstanding.

That's pretty much where I would put her. It's certainly not as good as her husband or Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama. The biggest difference I've seen is when she ran eight years ago, in order to show passion, she would yell the whole time. And now I've criticized Donald Trump for this. He does that. I've criticized Al Gore. Al Gore used to yell the whole time. So it's not a. Hillary Clinton certainly is victim of sexism and sexist attacks, but the idea that it's sexist to criticize her for yelling, I don't think is sex. And Bernie Sanders yells.

He does. That's right.

I've criticized all of them, and she doesn't do that as much. So I give her credit for not yelling. And of course, the problem with yelling is it is off putting. It flattens your voice, it makes you sound convers. It robs you of sounding conversational, doesn't make you sound like a real person. It makes you sound angry. So she solved that problem. However, she still has a problem that I see when she's in front of a larger audience. Her speech at the Democratic Convention this past summer, she didn't yell, but she spoke like this. Our next guest is Alan Stevens. And I'm not yelling, but can you hear me? Hear how I kind of sound like it's a robot? I'm coming out at the same speed and I'm pausing the same between each one.

That's what she did. That's an uncanny impersonation, TJ Very good. It was like she was in the room.

And, you know, she obviously sounds completely different, but the cadence of Speaking at the same speed and the same volume, she solved one problem of not using way too much volume, but she still has the problem of not varying her pace. And that's, to me, what makes her sound a lot less likable.

I think you're right. And it's interesting that we've had politicians that have done the same sort of thing, that they deliver at a kind of weird, as you say, a weird pace with regular pausing. And even Tony Blair, who is a good communicator and still is a good communicator, became almost a parody of himself at some point because he started using hand gestures to reinforce a particular word, and he would use the same hand gesture at the same time. And it was very interesting. In fact, recently I was asked to analyze Donald Trump's hand gestures for a European TV program. I hadn't even looked at it, but I looked through some of his speeches in order to do that, and I found that he, again, he's using the same gesture a lot of the time on the same word in a sentence. And I don't know whether it's deliberate or accidental, but when you see it, it looks very strange.

And I won't ask you if you think the fingers looked large or small. We're too classy a show for that.

It's hard to tell on television.

But speaking of consistent hand gestures, it's an observation. I wish I'd come up with it. Unfortunately, I just saw it on Twitter. But if you go back and look at Bernie Sanders convention speech, or any speech of Bernie Sanders, watch without the audio on, and someone on Twitter says, why does Bernie Sanders end every sentence as if he were asking the waiter for a check? And if you look at looks exactly like someone who is using the imaginary pen to sign the tab? And it's. I can't watch him now without bursting out laughing, thinking, where's that waiter? Where is that waiter?

Well, of course, I mean that watching without sound and also watching at double speed without sound is the classic way that impressionists pick up on how to do impressions of various people, celebrities and politicians. And I've talked to several impressionists here, and they all do the same thing. They watch somebody with the sound off at double speed and then with the sound off at normal speed. And the gestures really create the character. So the voice is not the hard part, but when they got the gestures nailed, they can really get it.

What is your advice to your clients on gestures? Because I have clients come to me all the time and say, oh, TJ teach me to look professional. I know I move my hands too much and invariably the person stands up, speaks. Everyone else in the room, the other colleagues think, oh no, their hands look good. In my own experience, having worked with 10,000 clients over the 30 plus years, everybody moves their hands when they speak, when they are comfortable and relaxed. But when people are nervous, that's when they hold a pen, grab a lectern, put their hands in their pockets. So my standard advice is move your hands. If you stop moving your hands, that actually makes you look nervous. But I want to know, what advice do you.

I would agree with that. And it's interesting because like you, I record my own audio and radio and so on, and I move my hands when I'm recording to emphasize my words to somebody who can't even see me. So I think that the way that you use gestures does affect how your voice sounds, let alone how you appear. So I would offer people pretty similar advice. I don't mean to agree with you yet again, T.J. but you, you're a clever man. So when I'm talking to clients, I say use natural hand gestures because then you will feel comfortable, you will be relaxed, and you'll be able to deliver a message that people believe. And yes, again, the white knuckles where they're gripping the lectern and shuffling around with hands in the pockets. So there are things not to do. But in terms of using this hand to point that way, and this is the past over there, and that's the future over there, I say, don't worry about that. The important thing is that you feel relaxed when you're delivering.

Yeah, and the problem, of course, with natural hand delivery is people either think they don't use their hands. I mean, I'll secretly tape people and they'll say, oh, T.J. i never move my hands. Meanwhile, their hands are going big, wide, pointing. And I'll say, oh, really? And I'll just play back the tape of what they said 10 seconds earlier and they'll laugh. Or. The other problem is that people are convinced that while none of their colleagues move their hands too much, they, and they alone are moving their hands excessively. And they need to learn how to control their hands, which I just think is I hate to sound. I guess this sounds sexist. It's one of those old wives tales. It's just horrific advice.

I think we should both get a big sign that says, it's not about the hands and just hold it up in front of our clients.

Alan, you've been in this business for quite A while we were both started when video cameras were not plentiful, they were not small, they were not cheap, they were not light. Now everybody has a video camera. There's, there's innovations with cameras, with Internet, with, with Skype, with. The thing you called is your version of teleprompter. I had not heard that before. What does that name? Auto cue. I'm going to write that down so I don't sound ignorant next time I'm in England. So there's all sorts of innovations. On the one hand, nothing changes in the sense that human beings, if they really want something important to happen, they have to speak. On the other hand, technology is constantly changing and there's more and more ways of speaking to bigger audiences all over the world about different things, different niches, using technology. When you look into your crystal ball, what else do you see? I mean, do you see for example, training that's completely holograms, where it's like you're there and you can see the person, but you don't have to leave your home. Does that even matter?

I think communication can be done in a number of ways, but I think certainly communication at a distance is becoming more and more feasible. I was out in South Africa last year emceeing a convention where the speakers were on five different continents, none of them in the room. And we had a full day where people were beaming in from Australia, from California, from Europe, from Singapore, and we had an interactive conference. And it worked, you should say none.

Of the speakers were there. Were there participants in the same room?

They were a room full of people in front of me. So I was the mc. All of the speakers were remote and we had question and answer sessions and we had two way cameras so that the speakers could see the audience and all that kind of thing.

I'm fascinated by that. Why did people come? If the speakers could be doing it remotely, why couldn't the participants in the seats do it remotely?

Because it was the first part of a convention that turned into a face to face convention. So it was the first day of a three day convention. The other two days were conventional convention, if you know what I mean, with people actually on a stage in front of them and meeting people like people like to meet each other, of course, but we couldn't get the, we couldn't fly. All the experts in the budget wasn't there. But what we could do was to get the experts to sit in their home office or go into a local studio and talk to us for an hour or an hour and A half face to face or face to screen if you like. Now the interesting thing there was somebody said to me, what if the technology had failed? Because technology is not foolproof. So I had to admit that what I'd done, I'd recorded every interview as live in advance several weeks previously and I was playing it in the background so that if any point the line failed or the broadband went down, I could switch to the pre record.

You had recorded a video based interview with all of the speakers. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So I'm increasingly asked to give speeches around the world and if someone can't afford my full fee and travel I always offer, I say, hey, I'll speak to you virtually. And what I do is an added twist because of that possible reason of technical issues. I'll record the entire speech just standing up in my own studio and send it to them and say, hey, if we lose connection, just throw this up. So the meeting planner appreciates it. They, they feel like they have safety and frankly, I have more content for my YouTube channel and, and social media.

If I may congratulate you on that TJ, marvelous YouTube stuff that you do and the great regularity and great content. I'm really impressed.

Thanks. And it, it is about regularity. And there may be people who.

Were.

Hotter flash in the pan than you or me, but I would say without being seeming too immodest, we're both regular.

We're still here.

We're still here and we're creating content and we are writing and using new media technology. And whether it's podcasting or anything else, what medium are you, what medium and what social media platform are you most excited about? Or that do you spend your most time in or get the most engagement from your fans and your supporters and clients?

That's an interesting question. What I'm going to do, I'm going to quote back to you the words of somebody that I think we both know, a lady called Pam Lontos. Pam used to run a company called PR PR and still is involved in the PR business. She sold the company a little while ago and her phrase and her book title was I see your name everywhere. And I'm going to use that phrase to indicate that I don't have a preference. What I like to do is to be as far as possible, ubiquitous across social media, podcasting, video, audio, email, newsletters, books, magazine articles, that kind of thing. So I don't tend to focus on a particular channel. What I do is to allow myself to spread across channels and the people who consume the media to make the choice.

Well said. Although these days, I mean, it is increasingly difficult to be everywhere when there's Snapchats and Instagrams and Foursquares and there's so many things. I mean, historically I liked YouTube. I just figured, okay, I'm teaching people how to speak and people get nervous because people have to see these scenes speaking. So really, video is the best medium for that. But what I found, and I'm sad to say this revelation didn't really come to me till about nine months ago, is that people just don't want to sit for more than about 3 minutes and 38 seconds for my videos. Whereas a podcast like this, there is a. Maybe not 100%, but there are a certain percentage of people still listening to you and me. And we are now at 59 minutes and 13 seconds. So audio, because it's so flexible, you can do it at the gym, for a walk, on the plane, while driving. It's easier for people to engage with you.

I absolutely agree. It's a longer form. I tend to keep my shows down about 20 minutes. My weekly show, sometimes I'll do a longer one. But you're absolutely right, you can see more engagement. If you look at your YouTube stats, as I'm sure you've done, it's clear that you do, you do see a drop off very rapidly. And it's interesting, isn't it, that people will. Films are getting longer and yet we know that people don't watch videos that long. It's a strange paradox.

Well, you have to do just that one thing if you're watching video. And as fantastic as I think I am, I can understand why someone doesn't want to sit back at 9 o' clock after a long day and just watch public speaking media training videos. Whereas if you're off for a morning walk, listening to an hour podcast can be great. Something that is great is talking to Alan Stevens. And if you want to hear more about him on a regular basis, do what I do. And that is subscribe to the Media Coach radio show. I'm TJ Walker. Alan Stevens, thanks for being our guest today.

A real pleasure, tj. Thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening to Speaking with TJ Walker, where the communication skills and practices of world class leaders are dissected.