TJ Walker explains that asking for feedback is scary but essential for improving presentation skills; practice and iterative adjustments—driven by specific, memorable feedback—produce measurable improvement. He asks learners to post what they remember from the course in the discussion group (rather than only giving a star rating) and offers to accept texts about deficiencies so he can refine the course.
Chapters
As a beginner when it comes to your presentation skills, one of the scariest things I'm imagining for you is asking people for feedback. What if they think I'm horrible? What if they think I look stupid or nervous or scared? I understand that. But feedback is so helpful to you and it will reduce your nerves when it comes to giving the big presentation because you've already gotten feedback before that. The reason so many people go from beginner when it comes to their presentation skills to great is not they were born with any unique talents. There's no silver tongue that you're born with or that you can get. It's just learned behavior by getting feedback. And if you get enough feedback and then you adjust to it and you learn from it, you can get your presentation skills to the point where they improve and improve and improve. But there's a certain way of doing it. Now, in a moment, if you haven't received it already, you're going to be asked for feedback from Udemy on this course. I do want you to give feedback because even though I've given thousands of speeches, I'm still trying to improve. Even though I have advanced courses on public speaking on Udemy and more than 100 communication courses, I'm still trying to improve. So I want to hear from you, your feedback so far on what you like of this course and what you think of it. Now, Udemy is going to ask you to rate it. There's a one to five star rating system. If you think this course is great, by all means, go ahead and rate it. Now, if you think there's something that needs to be improved, something that's deficient, something that you really think is lacking, what I would ask you is hold off on the rating for a moment, send me a text message, and then ideally, before you even finish the course, I'm able to make the improvements and the refinements. Now, there's one big problem. The way most people ask for feedback. They want a one to five star, one to ten rating. Good, bad. And that's nice. It can be nice for the ego and it's certainly nice for my ego. And so many people give me five stars. But frankly, that's not the feedback that's useful. The feedback that's useful is when you ask people who what do you remember? What do you take away from this? So that's what I'm going to ask you right now. Based on just what you've seen so far in this presentation, what sticks with you, I am going to ask you to write that in the discussion group now, in part because I am curious about what is sticking, but also I want to build in you the habit of asking people, your colleagues, customers, clients, your associates you might want to practice with, what do they actually remember from your presentation? That's much more useful than whether or not they thought you were professional or smooth or any of that. So go ahead. Right now, spend just a moment and write down what's actually sticking. So. And don't hold back. You could say, tj, I don't like your beady eyes, or I don't like your hairline. Say whatever you want. I'll be reading it and I'll be responding.
