Change! It is everywhere, every industry, every field technology changes things, culture changes. Many times for the better, are you keeping up-to-date on your communication skills and your speaking skills? Everybody has to change or you can just get stale. You can get musty. I have to change. Many of you have been with me for a long time. May remember I used to always wear a suit and tie for these videos. Now I was wearing shorts in the swimsuit from the waist down but when making videos to speak to you I felt the need to be formal and businesslike.
Well I have changed because so many other people in culture and business are more informal. So I have to keep up with the times. I used to have sort of a big fancy TV newsroom backdrop with all sorts of TVs. It just struck some people is dated. I listened to you. So I went with a simple clear backdrop what are you doing to change for the better. It is easy to get stuck in ruts. Now fundamental communication has not changed. You have to have something interesting and valuable to your audience and say it in a memorable way and in an engaging way. But little subtleties can change all the time you have to be attuned to that.
For example, many of you joining me today are coming from my old newsletter list. I used one newsletter provider for the last 15 years was not working very well. I had to switch to a new one today. So thanks for making the switch with me. Thanks for jumping over with me. Some of you are watching this because you are on one of the online training platforms that I have been on for the last five years and that brings up another area of change. That is just different in the modern world. We all have to be incredibly conscious of feedback to our presentations, feedback to our communication because it does not take long for negative reviews to just destroy our reputation. If we do listen to people just earlier today, I saw a note on a Facebook page I have to support students for one of my online platforms and the note from Facebook said “this student has complained about inappropriate content on this Facebook page.” I thought “Oh I did not say, WOW I hate these complainers. Let me ignore it or unfriend him or kick him up, No.” I instantly tried to see what it was because I was hoping another student and posted something defamatory or pornographic or something like that. So I went to see what the offending post was and they were pictures of food items, this person had cooked and so my first thought was “hmm this does not really have anything to do with public speaking and presentation skills this is inappropriate but then I clicked through and I saw that the person who posted it” had a good reason she was giving a speech a presentation on her cooking it was a demonstration which is exactly what she should have been putting in this forum and she was demonstrating cooking these items and other students had said “wow your presentation is so engaging we want to see the final product, we want to see what you actually cooked.” So she responded to them by instantly posting the video so I give her a lot of credit for doing that.
So I did not remove the post I then went to the student who complained and said “hey I understand why you did that. I was confused at first too but when I looked at it. Here is what I concluded I hope you find that reasonable too.” So I have not heard back from that student yet but I am pretty sure that that student is not going to be angry with me or complaining or trying to get me kicked off a learning platform because I listened. Because I responded. Because I tried to address a specific concern. The communication was not just me pushing my ideas out and how here you question me. I had to change. I had to look at something and figure out and see what might work. Now it could have happened that something inappropriate was posted and I hit delete. It does not always work out that way but the communications lesson is we have to listen to our audience more so than ever. We have to be able to react to them in almost real-time because if someone post criticism of you and you know deal with it for a day or two it can fester.
It can get worse now a lot of people. Perhaps my age and older do not like having to deal with this constant feedback. You know these youngins tweeting and texting but it goes both ways there are young people who are let’s say 23, 24 years old their whole life, they are used to communicating just by texting with their friends and the high school college text, text, text. Do not set up a voicemail would never leave a voicemail. Think it would be insane for someone else to leave a voicemail. Well now you are a junior Account Executive in a corporation or an institution or a government entity and you are dealing with people in their 30s 40s and 50s. They are calling you and they expect you to call back they call you want an answer they do not want a text back. They want you to actually speak. So young people have to learn – we have to all learn constantly we have to change involve with all of our communication and our speaking if we want to stay relevant and if we want to connect. I am TJ Walker thanks for joining me.