Public Speaking as Soft Skill

00:01 Is public speaking one of these skills you just had to be born with? No, no, no.

00:13 It's not a skill you're born with.

00:14 Nobody's born knowing how to speak anymore.

00:17 Any more than anyone's born.

00:18 Knowing how to be a great writer.

00:20 People only become great writers after years and years and years of learning how to write A, B, C and getting instruction and feedback on a continual basis.

00:30 Now, the good news about public speaking is most people never get any training on how to be a good speaker.

00:37 So it only takes a little bit of improvement to really stand above most other people when it comes to public speaking.

00:44 Now, if you doubt me about whether this is genetic or born versus a learned skill, just look at history.

00:51 For example, Martin Luther King Jr, Rush Limbaugh, two people polar opposites of the political spectrum.

00:59 Both rose to great prominence based on their ability to speak, to speak well, and to speak to large audiences.

01:08 Guess what they both had in common? They both, when they took a public speaking course in college, got the grade of C completely average.

01:22 I see, I mean, that's pretty lame when you think about it.

01:25 And this is not as small children, this is when they are 18, 19, 20 years old. So it is a skill that people learn, and they can actually learn at any age in life. John F Kennedy was considered a horrible public speaker when he was a member of the United States Congress back in the fifties.

01:44 He would go around, speak, head buried, reading awful, and yet he grew to be a good public speaker.

01:52 So if you think you're not born with a talent, get over it.

01:57 This is not one of these things that require certain genetic abnormalities to be great.

02:04 You know, if you want to be Michael Phelps and swim at that level, it helps to have a really set of short legs, proportionally long torso and feet that bend in really odd ways.

02:15 Now, you and I can't do that.

02:18 Michael Phelps. Yeah, he works hard.

02:20 He trains hard, but he has certain genetic advantages that make him a world class swimmer.

02:27 You don't need anything like that to be a world class public speaker.

02:31 So all you need is a desire, the willingness to practice, the willingness to practice on video and putting time into it.

02:39 And you can become a world class speaker.