The right advice from the right people

A conversation took place between a professional speaker and an elderly woman aboard a plane. The professional said, “I was preparing my notes for one of the parent education seminars I conduct as an educa-tional psychologist.” The elderly woman sitting next to me explained that she was returning to Miami after having spent two weeks visiting her six children, 18 grandchildren, and 10 great grandchildren in Boston. Then, she inquired about what he did for a living. He told her, fully expecting her to question him for free professional advice.  Instead, she sat back and said, “If there’s anything you want to know, just ask me.”  

I may be in the speaking and business consultancy profession, but I am very careful to remind myself that I may be good in certain aspects of the businesses—areas where I have had experiences in or areas where I currently operate in. In all other areas, I would not touch it due to the fear that I might short-change my clients and waste their investments because I am not competent enough to speak of it.

Whenever I come across business people who have started and ran businesses, I do not give advice—I ask them for it. It is not an embarrassment to ask questions. What is embarrassing and downright humiliating is pretending to know something and faking it.

I remember mentoring a young man in the area of public speaking many years ago, but I noticed something odd with him. He had the habit of initiating conversations just so he could offer tons of information and advice (mostly theoretical) on how business owners could do their business better. Talk about giving unsolicited information! I winced and pulled this person aside and said, “Do not offer information when you are not asked. Sometimes the businessman already knows the answer, but he or she merely wants to check if you know your stuff. And frankly, what you just shared confirmed the fact that you do not.”
I think it was Mark Twain who said: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” In other words, It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubts. Despite persistent reminders, he just would not listen. So, I dropped him for I could not develop him as a speaker because after all, the character part will always be more important than the competence part.

In making decisions, the source you use to get your advice from makes all the difference. If you had car trouble, you wouldn’t call a mechanic who is lucky at making repairs. For a toothache, you wouldn’t consult a dentist who loves reading dental books. You want to choose someone with knowledge, insights, and experiences in that particular field. You want someone who will give you a correct evaluation of the problem; one who is honest and can offer a solution. This is the same principle with getting the services of speakers and trainers, thought leaders and influencers. Just because someone can communicate does not make the person an expert in his or her chosen field. Just because someone knows how to hold his or her smart phones and do endless selfies and videos may not guarantee that the person is an expert apart from marketing the self and creating a “Personal Brand” hoping that this would make the person a “YouTube” star, be an expert and earn millions.

Companies should do due diligence. A thorough checking of the resource person’s track records should be initiated. Would you like to invite a professional speaker to speak on growing your business or devel-oping your leaders when the speaker has never ran a successful business and has never led anyone for that matter? I guess you would not.

You need practitioners and not just theorists to help you achieve things. This is why the proof of the pudding is always the question-and-answer portion of the public speech, and I kid you not when I tell you that I have seen how certain speakers have been battered and ridiculed right in from of the public audience, simply because he or she could not answer the question in a competent manner, for the topic is not within the competence of the speaker and the lack of experience and insights reveal the shallowness of the presentation.

It is not good for speakers and resource persons to want to grab every invitation that comes. When they want to be everything to everyone, what would be apparent is that there is no clearly defined specializa-tion, and the speaker/trainer gets stuck in the middle. It is better to get some actual work or business experience, build competence, and be an expert in something. Being good enough to deliver a speech, crack a few jokes, do antics may be tools and diversions, but they are not what makes the resource speaker a real authentic subject matter expert. Being stuck in the middle is not a good place to be. And for those who are thinking of building a career out of doing endless social media “branding” so that he or she may be the next star and make a fortune out from it...here is my advice. Don’t quit your day job. Go back and do some meaningful work.

(Experience two inspiring days of leadership training with Francis Kong in his highly-acclaimed Level Up Leadership seminar-workshop on September 18-19 at Makati Diamond Residences near Greenbelt 1. For registration or inquiries contact April at +63928-559-1798 or register online at www.levelupleadership.ph)