George Torok interviewed on KAG Masterclass

How to deliver your intended message more effectively.

Enjoy this interview. George Torok was featured on the KAG Masterclass with host Ajay Khudania.

We discuss communication and presentation skills. Ajay is an experienced journalist based in in New Delhi, India.

You can read text excerpts of this conversation below the video.

 

Coming live from Burlington Ontario Canada is our guest this evening. Welcome to this special edition of the KAJ Masterclass that ensures that you’ll profit from your time spent here with experts either through their industry insights, information or simply learning from them.

Today we have George Torok, Global speech coach for Executives and podcast host. He is a speaker. Author and awarded radio host. Today will be talking to him on how to deliver your intended message more effectively and achieve greater success.

You tell a lot of things and nice things to everybody to present their message best. And things get lost in translation. And you say that Inferior Never Wins.

Why do you call yourself a speech coach? What does that mean?

That might confuse some people and I do help them speak more clearly and deliver their message. Initially it was with speeches where someone must deliver a speech. Whether it’s a speech or presentation I help them design it and deliver it more effectively.

George, you are a speech coach for executives and communications skills coach. These are top executives, CEOs of big companies with a lot of experience and you tell them how to deliver their message effectively. What do you think? They don’t know how to deliver their message? Where do you add your value?

Good question AJ and I’ll let you in on a secret.

Just because someone is the president of the company or the CEO of the company or a senior vice president doesn’t mean that they necessarily deliver their message well. They have their moments of anxiety. Some of them are quite concerned. They’re nervous and many of them admit to me of feeling some anxiety some of that fear of public speaking of making a mistake of coming across wrong.

What I do for them is I observe how they come across and I think about who’s their audience. What does their audience need?  What’s the mindset of their audience? And I help the executive deliver the message in a way that the audience gets it and understands it and acts on it

I saw one of your videos where you put it nicely. These senior executives are technicians. They know what they know, and they don’t know how to convey that effectively.

They’re not effective communicators.

Yeah it’s true many leaders are leaders because of their technical expertise.

They could be an accountant, an engineer or operations person and that’s how they got to lead their department and maybe eventually the company, but they are grounded in the technical part and that’s the language that they use.

When they become the leader of an organization they need to speak the language of the common person the common person in the company and the common person in their market.

 

Why do speakers fail?

Because they focus on themselves.

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How do you ask questions in a situation where your top boss or the top dog is delivering the message and your job is just to listen. How do you make yourself clear that you have not understood? How do you tell them that the message was not delivered correctly?

Very carefully.

When I coach the CEO or president, I tell them the truth. When you are an employee it’s different for you.

If you are the president of the company and I’m a new manager working for you I want to impress with how good a worker I am and how cooperative that I am. I’m a good team player and so I’m not going to question you when I don’t understand you because I’m afraid to look weak.

But, the truth is when you don’t understand you will appear strong when you ask the question.

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You were not a natural-born public speaker.  How did you learn this? Where did you learn to be such a fantastic Global trainer?

The ability to communicate and to speak and have conversation are skills and that means that skills can be learned and can be improved.

There is no perfect communication: there is no perfect presentation.

It’s always about how do I get better today than I was yesterday?

Focus on your audience. The message is for them. What do you know about them? What’s the purpose of your presentation? What do you want them to think feel or do? It’s about moving people it’s not about covering information.

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Who is George Torok?

Best selling author, awarded radio show, host executive speech coach, communication skills specialist world explorer, keynote speaker, coauthor of the bestselling book, Secrets of Power Marketing. It’s only one life. People dream of making use of that life. You have done so many things. So tell me who is George Torok? And you still going strong.

You know what. I’m just I’m just curious about life. I’m fascinated by how we communicate, how we think how we are influenced. What is it that influences how we think and act?

And sometimes I just call myself Curious George.