Ep. 047 — Why Character Matters in Public Speaking & How to Grow It

Release date: 19 January , 2026

Hosted by Roddy Galbraith

A Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge — a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

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This Week’s Big Idea

Great speaking isn’t just about technique — it’s shaped by character. Courage, ethical influence, and the ability to play (rather than punish yourself) determine how your message lands. Who you are behind the words matters as much as the words themselves.

Key Takeaways

• Courage shows up in failure, not winning. (Nick Vujicic) Growth lives on the other side of mistakes — if you keep going.
• You don’t have to pay for every lesson yourself. Ask for help and learn from others who’ve already failed forward.
• Ethical influence = fully informed choice. (Robert Cialdini) If a principle of influence is genuinely present, you have a duty to name it.
• Manufactured urgency = manipulation. Real scarcity is ethical; fake scarcity is not.
• Play is growth. (Michael Beckwith) Learning works better when you treat speaking as a game, not a trial.
• Your character speaks before your content. Your relationship with success, failure, and yourself is always audible to the audience.

Quote of the Week

“You don’t need courage to win — you need courage to fail.” — Nick Vujicic

Resources & Practice

• Read: Robert Cialdini, Influence

• Watch: Evan Almighty (the “opportunities, not outcomes” scene)

• Practice this week:

  • After any talk, write down one failure you learned from (not fixed).

  • Name one real principle of influence you used (reciprocity, authority, scarcity, etc.).

  • Give yourself permission to play in your next rehearsal.

Get the companion guide here > MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge

Learn about the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team: maxwellleadership.com/speak

Full Transcript (Ep. 047 — Why Character Matters in Public Speaking & How to Grow It)

Released: January 19, 2026

This transcript was auto-generated. It may contain minor errors. *Copy text adds attribution automatically

Hey guys, welcome back to the Speakers Edge podcast. The podcast
dedicated to helping you to learn from some of the world’s very best
speakers and communicators so that you can learn to master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak. I’m your host for this podcast, Roddy Galbraith, and I’m thrilled you’ve chosen to join us today. If you want to be a better communicator, you are in the right place because on every episode of the show, we build on a very simple but very true idea that communication is a learnable skill. And it’s worth learning because it will do more for you than any other skill you can develop. It will do more for your business. It will do more for your
career. It will do more for your self-confidence, everything. So, it’s
definitely worth working on because if you think about it, we’re social
beings, aren’t we? We interact with other human beings, with other
people all day, every day. And John Maxwell says that anything of
significance that we’re going to achieve is going to be achieved with
and through other people. Why? Because one is too small a number to
achieve anything of significance. We can’t do it on our own. We need
other people. And even more than this, actually, even more than needing
other people to achieve significance. Well, I think we’re here to
actually get better at helping other people. That’s our goal. That’s our
object. That’s our mission. Why we’re here. We’re here to get better at
helping one another. And we can do that better if we get better at
communicating because that’s how we interact with other people. It makes
sense, doesn’t it, when you think about it. So, this is something that
you absolutely can do. And I really believe it’s something that you
should do because getting better at communicating is quite literally
getting better at life. Now, before we dive into today’s lesson, if you
haven’t downloaded the companion guide, go to
maxwellleadership.com/thespeaker’s edge, download the companion guide, and
if you like the show, if you enjoy the show, we would love it if you
rate and review the show as well. Thank you. Now, over the last 20
years, I’ve been very blessed and had the opportunity to work with some
of the world’s very best speakers and communicators, and many of them
have been on the show over the last 12 months. And so, we decided to put
together like a four-part miniseries. And this is actually we’re in week
four now. If you didn’t catch the previous episodes, it’s some of the
best advice I’ve ever gotten from some of the world’s best speakers
distilled down into this kind of four-part miniseries. And it’s a great
series. You should go back and listen to the previous episodes if you
haven’t caught them. In episode 44, which was episode one of the
miniseries, John Maxwell, Bonnie St. John, Les Brown, and Seth Godin all
talking about the importance of connecting. Then in episode two, episode
45 of the show, Teresa Scanlan and Simon Sinek were talking about the importance of repetition and the reps that no one sees. And then last
week we talked about the physiology of fear with Dr. Bruce Lipton in
episode 46. And in today’s episode, we’re going to be learning from Nick
Vujicic, Dr. Robert Cialdini, and Michael Beckwith. Three more
wonderful, wonderful speakers. So, we’ve talked about connecting. We
talked about preparation. We talked about confidence. We talked about
getting to know yourself better, self-awareness. We talked about getting
to know others better through that process. We talked about getting
better at communication generally and getting better at influence. All
of which helps us get better at helping other people. But there’s
another layer to great speaking and great communication that doesn’t get
talked about anywhere near enough, I don’t think. And that is that who
you are as a person shows up when you speak. So the woman behind the
words, the man behind the words, the person behind the words that you
say has a big influence on the people that you’re speaking to. Your
courage, your integrity, your relationship with success, your
relationship with failure. All of these are part of your character, your
attitude to life. This is huge, isn’t it? Your attitude to life. Whether
you allow yourself to enjoy the process of life or you’re terrified of
it, all of that is important. So, in this final episode of the four-part
miniseries, we’re going to be learning three more lessons from three
more world-class speakers. As I said, Nick Vujicic, Dr. Robert Cialdini,
and Michael Beckwith. All right, let’s start with Nick Vujicic then. I
first met him back in 2014. And if you don’t know who Nick is, I’m sure
you do, but if you don’t know who Nick is, he’s got no arms and no legs.
He’s an incredible speaker and he’s one of the most inspirational people
you’ll ever meet and a wonderful, wonderful person. So, we’ve done a
number of events together over the years and at the pre-me before one of
these events, we’re in his suite and we’re talking about what we’re
going to cover and he’s in his chair that’s kind of motorized that he
moves around with and he says, “Rody, can you just move me a little bit
closer to uh the sofa?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.” Like this. And then he
goes, “That’s it. Great.” And then he leaps out of his chair towards the
sofa, turns around, and then he’s like, “Oh, that’s better. That’s more
comfortable.” and he’s sitting on the sofa like an incredible leap of
faith if you think and it really made me think about how much courage it
takes for Nick to live really every single day and if you listen to his
kind of signature story about his journey to becoming a speaker it took
enormous courage for him to become a speaker and he’s very intentionally
not allowed anything to hold him back now we did a one-day speaker
training event about 10 years ago and Nick was opening up the day he’s
standing on a table on stage at the front and there’s a couple hundred
people in the audience and he’s asking them at the beginning what type
of things do you need help with and as people are giving him questions
that they would like answered he’s taking notes on his mobile phone now
he’s got no arms or legs but he’s got like a big toe his phone is on the
table and he’s typing in with his toe into his mobile phone as people
are asking the questions and he must have made a list of like 15 20
seconds very quickly quicker than you could type and then over the next
couple of hours he went through and answered every single question. It
was amazing. It really was. Just think about the courage that he’s
needed to face every single day of his life, let alone just to get that
good as a speaker and a communicator. And he is really, really good. At
the end of the day, just as we’re finishing up, he says, “I just want to
quickly share one more lesson with you.” He said, “If I can learn to
master my hand gestures, anyone can.” And then everyone laughed. And
then he says, “No, I’m serious.” And then he gave us like a three-minute
compressed body language master class where he was telling us about how
he’d lean forward and how he uses his shoulders and his face and his
eyebrows. And he uses the body that he has to be very, very expressive.
And as he went through all of these different things that he was doing,
which was part of the magnificent experience he’d created, we could
recognize them and it was amazing. And so that big lesson of don’t worry
about what you don’t have, just concentrate on what you do have and make
the best of it. very very powerful. And then he shared something that
I’ll never forget. He said, “You don’t need courage to win. Winning is
easy. You don’t need courage for that. You need courage to fail.” That’s
good, isn’t it? You need courage to fail. We learn more from failure.
George McDonald said, “Pros introduce a person to themselves.” Oh,
that’s so good, isn’t it? Problems introduce a person to themselves. Not
so much the wins, but the problems, the struggles. It’s the problems
that enable us to really dig deep into who we are. It reveals ourself to
ourselves, doesn’t it? So that we can become more self-aware and then we
can grow. We can get better. So failure isn’t the opposite of growth. It
is growth. Failure is growth. But only if you keep going. If you allow
failure to be final, then that’s the end of the road. That’s no good.
But if you keep going, then you keep growing. You keep growing. And Nick
also said something else that I think is very important. So he said
failure is growth and you learn important lessons from failure but you
don’t have to pay for every lesson yourself. You don’t have to pay for
all of them yourself. You can learn from other people who’ve already
paid the price and you can learn from them if you’re willing to ask for
help. If you’re willing to accept help from other people. So courage
isn’t bravado really. It’s humility in action. If courage isn’t
something you have the good news is it’s something you can develop. We
can practice being courageous and you’ll get better and better at being
courageous if that’s what you set out to do. So, we need the
opportunities to do that, don’t we? Now, if you’ve seen the film Evan
Almighty, Morgan Freeman is playing God and Evan’s wife is left him and
she’s in a diner and she’s kind of sat there, the kids are in the car
and she’s looking really stressed and uh Morgan Freeman says to her,
“Are you okay?” She’s like, “Oh, it’s a long story.” He says, “Oh, I’m a
bit of a storyteller myself. Why don’t you tell me the story?” And so
she tells him about heaven and the ark and everything. And he’s like,
“Okay, sounds like a little bit of an opportunity.” And she’s like,
“What do you mean?” He says, “Well, let me put it this way. If someone
prays for patience, do you think God just sends them patience or an
opportunity to be patient?” If someone prays for courage, do you think
God just sends them courage or an opportunity to be courageous? And then
he says, ‘If someone prays for a family to be brought closer together,
which had been her prayer the night before, if someone prays for a
family to be brought closer together, do you think God just waves his
magic wands and zaps them with fuzzy feelings? Or does he give them an
opportunity to come together and love each other and face the challenge
together?’ So powerful. We need the opportunities to develop and grow,
don’t we? So we can practice being courageous. We can look for the
opportunities in order to do that. All right. Now then, let’s go to
Dr. Robert Cialdini. He has this great book, Influence, that’s been out
for a number of years now, and it’s so powerful. It really is. I highly
recommend that you check it out if you haven’t seen it. Anyway, I was
interviewing Dr. Cialdini back in 2019, and what an honor that was to
get to talk to him about this great body of work, and it’s made an
enormous difference on my life, but not just my life. It’s influenced so
many people. And when you understand those six key principles of
influence that he talks about, you’ll see them everywhere. everyone uses
them and talks about them. Now, I asked him in the interview about the
difference between ethical influence and manipulation. How do we know
the difference? And he said, well, if a principle of influence, one of
those six kind of key principles of influence, if one of those
principles is genuinely present in a situation, then you’re entitled to
fully inform your audience about that principle, to tell them about that
principle. And actually, if you were to withhold that because you don’t
want to be pushy or you don’t want to feel like you’re being salesy, if
you withhold important information, then it can actually be misleading
and very unhelpful actually. But if you pretend one of the principles is
present when it’s not, if you manufacture, let’s say, urgency or
scarcity when they don’t genuinely exist in the situation and you’re
doing it purely for your own advantage, not to help them, then that’s
manipulation. That’s manipulation. So influence isn’t about getting what
you want. It’s about helping people make informed decisions. Giving them
all the information they need so they can genuinely make the right
decision for them, whether that’s to buy your program or not based on
all the information that you’ve shared with them. It’s so good, isn’t
it? It’s like a different take on influence, but it makes great sense.
Now, he shared a real simple example that really brings this to life. He
said, “I was waiting for my wife who was doing some shopping, and I was
walking around the shops, just killing time while I was waiting, and I
walked past this electronic shop,” he said, “and in the window was this
big uh widescreen TV.” And I thought, “This is this is nice.” And it was
for sale at a good price. So, I went in and started looking at it. And
while I was looking in the shop, the sales guy came up to me and said,
“Oh, I see you looking at this TV.” And he says, “Yeah.” uh, he said,
“Are you thinking of buying?” And he said, “No, not really.” He said,
“Well, this is a great model. this is a great price and we only have one
of these left actually. And then he said,”And just so you know, a lady
called me this morning. She’s very interested in this particular TV and
she’s going to come over this afternoon and uh take a look and I expect
she’s probably going to buy it.” And then he said, “5 minutes later, I’m
walking out of the shop with this TV, a trolley. I’m supposed to be the
master of influence and here I am walking out the shop with a trolley
with a TV in it that I never even wanted.” Now, when I got back, I
thought about that and I thought, I wonder if he was telling me the
truth. Was it the last one that he had? So I said, “Well, what did you
do?” And he said, “Well, I went back the next day and I thought, if I
see a space in the window where that TV was, I’ll know that he was
telling the truth and it was ethical. But if I go back and there’s
another one of the same TVs there, then I’ll know that he was lying to
me and that’s manipulation.” So I went back and sure enough, there was a
space there. So he had been giving me the information. Now you consider
the situation he said where if I went back to buy the TV cuz I wanted to
wait and see and the TV had been sold and it was the last one and I’m
like what happened to the TV? He said oh well there was somebody else
coming over to look at it. I would have been annoyed because had he told
me that before I could have made the decision then knowing that if I
don’t buy it now it’s probably going to be gone. That would have been
very useful information. So I would have felt like he’d let me down. But
because he shared that information with me, I was able to make a fully
informed decision. So good, isn’t it? So if any of the six principles
exist, it’s not only are you entitled to share that information, it’s
your duty to share that information so that you’re doing your job to
fully inform them so they can decide whether they want to take action or
not. You’re giving them all the information for them to do that. All
right. Lastly, then let’s look at Michael Beckwith. Michael Beckwith, if
you don’t know, is the minister of Agape Church in Los Angeles. I had
the opportunity to sit next to him at a VIP dinner in 2007. And we
talked for about 90 minutes. It was fascinating. He’s a really, really
lovely man. Shared so much great information, but he said something that
he said many things that really impacted me, but one that I really clung
on to because it’s particularly relevant for speaking. He said,
“Whatever you’re trying to do, try and have fun with it. when you’re
trying to learn something new, when you’re trying to grow in some
particular area, he said, ‘Try and have fun with it.’ Because play is
the same vibration as prayer.” That’s good, isn’t it? Play is the same
vibration as prayer. Because very often as human beings, I think this is
important because often we’re not kind to ourselves, are we? We tend to
punish ourselves while we’re learning if we can’t do it perfectly first
time. We berate ourselves and beat ourselves up. Now, we’d never speak
to anyone else like that, but we feel comfortable doing it to ourselves.
We’re not our biggest cheerleaders and encouragers. We don’t love
ourselves in that way. We’re our harshest critic. And when it comes to
speaking, which is one of the the fears that most people have,
apparently, one of the biggest fears most people have, then this is
especially true. But what if speaking wasn’t something that we had to
like try and survive? We had to try and get through. What if it was
something that we could actually enjoy? Wouldn’t that be better? What if
it didn’t have to be a grind? It could be a game like Michael Beck had
said. What if we could actually have fun? Well, the truth is we can
because the pressure that we feel, no one else is putting that on us. We
are putting it on ourselves by insisting on being able to do it
perfectly first time, which is just not realistic. So, we don’t have to
put that pressure on ourselves. We can try and have fun with it. All
right then. So in this episode we’ve looked at the the wisdom from Nick
Vujicic how you don’t need courage to win that’s easy you need courage
to fail to learn from it and keep going. Then we learned from Robert
Cialdini it’s your duty to fully explain the situation and if any of
those six principles of influence exist in the situation it’s your duty
to explain that and to help people understand that so that they can make
a fully informed decision as to whether or not they want to buy.
Anything less than that is a disservice to them, even if it makes you
feel uncomfortable. And then we learned from Michael Beckwith right at
the end that it’s okay to have fun while we’re learning because play is
the same vibration as prayer. Love it. Three more great world-class
speakers. All right, before we wrap up real quick, you’ve heard me talk
about the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team before. If you want to be a
speaker, a trainer, or a coach, particularly if you want to develop your
speaking, then it really is a no-brainer. I’ve been working with John
Maxwell on the Maxwell method of speaking since about 2010. There’s
around 60,000 coaches worldwide in 168 countries around the world. So,
you’re not going to be the first people into this new program. It’s a
huge program, a huge program, and it’s the program is vast. It’s far
more than just speaking, but I’m just talking to you about speaking
because that’s uh my area. If you want to find out more, simply go to
maxwellleadership.com/speak. Jump on a call with a program advisor and
find out about the program. Ask them a few questions. They’ll ask you a few questions. If it’s not a fit, it’s no problem. It’s just cost you a
few moments of your time. All right, that’s it for this week. Then we’re
going to have to wrap up there. Don’t forget to download our companion guide. Go to maxwellleadership.com/thespeaker’s edge. Remember, communication is one of the most important skills you can develop. It is 100% a learnable skill. If you keep learning, you’re going to be able to master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak. Thanks for listening today. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Lots of love. Take care. Bye-bye. God bless.