Interview with Jonathan Talbott: Communications Expert
By Omar El-Kurdi
8 February 2021
Jonathan Talbott is a communications expert and coach, as well as Media & Communications professor at Webster University Leiden. Professor Talbott specializes in helping people communicate, whether it be interpersonal communication, or public speaking and presenting ideas to an audience. He’s helped countless individuals improve their public speaking both in the classroom and on an individual level, working with people all the way up to the gold standard– TED talks. In this interview, Talbott offers us his experience working at Webster University Leiden, his motivations in and importance of the communications field, and gives a trick or two he uses to communicate better in online settings.
Omar: How did you get into this field?
Jonathan: I spent most of my life as a musician. I have two bachelor’s degrees in music– one from Rochester University in the United States and one from the Royal Conservatory in the Netherlands. What performance arts has taught me is that the way in which we connect and communicate with the audience plays a huge role in their ability to absorb any incoming information from the speaker (or performer).
“Music is communication in the form of art.”
I picked up a passion for verbal communication; being a witness to great ideas that people had a hard time grasping because of the way they were being presented. Overtime, I set aside my career in music and began to focus primarily on interpersonal communication, public speaking, and teaching the younger generation what they could do to develop their own personalized form of communication.
Really what we’re doing is giving people a successful experience in doing something frightening and difficult, and giving them the skills to make it better. Many people have awful experiences with public speaking and giving presentations. This might make people feel like they can’t do a good job with sharing their work and ideas, when the truth is that everyone can do this, we just need to give them some solid footing.
Omar: What is your experience like in the classroom?
Jonathan: I have students from all faculties in my courses. Also having students in all 4 years in these courses, which makes it an incredibly diverse class and a good experience. These students also have incredibly diverse backgrounds, and it seems like each one of them is on their own journey. We have some students that come from conservative backgrounds, and other students who are on the path of discovering their own identity coming out of these backgrounds. This requires me to be consciously respectful of everyone’s journey and to have perspective on what their experience might be like in these classrooms.
I am both sensitive and forthcoming in my approach with students in a classroom setting, helping them push boundaries while speaking up about certain ideas, even if it means bringing out some tension! While at the same time, I remain mindful and respectful of these students’ experiences.
Omar: How has the teaching environment changed since classes moved online?
Jonathan: A lot has changed. We have students in about 9 different time zones now in some of these classes. The good thing is that students have been able to open up more in a virtual setting– which may be due to being in the comfort of their own homes while attending these classes. I’ve seen a spike in the motivation of my students during the lockdown, partially due to luck and to the lack of distractions around the students at this moment.
The world has gotten a lot bigger, the world has also gotten a lot smaller, as small as the cameras on our laptops and our screens that we spend all our time on now. If I were to look directly at you, you wouldn’t know I was looking at you, but If I was looking at the camera, I would then be looking directly at you. The funny thing is, there is really nothing encouraging me from looking at the camera! The exercise that I try to teach other faculty members teaching at Webster is to take a sticky note, draw a happy face on it and stick it next to the camera. Train yourself to talk to the sticky note and get ultimately rewarded for it.
Omar: What keeps you motivated to teach at Webster University Leiden?
Jonathan: Definitely the students, one hundred percent. I’m passionate about helping students – not only educating them – but helping them educate themselves. I feel lucky to be teaching at a small community such as the Leiden Campus because it allows me to provide a more personalized experience for the students. Rather than teaching 5 sections of 125 students at once, I teach about 25 students every 16 weeks. At the end of each semester, the students have a chance to present their own TED talk. I give them feedback throughout the semester on how to give the best presentation they possibly can.
The curriculum at Webster allows me to teach the students in a way that they can take with them to their own personal lives. This is due to the personal freedom that Webster allows and trusts the faculty to add to the courses they teach. How we go about meeting those requirements is up to the professor, given their vast range of knowledge and experience in their respected professions.
“Absolutely everybody is in media and communications. Everyone can use it, whether it is just to feel more comfortable, or whether it is for something like career advancement.”
Professor Talbott has an interesting story which starts as a professional violinist and ends with coaching and teaching both students and professionals how to communicate better, in both their personal lives and in a public manner. He emphasizes that he is not the educator here, he is more of a guide that helps people through steps that allow them to personalize their own form of communication. Every individual’s form of communication matters, whether it be building sub-skills that work for their type of expression, or whether it is getting in touch with their emotions to learn how to express themselves in a way that they feel comfortable and natural.
To see more from Jonathan Talbott, check out the links below:
Non-Academic Website: http://www.tipresentations.nl