Do people hang on to your every word? Are they sitting at the edge of their seats when you speak?
Do you know people who can mesmerize their audience when they tell a story? Do you know people who exude executive presence just sitting in a room with you? People enjoy being with them and they are influential.
These excellent communicators are out there and they’ve trained for it. It’s not magic and they weren’t born with it as they’d like you to believe.
Magnificent communicators have charisma.
Communication skills are the number 1 requirement in nearly every job description. Your communication skills become more & more critical as you climb the ladder of your career. You need them to network, ask for a raise, deal with negative feedback, the list goes on.
Most people aren’t superstars at communicating. Especially those who haven’t put much effort into learning how.
How are your communication skills? Be honest with yourself. Are you concise & convincing, or do you ramble on? Do people love your ideas & act on them immediately, or are you misunderstood or (God-forbid!) interrupted? If you want to learn how to communicate better, read on!
No One Was Born a Perfect Communicator
How Do Those Magnificent Communicators Do It?
Oh, they’ve got it down pat alright. They can magnetically communicate to their boss, in front of an audience, in any stressful situation without even much preparation. That’s because of all the practice they put in for a few short weeks or months of their lives.
They learned the techniques to be crystal clear speakers, turn their thoughts into words and persuade others.
Let me share with you what you need to do to become an incredible communicator.
- Relax. I can’t emphasize enough just how relaxed you need to be before & during every communicative situation. Not just giving presentations but communicating with colleagues & clients when dating, making small talk, etc. Feel all of your muscles from the inside & make sure they’re just hanging down. No joke, kids. You’ll find that the more relaxed you are, the better your communication skills.
It comes as no surprise that when you’re sitting with friends, you can describe your project so beautifully your friends think you’re the most intelligent person they know. Then your boss pokes his/her head in and asks how the project’s going & someone might describe you as a stutterer. Who’s nervous. Not confident. When you come across that way, your chances of getting ahead slow down a bit.
- Articulation is Not the Answer. My clients are primarily C-level folks who put themselves into more & more challenging speaking situations as they continue to succeed in their lives. I’m fortunate enough to have the pleasure of working with really smart people who know that self-improvement is necessary to achieve great success.
I hear many people say, “I’d like to improve my articulation.” Being articulate means speaking fluently & coherently. It doesn’t mean that you pop each letter very distinctly. In other words, articulating each letter doesn’t make you articulate. Here’s one reason why it doesn’t work: Because in Standard American English, 1 letter does not represent only 1 sound (among other reasons). For example, we have 5 vowel letters, but those 5 letters represent 16 sounds. Instead of over-articulating your sounds, link them together.
Don’t work on popping each word’s final sound. Allow the sound to blend in with the first sound of the next word. It’s called co-articulation. That’s what makes your speech fluent & fluid—resulting in incredible, authoritative & persuasive speech.
Record your side of a conversation and listen for over-articulation. (I challenge you! Don’t be afraid!) Then work to make sure you’re not stopping between words & that you’re linking the words together within phrases & clauses. Let me know how you do!
- Don’t Slow Down — Speak with Pauses. There’s a lot of advice out there that you need to slow down to speak better. Slowing down is incorrect advice. Don’t speak in slow motion.
Instead, use pauses. Practice by making them uncomfortably long. You may think that people are impatiently waiting for what’s next, but in reality, they’re merely processing the information that came prior. You’re in the future thinking about what you’re going to say next; your listeners are in the past processing what you’ve already put out there. With pauses, you’re all in the present! That’s how to speak better!
How to Be InfluentialHow many times have you been intently attempting to listen to someone & your mind wanders? Like, a lot, right? It’s the speaker’s fault! They are probably over-articulating — making them sound staccato; they’re not using pauses — It’s all bad.
Processing speech is a very big part of communicating. It’s our responsibility to make it easier for our listeners to process our message. That is if we want them to follow our important call-to-action.
9 Secret Steps to Influencing Others
Want to be more influential? We all want to communicate our most important messages in a way that encourages others to take action. Whether that action is voting for our candidate or picking up milk from the store, the words we use and how we speak play a huge role in getting the job done.
How to Make Your Speaking Voice Sound Better
How do I make these skills a habit in my life?
I’m so glad you asked. The easiest way is to hire me and I will guide you. Or you can take The Voice Spa online course. Or a hybrid of the two.
What you’ll need to do is apply each skill hierarchically throughout your life. So start with the easy speaking situations you find yourself in. Like ordering food or chatting with your cat/kids/dog/randomstranger.
Or reading to your kids. Don’t be dissuaded when your child asks you why you’re speaking differently. That’s a good sign! It means you’re making changes.
Build your hierarchy.
Then build your hierarchy. Determine which communicative situations are hardest for you and which are easiest and stack them from easiest to hardest. And work in that direction.
Do only 1 level at a time. Don’t just try to apply these skills to your off-the-cuff speaking situations and think it’s going to work. You may see diffuse improvement but we need it to be specific.
And just practice for 15 minutes twice a day. Soon you’ll be charming the pants off everyone you meet. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)
Persuasive Speaking: How To Nail It When You Need It Most
You don’t have to go it alone.
My clients don’t want you to know they’ve taken my training. They want to keep it a secret. If you envy anyone at your office for being charismatic, engaging, and persuasive, just know that you can get there too.
It’ll take between 30-90 days depending on your goals and your openness to change. Get in touch with us and we will guide you.
Whether you work with us or go it alone remember to…
Consider the stakes.
First, take into consideration whether a situation is high-stake or low-stake. You’ll notice a difference in the way you run a team meeting and how you speak to your boss.
Did you ever notice you perform better in low-stakes scenarios? If you’re ordering coffee or chatting with the doorman on our way into the building, there are no or low stakes. So there’s no stammering or garbling up your words. You’re as smooth as silk!
But when you report to the CEO, that’s an entirely different story. The stakes can be pretty high, and now you’re as smooth as burlap! No one wants that!
I recommend you work your way from low-stake scenarios up to high-stakes ones.
Free eBooks on Accent Reduction & Closing Deals
An Introduction to Accent Reduction
This brief introduction will get you started on the road to speaking Standard American English.
The Top 5 Reasons Why Your Employees are NOT Closing Deals
If your team isn’t getting it done, the reasons may not be what you think they are. Download this e-book for the hidden problems holding business people back.
But how do you relax? For some reason I can’t seem to relax whenever I need too (especially during presentations). I can’t get my heartbeat under control, it goes crazy fast when I need to present. Deffo need your help with that
Take this class: The Voice Spa
This is amazing, thank you! I think I’ll need a bit if extra help from you, though. 😂
The article gathers all the important areas to tackle when communicating. Lots of tips, and interesting suggestions. For such a short article, it’s perfect to put you on track! Really glad with your work.
The article gathers all the important areas to tackle when communicating. Before reading this topic I always thought slowing down was the key of great communication, but you shed those false perceptions, as pausing is more important than outright slowing down. Your emphasis on being relax has also solidified its importance. The secret has been revealed. Really glad with your work.
Communication – the human connection – is the key to personal and career success.
The above quote is so true. Well! This article is very much helpful in building good communication skills. I am going use this tips for better communication especially the tip which says don’t speak in slow motion instead use pauses. I speak ,read very fast, so I get suggestions of speak slowly but now I know what to do, I m gonna take pauses while speaking up 👍.thank you for this great article.
Here we go again ‘Relax’ tell that to my heart . Funny thing is I tend to great with my presenations if I block out all the ‘noise ‘ my brain is making but training myself to relax , wow what a task . Another thing that stood out for me is the not slowing down , but using pauses, I strongly agree. Whenever a speaker speaks in slow mo I get offended.