Avoid wasting your money until you are ready. Let me explain…
You’ve decided that you have some communication issues that you would like to improve upon and a coach is the solution to help you achieve your goals. Resolving to make change is a wonderful goal but too often, people with best intentions are unable to achieve their goals. Too often, we have unrealistic goals and don’t realize how difficult change can be.
Are you trying to persuade someone (or a group) to see your point of view but your
message seems to allude them? Working with many clients over the year, there are speaking habits that are detractors and ultimately (but unintentionally) affect the speaker’s credibility. The speaker may be totally oblivious to the distraction, too, unless they have sought out the feedback or someone has boldly spoken up. Most people don’t give their opinion though as they feel unqualified to do so or they are afraid of offending the person needing the feedback. Since a lot of distractions occur without knowledge that they exist in the first place, here’s a crash course to help you identify potential issues. This checklist of common distractions are easy to fix with self-awareness and self-monitoring. Remember that any behavior that causes your audience to think about something else (and not you, the speaker) will take away from your message. As soon as that happens, your credibility suffers.
I hear this all the time. Many professionals tell me that they hate the way that they sound when they hear themselves on a recording (video or audio). Of course, there is a good reason for that…when you speak, you are hearing yourself from within your head, with all the amplification of sound waves bouncing off the bony structures of your head. When you are listening to yourself from “outside” of your head, it sounds completely different. However, the way you sound on the recording is the true you! Yikes. Does that make you cringe, too?
Many of you know how much I love to mountain bike. I started it a few years ago and have been hooked ever since. My biking friends taught me how to navigate rough terrain, climb steep hills, jump logs, and make difficult turns on switchbacks. It is challenging and fun and of course, being outdoors is a big plus!
I received a lot of great advice when I started that applies to the way in which we communicate. Let me share that advice with you. First, the piece of advice and what it means in the mountain biking world and then, how this guideline applies to the way in which you communicate.
It only takes seconds to make an impression. It seems the research varies from 1/10th of a second to 30 seconds (with an average of 7 seconds). The fact remains, we judge quickly and others are doing the same when we first meet. The question is, what can we do about it?
A lot of people take for granted the powerful tools they have to create lasting impressions that help them every day in their communications with business customers and colleagues and help them to achieve their goals and aspirations.
When I was first starting out as a professional, there were occasions that my employer wanted me to do some public speaking. I was absolutely mortified to have to consider this daunting task! First of all, it scared me to have to create a compelling presentation to a professional audience and secondly, I was afraid to speak and be in front of people who were judging me (as least, that’s what I thought). Because of my self-degrading thoughts, my voice sounded shaky and I didn’t project very well.
If you are giving a speech in the near future, I’d like to challenge you to try something new… Your task is to pick a topic that you love to talk about and create 10 different possible openings for your presentation on that topic. Your dynamic opening is going to help your listeners decide if they want to listen to you and they will decide in 30 seconds or less. Making a strong positive and interesting opening will help you make a great first impression and help them to decide if you are credible.
Here is an example of what I’d like you to try. I frequently talk about executive speech and voice branding because I want to create an awareness about how you can control the way you sound to your desired perception. Here are 10 different ways to start my presentation using 10 different styles:
Americans use idioms in nearly every conversation without much thought. Non-native English speakers often struggle understanding idioms because they require a lot of background, contextual information.
We have entered a historic time that is changing how we interact with our clients, team members and senior leaders. The majority of meetings are now being held virtually, creating the perfect opportunity for mixed signals and miscommunication. Here are 5 etiquette tips to help your virtual meetings and conversations remain positive and productive.
It’s not all that difficult to get caught up in our own little world and forget that differences exist between us and our foreign colleagues with whom we interact and/or do business. I’ve been guilty of it and was it ever an awkward and embarrassing moment when I found out I committed an egregious faux pas. (I wanted to hide when I was calmly and tactfully corrected. Luckily, I had a forgiving friend.) Here are some terrific tips to help you understand cultural differences. They come from Rhonda Coast, who is an expert on cross-cultural training in the workplace. It’s a must read to help you to avoid making a mistake that leaves you embarrassed.
