Coping with nerves: the credibility problem

Nervousness is probably the biggest problem to be surmounted for most inexperienced speakers. Were it not for nervousness, common sense, and normal intelligence, would ensure that most talks were interesting and well planned. But nervousness seems to disable common sense, and normal intelligence gets swamped by anxiety. A blog like this is needed just because speakers get nervous. Like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights, they don’t know which way to run. All sorts of bizarre behavior results, unless there are firm guide lines. Like clinging to the wreckage in a storm, any fragment of advice gives security. Even if the speaker doesn’t feel at all like smiling, for example, the knowledge that he or she ought to smile is enough to make them feel that they are doing the right thing.

Nervousness is a very real problem, and is the root of most of the other problems with speaking. We all talk competently in a group of friends, but as soon as the group of friends becomes a wall of strangers, nervousness usurps our every-day competence, and we need the prop of advice.

Unfortunately, many experts on speaking dismiss nervousness as not worth discussing. Like laziness, or cowardice, these blog seem to imply that it is something to be ashamed of, and certainly not something to be discussed. The speaker may be jollied along with advice like ‘Don’t worry’, or ‘It’ll be all right’. He or she is given the impression that nervousness, like incontinence, is something which is better not thought about. It will go away if you ignore it, and if not, there’s nothing to be done about it. Nervousness is beyond help, these books seem to imply, and only courage will overcome it. Good chaps put a brave face on it, and never mention it to other chaps.

Sadly, all this hearty pretense is no help; it merely increases the sufferer’s sense of his or her own inadequacy. It is also cruel: extreme nervousness is one of the most unpleasant experiences most civilized people go through. It is a form of physical and mental suffering which is unparalleled. Extreme misery, anguished anxiety, and even physical nausea are added to shame and a sense of inadequacy. Embarrassment is the least of the suffering. It may take weeks, months even to get over the misery caused by a catastrophic failure to cope with nervousness. The speaker may go through savage reassessments of his or her abilities as a result of ruining a presentation through nerves. Undoubtedly, nervousness is a serious problem; it needs careful and considered help.

Nervousness can be helped, and eventually reduced to manageable proportions. It is, after all, a purely mental phenomenon. Attitudes, and knowledge about the cause and function of the anxiety, advice about how to reduce it, and experience which renders the terrifying familiar, are the clues. Much of the work on nervousness has been done by musicians: talented young musicians find the intricate dexterity required to play their instruments turned into clumsiness in front of judges and audiences. Since it is clearly a waste, musicians have studied the problems of tension in performance. Speakers, who have similar problems, can benefit from the knowledge and techniques gained from these studies.

The first thing to learn about nervousness is that it is universal. Every nervous speaker thinks that he or she is the only one in the world to suffer. Compared with the calm competence of every one else, he or she feels their own shameful failure as a personal inadequacy. The truth is that nervousness when facing an audience is very common. Almost everyone suffers from nerves, even experienced professionals, and the reason why we are not aware of this is simply that the basic effect of nerves doesn’t show. Providing the gestures are controlled, butterflies in the stomach are invisible to the audience. So the calm and confident speaker you watched with envy, was almost certainly trembling like a leaf inside: you just couldn’t see it.

It is a good thing that speakers are nervous. Contrary to popular belief, the calm and controlled speaker is acting, he or she is disguising nervousness in a practised simulation of indifference. If he or she were really not nervous, there would be no energy to give the talk: nerves are useful to the speaker, without them he would go to sleep. Even people who make their living from appearing in front of audiences—actors, comedians, performers—are nervous just before going on stage. They rely on these nerves to give them the boost of energy which makes them sparkle. And the shot of adrenalin they get becomes a fix. It is something they can’t do without, and is probably why these people love the stage experience so much. Nervousness is a useful, and essential part of performance, not something to worry about or be ashamed of. The art of effective speaking is not ceasing to be nervous; it is using the nervous energy to improve the talk. Standing up and speaking requires a great deal of effort: the slight lift given by nervousness arouses our energies.

If you feel you have an unusually nervous disposition, you may be surprised to know that you are not alone. Such sensitivity is common; psychologists calculate that: ‘Between five and eight per cent of the population are unduly anxious.’ Knowing that you are not alone doesn’t change the fact that you are nervous, but it should give you hope that your nervousness can be conquered. One of the more unpleasant features of being very nervous is a sense of isolation, and
the fear of shame if others see that you are nervous. Take heart, there is nothing especially unusual in being highly sensitive, and you are far from alone. Almost certainly, there are compensating advantages in your higher than average levels of arousal, and sensitive response to anxiety. Highly nervous people, for instance, are often of above average intelligence. It is possible to apply this intelligence to solving the problem of nervousness by learning about it, and applying the results of research. The higher sensitivity is also compensated by greater alertness, and awareness of audience reactions. It sounds paradoxical, but is none the less true. Nervous people usually make good speakers, once they have tamed and applied their nervousness.

Spoken Language is Not Written Language.

Spoken language has two other important differences from written language. Firstly, speaking uses much repetition. The typical way of explaining, amplifying, and exploring a point is to add an extra phrase in a sort of phonological bracket. By dropping or raising the voice, it is made clear to the listener that the information is a sort of sideline, or footnote, which is meant to clarify what is being said, rather than introduce a new point. Speakers also tend to restart sentences in different ways, trying to get across what they mean by different routes, and when they feel the point is clear, not bothering to complete or tidy up what they have started to say. There is also much trying out of different words, and rhetorical repetition for emphasis. All these features contribute to the muscular, flexible, and alert feeling of spoken language. It is like a living contact with the mind of the speaker, whereas written language is a fossil record of his or her thoughts.

The second way in which spoken language differs from written language is that the choice of vocabulary is very different. Written vocabulary is formal, and explicit. Spoken vocabulary tends to be familiar, and everyday. Indeed, it is usually possible to get someone to simplify and clarify a tortuous written sentence by asking him to look away from the page, and say what he means. A writer who has solemnly written: ‘Tests were conducted on the loader to ascertain the maximum failure capacity’, when asked what he meant, would say something like: ‘We loaded it up until the cable broke’; a simpler, and clearer, way of explaining a technical point.

Writers, then, use formal grammar, single expressions, and elaborate, abstract vocabulary: speakers use intonation, repeat things until they are clear, and use everyday words. There are great differences between spoken and written language, and when written language is read out, it is less effective. I am not suggesting that there is a difference of worth, between written and spoken language. They are simply used for different purposes; one is to communicate face to face, the other communicates remotely. Misusing the difference is one cause of boring presentations. It you read out written language, your voice will naturally lack intonation. The structure of what you say will be over formal, and the vocabulary will be too abstract. This is why listening to written papers being read out is so difficult. The listener gets no sense of contact with the speaker’s mind—there seems to be a wall of fog between the living mind of the speaker, and the listener.

Written language often sounds false and clumsy when it is read out, and what I have said in the last few paragraphs should explain why. The added problem is that many people are poor readers; their reading voices are stumbling and monotonous. It is possible to read written text in an interesting way—actors do it constantly—but it requires great skill. It is certainly not to be recommended as a way of giving a technical or informative presentation.

Another disadvantage of reading is that the presenter loses eye contact with the audience. Because he or she has to follow the text, it is impossible to do more than glance up at his listeners from time to time, whereas someone speaking spontaneously will naturally be looking round at the listeners. When reading, a presenter also loses the chance to make gestures and arm movements, which are naturally suppressed when reading from a script because they seem artificial. None-the-less reading a written text is a method often used. It is one I don’t recommend. In all but exceptional circumstances, it is a sure way of losing the attention and interest of the audience. It is an expensive way of buying the confidence that you won’t forget what you are going to say. You may not forget, but the audience almost certainly will.

If you are terrified of forgetting what to say, there is a compromise which helps boost confidence, by providing safety points to return to if the impromptu flow of words breaks down. The technique is to write down the opening and closing sentences, as well as sections within the speech, for use in the case of emergencies. By providing islands of security, you will increase your self-confidence. It also provides natural resting places, and if the worst happens, and you dry up, there is something to say while you are finding your feet again. But don’t write down more than a few sentences, otherwise the whole talk will acquire the monotonous flavour of the written script. The first sentence of each new topic, and the conclusion of each section, is as far as you should go. In between, use ordinary notes.

The Closing Stages- The Time To Get Remembered

When a speaker conduct his speaking infront of a group of audience, he/she need to communicate the message that he/she likes to do. And for this communication of message, speaker need to generate audience attention into the speech and more over he/she need to sustain that attention throughout the speech. At the same time, when speaker ends or close his speech he need to ensure a good closing. Because, closing is the thing which people remember for longer and the total speech's success ultimately depends on the closing. A good closing make the speech a successful one, make the speaker an effective speaker with good speaking skill.

Having started successfully, and carried the talk on effectively without losing the audience’s attention, time is up and you now have to finish. How do you do this successfully? There are tactics for finishing, just as there are tactics for opening, and thought about what you are trying to achieve will, as always, improve the performance. Many people feel that the ending is more than half the battle. Certainly, the impression which the audience will carry away with them will be strongly influenced by what happens in the last few minutes of the talk.

The essential aim is to round off the presentation on an up beat. You can, for instance, get attention again by a vital, arresting and memorable fact or idea. Another way of finishing is to tie up all the loose ends by restating the sub-headings you used, restating the main heading or title of the talk, and restating the conclusion you came to. But whichever tactic you choose, it is important to remember that the last sentences must be telling. So the encoding you chose for your closing remarks should be memorable. Try to find a good phrase, a witty or stylish way of putting the point, or some clear statement of the main aim of the talk, for the last thing you say. It can help to have the last sentence or two written down in your notes. If you are nervous about forgetting it, or getting confused, it may even be worth trying to learn it off by heart.

The virtue of all these tactics is that they will save you spoiling the effect of the presentation by falling into a weak or confused ending, which trails off in embarrassment. A surprising number of speakers seem unable to end firmly, but mumble on with increasing indecision at the end of their talk. Never end weakly with: ‘Shall I go on? …’; or ‘What I should have said if I’d had time was…’; or ‘What I intended to say was…’; or ‘I think that’s all I have to say’. The audience will remember the last point, or sentence, clearly. If that last sentence is a shambolic confusion of indecision, with the texture of a rice pudding, then the whole talk will be remembered as weak. End boldly, with a final statement of your main point which you fly like a banner, before sitting down.

The aim of the concluding sentences is to make sure that your talk goes somewhere. It should not just peter out in confusion. Karl Lashley told a nice anecdote:

I attended the dedication, three weeks ago, of a bridge at Dyea, Alaska. The road to the bridge for nine miles was blasted along a series of cliffs. It led to a magnificent steel bridge, permanent and apparently indestructable. After the dedication ceremonies I walked across the bridge and was confronted with an impenetrable forest of shrubs and underbush, through which only a couple of trails of bears led to indeterminate places.

Make sure that your proudly constructed talk does not lead to a wilderness of bear-tracks! It is also a courtesy, if you are speaking as part of a longer seminar, conference, or presentation, to prepare the ground for the next topic and speaker. Something simple like: “It’s now coffee time. After a ten minute break, Alan will tell you about the stress calculations used in the project,” will form a neat conclusion. This tactic helps to give the audience a sense of continuity.

If you are not followed by someone else, make sure that you end as strongly as possible. ‘So we see that nutrition is a vital element in the health of the community’, or ‘Voice-recognition is developing rapidly, and within ten years will be commonplace’, or ‘the familiar chlorate process, which is the mainstay of our company profits, is much more complex than most of us realize’, is the sort of clear statement that is needed. If you start clearly, keep people aware of where you are going throughout the talk, whether it is short or long, and end firmly and impressively, your talk is going to be remembered as an effective presentation. Judging by the average standards of presentation one hears, it may well be the best of the day.

Signposting All The Way- Important For A Good Speech

When a speaker conduct his speaking infront of a group of audience, he/she need to communicate the message that he/she likes to do. And for this communication of message, speaker need to generate audience attention into the speech and more over he/she need to sustain that attention throughout the speech. Without audience's attention, it is very difficult for the speaker to communicate their ideas with their audience. And in absence of audience's attention, speaker become failure to have an effective communication. Now, to sustain the attention of audience into the speech, speaker can do something which is much familiar as Signposting.

The idea of ‘signposting’ originated with Tolman in 1951. The idea was that people become mentally disorientated by new information, and need to find their bearings. On an intellectual journey, signposts which point the way, and help to locate ideas, help people to understand. Tolman also speaks of a ‘placing-need’ which makes people want to have a map in their minds into which they can place the new information. Within that perceptual field clear orientating references and signposts are needed if the listener is to absorb information comfortably.

Once the opening stages of the talk are over, and the audience have been told where they are going, it is important to continue to signpost throughout the talk. This is done by announcing the topic, giving a heading, or listing keywords every time you start a new section of the talk. These can be written up on a board, flip chart or overhead projector. You should also give one or two sentences at the beginning of each section which act as an overview of the section. After developing the section, explaining and clarifying the point, giving examples, and discussing them, you should then come back to a sentence or two of summary and conclusion. Some signal is then needed to alert the audience to the fact that a new topic is about to start. Writing the new heading up, which requires you to change position, and pause while writing, is undoubtedly the best technique. But shifting position, allowing a significant pause, or even a change in the tone of voice is better than nothing.

The next section of the talk should start in the same way, with a sentence or two of definition, followed by explanation, examples, and clarification. As the talk progresses, you should also stop and take stock frequently, collecting together what has been said so far, summarizing the overall plan of the talk, and showing how what has been said so far leads on to the next point. Make cumulative summaries as you go through the talk. Each time you change topic and move onto a new subject, summarize in a sentence or two what you have said so far, refer to the map of the structure of the talk, and then announce the new heading. It seems easy and obvious, but many speakers do these things so quietly that no-one notices. The audience wake up from a day-dream to discover that the topic has changed while they were away.

So clear and repeated signposting is needed, if the talk is to be effective. Within each section, you should give the general picture at the beginning, and not launch into the body of the topic until you have given them an overview both of the topic itself, and of the way you are going to treat it. The effect of this is that within the overall structure each sub-element should have its own structure. Donald Bligh suggests that each point should be a version of the ‘general form’ of ‘making a point’ He lists these moves as follows:

1. Concise statement
2. Use the Board
3. Re-expression
4. Feedback
5. Recapitulation and restatement
6. Elaboration
   

• More detail
• Illustration
• Explanations
• Relate to other points
• Examples
  

A structure of this kind within each section will help to make the progress of the talk easier to understand and clearer. One of the difficulties that a speaker faces is that there is no lay out code in speech, such as the indentations and blank spaces which are used in written material to make the structure clear. The speaker must supply all these props to understanding with his voice. This is why it is especially important to emphasize the change of topic using as many different techniques as possible. Imagine a book in which the chapter headings were all set in the same size type as the rest of the page, and had no white space around them. If there were no paragraph breaks either, the text would be impossibly difficult to read. There would be a dense blur of information, with no visible shape or structure. Yet this is what happens in most talks. The paragraph breaks, and the white space round the headings must be provided by the speaker’s tone of voice. Even if he emphasizes the change of topic, some of the audience may be day-dreaming at that moment, and miss the change. But if you write the new topic on the board, or flip chart, then when listeners return from their intermittent day-dreams they can see that a new topic has started. It is like leaving a message for an absent person to collect when he returns.

The absence of a layout code also means that listeners can’t scan the page to see the shape of the information, or to look up a point which has gone by. Listening, unlike reading, gives the audience no opportunity to pause, rest and go back over material, at will. Once spoken, the information has gone. So the speaker has a much greater need for clear and simple structure in his information than the writer. The speaker must also be careful not to make mistakes; they can never be unsaid. And the listener must recognize that information lost is never recovered.

There are two more rules which must be added to the overall advice on how to glue together your points to make them clear, structuring a presentation. Firstly, there should be clear explaining links to connect point to point. Secondly, each individual point should follow the ‘rule-example-rule’ principle, where a brief statement of the fact, idea, or point, is followed by an example or illustration, and then that fact, idea or point is repeated. A simple phrase, at most a sentence, will do for the first statement. Any amount of illustration can reinforce this, depending on the importance and complexity of the point, and a summary restatement should follow.

One final piece of advice; it is often very helpful to be quite open and honest about things you find difficult to explain. By taking your listeners into your confidence, you will enlist their interest in the solution to the problem of how to explain the point. You will also make them feel that their difficulty in understanding is not because you are a bad explainer, but because the point itself is complicated. You align yourself with them, and make the point itself the enemy. They are then more sympathetic, more aware, and in trying to help you, will accelerate their own understanding.

Signposting For Longer Speech

A longer presentation (one which lasts more than ten minutes) demands a long span of uninterrupted attention from the audience, and therefore needs more skill in the structuring of the talk. Ten minutes may seem a short period, but as I have said earlier, audiences find it difficult to listen for long without taking little breaks for daydreams. So longer talks need more organizing, more linking, and more reminders. They have a greater overhead of time which must be devoted to housekeeping activities, like keeping tabs on where the talk has got to, and keeping the structure fresh in the audience’s mind.

Signposting in a longer talk becomes more important. The speaker must provide a thread to help the audience to find their way through the maze. He or she must remember how limited any listener’s span of attention is, and offer regular directions for the lost travellers. The basic rule is that the receiver of the message always needs more explanation than the speaker thinks he does, because he is not as familiar with the material.

In a longer talk some technique must be found to interrupt the monologue with a different activity every five or ten minutes. Break up long stretches of time by strategically timed visual aids. An alternative is to schedule occasional brief periods of discussion to provide relief. The audience are stretching their legs mentally, if they are given a chance to talk themselves. The discussion period doesn’t need to be long; a few minutes relaxed talking as a group will help the listeners approach the next section of the talk feeling refreshed. If the speaker breaks up a long talk, and provides variety in this way, the audience will experience it as several short talks rather than one long one.

All this advice on how to reduce the burden of listening by breaking up a long period into shorter ones is not based on laziness. Psychological research gives clear evidence that shorter sessions improve learning. The early work on memory showed the importance of rest periods. Hermann Ebbinghaus, for example showed that the efficiency of learning improved when he included short periods of rest between learning sessions. At first he was surprised by this, since he expected periods of rest to cause people to forget some of what they had just learned, and so reduce the overall amount of learning. But he realized that the reminiscence effect was causing learning to improve. The conclusion from the experiments was that both primacy and recency increase the efficiency of a learning session which is punctuated by breaks. A single session benefits from primacy and recency only at the beginning and the end. But if the learning task is broken into several shorter sessions, with breaks in between, there are more occasions when the primacy and recency effects can assist learning.

It seems that the memory, like some muscles, tires easily, but recovers quickly. Ebbinghaus’s results showed quite clearly that the benefit of a break increased as the length of the break increased up to a maximum of ten minutes. After that, lengthening the break to a quarter or half an hour made no difference. The result has been confirmed by many subsequent researchers. This is why most effective courses and conferences schedule ten minute breaks every hour or so. It is also why a presentation which lasts more than ten minutes needs to have built in variety, and breaks of various kinds, so that the listeners can recover their mental energy. The key to an effective talk is variety, whether the talk is long or short. And the key to an effective longer talk is to break it down by whatever means available into a sequence of shorter sessions. If you spend time devising ways of breaking up the long session, you will be rewarded by an alert and attentive audience.

Generating Audience Attention To The Speech- Important Aspect For The Speaker

Communication is a great skill to possess. And speaking skill is an important corner stone of overall communication. During speaking, speaker need to generate audience's attention to the speech. Without attention, it is very difficult for the speaker to share their ideas with their audience successfully. And in that case, total communication failed. So to have an effective communication, speaker need to generate enough attention in to the speech so that he can gain success in his speaking skill as well as in the total communication.

After making clear who and what you are, you must launch into your subject without delay. Don’t beat about the bush for several minutes, get into the meat of the subject straight away. One way of starting the talk is to put a question in the audiences’ minds. Do they know how the raw material for the process is prepared? Have they thought about whether the I/O routines can be speeded up? Do they realize the financial drain on profitability which spoilage causes? Such a tactic focuses their attention on the issue, and helps them to listen positively to the information which follows it.

Another way of directing attention to a problem is an arresting quotation from a dissatisfied customer. Another way might be a photograph of a structure which has collapsed. It is also useful to point out how the present talk fits into previous talks, and a question related to the last presentation will help to remind the audience of what they already know, and how this new presentation will fit in. All these tactics have one central aim—to make sure the listeners realize what the purpose of the talk is, so they can fit the new information they are being given during the talk into a familiar conceptual pattern. Often speakers ignore this need to bring the subject into sharp focus at the beginning of the talk. In many presentations the consequences of neglect of the ideas and information are described at the end, rather than the beginning. In one lecture on dietary control, for instance, slides of the deformities which resulted from malnutrition were shown at the end; they would have been better shown at the beginning, so the audience could visualize the problems to be solved. ‘These show what can happen; what can we do to prevent it?’ would have made an excellent opening to the talk.

Asking questions is the best way to promote thought. Such questions may be only rhetorical, and not expect an answer from the audience, but Sime and Boyce showed that rhetorical questions raised the level of attention, and improved the amount of learning.1 We are so conditioned to provide answers to sentences in question form, that our minds are subconsciously aroused towards an answer, even if we remain silent. Asking questions is an effective way of introducing a topic.

Other methods may also be used to increase interest and arousal. Advertisers typically use irrelevant messages about sex, status and emotions before selling their product. In the same way a stimulating fact or picture will arouse the audience and improve their reception of a quite different message which may follow. Remember Hillaire Belloc’s aphorism: ‘Tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them that you’ve told them.’ The job of the introductory sentences is to arouse interest in what you are going to tell them, by telling them. Then the talk can go on to expand the subject, assured of attention from the listeners.

The need to arouse and prepare the audience is confirmed by psychological research. Many experiments show that unless the receiver is guided in how to decode the message, he may perceive something different. Psychologists have shown that knowledge about what a person is going to hear can change what he thinks he does hear:

The English psychologist David Bruce recorded a set of ordinary sentences and played them in the presence of noise so intense that the voice was just audible, but not intelligible. He told his listeners that these were sentences on some general topic—sports, say—and asked them to repeat what they heard. He then told them that they would hear more sentences on a different topic, which they were also to repeat. This was done several times. Each time the listeners repeated sentences appropriate to the topic announced in advance. When at the end of the experiment Bruce told them that they had heard the same recording every time—all he had changed was the topic they were given—most listeners were unable to believe it. With an advance hypothesis about what the message will be we can tune our perceptual system to favour certain impressions and reject others.

We may think that the experiment was unfair on the listeners; perhaps they were only trying to please when they invented sentences! But the central fact remains; we hear what we expect to hear. Therefore, if what is going to be said in a talk is announced at the beginning, the listeners more easily receive the message. Another experiment supports the same conclusion. Psychologists measured the effect of mental ‘set’ in perception by asking their subjects to repeat words which were flashed quickly in front of them, but after they were given different expectations about what they were going to see. In a typical experiment people were briefly shown the name of an animal, such as ‘horse’. One group were told they would see the name of an animal, another that they would see the name of a flower, and the third only that they would see a word. People who were expecting to see the name of an animal recognized the word most quickly and made fewest mistakes. People who were not expecting to see any particular word did second best. And those who were expecting to see the name of a flower made most mistakes when shown the name of an animal. They also reacted more slowly.

Listening to a complicated explanation, or a mass of unfamiliar facts, is similar to seeing words flashed too briefly in front of your eyes, or listening to a voice over a harsh mash of noise. They are all situations where the message must be disentangled from distractions. What the audience is told about the subject of the talk will condition what they understand the talk to be about. This is why it is so important to arouse interest in the subject, and be clear about what the purpose and content of the talk is going to be, in the first few minutes of the talk.

It is surprising how easily people are misled by what they expect to see, rather than what they actually do see. Abercrombie uses the following example. Read these labels quickly:

• PARIS

IN THE
THE SPRING

• ONCE
  

IN A
A LIFETIME

• BIRD

IN THE
THE HAND

Only when asked to look more carefully do most people notice that the ‘a’ and ‘the’ are repeated in the middle of the phrase. We don’t expect to see it, and therefore we don’t see it. But if we are told, we see it easily. Telling people what they are about to perceive will radically affect what they do perceive. The conclusion for the speaker is clear. Telling your audience in advance what to expect is an essential part of presenting information to them. In the face of such clear evidence, it is inexcusable to omit the preparation and warning phase of the talk. The subject must be made clear in the opening moments of the presentation.

The Opening Of The Speech: Very Critical For Success

Speaking is a great skill. Through speaking you are sharing your ideas with your audience. If you can successfully communicate then they will influenced by your ideas and their leel of influence is the parameter to measure your success as a speaker. And to have success in speaking, we need to have a good Opening.

You have now reached that long dreaded moment—you have to stand up and start speaking. What do you say? How do you get started? Remember that the primacy effect will ensure that what you say in the first few sentences will be among the best remembered parts of the talk, remember that first impressions are lasting impressions: so how are you going to get started effectively? As with everything in speaking, thought makes the problem easier. There are a variety of starting tactics, and you can select between them on the basis of your own experience, as well as the type of audience. The opening which every speaker wants to make, but few succeed in pulling off, is the dramatic start with an arresting fact, quotation, or remark. Something surprising, exciting, disturbing, or plain unusual; something which will make the audience gasp with admiration, and sit up to take notice for the rest of the talk.

Not many speakers manage this effect, though everyone seems to dream of it. If you have such a fact or idea, it is certainly worth trying, for it does have the effect of alerting the listeners, and focusing their minds on the subject of the presentation. But it is difficult to achieve just the right tone of confidence, and drama, in the first sentences. One problem is that it is often difficult to get the first few words in the right tone, volume, and steadiness. Only when the voice has warmed up, can it be relied upon to produce the right effect. It is often more sensible, particularly if you are inexperienced as a speaker, to start with the simple matters of fact that the audience need to know.

What questions will be in the audience’s minds at the beginning of the talk? To being with, simple practical matters like what is the talk about? Who are you? What are your qualifications, experience, and interests? How will it help them? Why should it interest them? What right have you to be speaking to them on this topic? These are the questions likely to be occupying the audience’s minds, and they will need an answer before they will open their minds to the information you have to give. They will not make their memories available to you until they are sure the effort will not be wasted. If you do not satisfy some of these points, the lingering doubt will corrupt the input of information, and continue to interfere with their perception of your message.

Satisfying these questions is so important that even if you do start with a successful attention jerker, you will need to indicate answers to most of these questions within the first few minutes. You may have been introduced by a chairperson, who should have covered these points. But if he or she hasn’t, try to fill in the missing details. It is undoubtedly much easier to listen to someone if you know exactly who and what they are, and what they are talking about. The easiest opening tactic is to reinforce what the chairperson said in introducing you. Extend it, fill in the gaps, but do not just repeat it. It gets you off the ground with the talk, and once you have started, it is easier to carry on talking.

The first task, then, is to establish rapport with the audience, gaining its confidence, and thereby making it prepared to give attention. To do this, explain how and why you are there, and what previous contacts you have had with this and similar organizations. It is also wise to check that you can be heard. These preparatory stages should not be allowed to take a lot of time; but briefly and clearly stated they are useful opening tactics. Thus, for example, a speaker’s first sentences might be:

I’ve been invited by Dr. XXXXXX to talk to you about the software of voice-recognition programs. I worked on this problem for nearly ten years with JCN, a company very similar to yours. I now run my own software house, and have talked to many groups like yours. Incidentally, can you hear me all right at the back? I’m going to talk for about 30 minutes on three main topics…
To ensure that these important points are not missed, construct your opening sentences from a check list, such as this. Don’t launch into an autobiography, each point needs only a single phrase, but it is useful for the audience to know these things:

1. Who invited me here, or arranged the talk?
2. What is the title of the talk?
3. Have I given a presentation to this, or any similar organization before?
4. What is my present job, or status, in which organization?
5. Can they hear me at the back?
6. How long am I going to talk for?
7. What are the main sections in my talk?
   

If you draft simple answers to these questions, and mention them in the first minute of your talk, you will help to ensure that the audience is content to listen to you.

Keep Breathing space for memory During Speech

During the body of the talk, it is too easy for ideas to become jumbled together in the listeners’ minds. Unless the speaker is careful to mark the sections with clear signposts, the landscape of the talk will merge into a blur, and few details of the mental journey will be remembered. Where new ideas interfere with ones previously presented there exists what psychologists call ‘retroactive’ interference. Where old ideas interfere with those following (perhaps because they are so arresting that the listener’s mind is still partly dwelling on them) psychologists call it ‘proactive’ interference. The technical terms are not important, but the principle is. Memory depends on clear space around important ideas and facts, and rest or silence is the best form of clear space.

Despite every care, it is still not possible for a speaker to ensure that everything he says is remembered. Partly this is just an inescapable fact of mental life. People forget. Forgetting itself is an interesting subject and psychologists have suggested a number of reasons for forgetting. They include repression, a word coined by Freud to describe the way people force out of consciousness events and ideas which for some reason they do not want to remember. Motivation is as important in forgetting as it is in remembering. Quite slight motives can lead to forgetting, such as an embarrassing professional lapse, which may lead to all information surrounding the situation being repressed.

Other causes of forgetting are the decay of the memory traces for physical reasons, interference from other similar memories, and loss of the ability to locate the memory. According to this last hypothesis, all memories are retained in the brain, but retrieving them is too difficult. Recalling other features of the experience, or working gradually back into our memories, will often enable us to discover memories we had thought lost. Thus my father, writing his autobiography for his grand children in his seventy-second year, started re-telling an incident in which a school-fellow had died of meningitis. To his surprise he found he could remember the boy’s name, and even his address. He had not remembered those facts for sixty years, and certainly could not have recalled them had he been asked. The ‘search’ theory of memory claims that forgetting happens when more and more memories are built up without enough features to differentiate between them. Unless simple clues are given to act as handles, it becomes harder and harder to find any particular fact, from the mass of detail in the memory.

Let me make three final points about memory before concluding this section. The first point is that it is useful to distinguish between active and passive memories. Faces seen at a meeting, for example, remain familiar if we meet them again, even though we may not be able to place a name on them. The image of almost every face we see is retained in the memory; but voluntary access to the information has been lost. Recognition is passive; active recall requires a pathway into the memory. Effective memory relies on clear structures being developed to retain access, and not just on the vividness of the memory itself. The speaker’s task, therefore, is to provide this unforgetable structure, without which the detail amassed in the talk will be lost, like water poured onto sand.

The need for organization to help active memory leads me to the second point. Unless we can see a structure in the details, they are less meaningful, and therefore much more difficult to retain in memory.

It is immediately obvious that learning the first list would be a major task, whereas the middle list is only moderately hard, and the last list is perfectly easy to remember. The conclusion for the speaker is obvious; break up similar facts into patterns. Remember that you must link new ideas into existing ones, using a clear structure, if you want your audience to remember them

The third and final point about memory is a more hopeful one. It is a strange fact that we are usually modest about our memories. Hans Eysenck comments that:

"when you ask most people about their memory, the first thing they usually say is that they have the bad luck to have a very poor memory. There is an interesting contrast here with what happens when you ask people about their intelligence or sense of humour: only a very small percentage of people will admit to below-average intelligence or a poor sense of humour!"

The memory is extraordinarily powerful, much better than we think. When tested on their memory of ten thousand pictures, people recognized 99.6% of them correctly. As the researcher commented: “the recognition of pictures is essentially perfect”. The brain is highly sophisticated and memory itself has no visible limits. The audience could remember much more than they often do; the amount is not limited by any natural maximum capacity. If the speaker prepares his talk in a way which provides the opportunities for memory, and offers a clear scaffolding of organization on which the memories can be hung, there is no limit to what the audience can be
helped to remember.

Thoughtful Selection: The First Thing Speaker Should Do During Preparation

Speaking is always very much critical point to have effective communication. An expert who have effective communication skill always need to have good command over speaking skill. Effective speaking skill will always help people to build an effective communication etween people through building rapport and exchanging feedbacks. You have to work hard to improve your speaking skill as to improve your effective communication skill. In this regard, i am here discussing the phase where you need to select what you are going to deliver through your speech.

The first important decision in making a selection of material is what you are going to leave out, not what you are going to put in. Talks are not for the transfer of a mass of information from one mind to others. That job is better done by paper. They are best used to give an overview of the subject, to create interest and enthusiasm. If you are already expert in a subject, you must now decide what the audience don’t need to know; if you have to work on a new subject, as soon as you have understood it, you will have to make decisions about what is not needed in the talk.

It is a mistake to try to pad the talk out with masses of information and detail, in the belief that the audience will be impressed by your knowledge. They won’t be—they will simply go to sleep. The amount of information which can be absorbed in one session when listening is strictly limited. The listening situation is quite different from sitting down with a book at a desk, and making notes. When listening, it is not possible to do more than gain an overall impression, and perhaps a handful of facts. Hard, dense packed information, cannot be communicated in talks; it is a mistake to try.

This fact is common experience—think how many actual details you remember from the last technical talk you heard—but it is encouraging to find it supported by research. Erskine and O’Morchoe did an experiment, in which they taught one class only essential principles with little detail, and then compared their knowledge with another class which had been given a lot of details. The first class did better. Their conclusion was that too much material causes interference, and the audience remember less, not more.

Too much detail, then, is counter-productive in a talk (to use one of the familiar buzz-words of the 1970s). Factual information can only be used as illustration, or example, never as the substance of the talk. A verbal presentation communicates attitudes, enthusiasms, impressions, not facts. To try to battle against this natural situation will only alienate the audience, and reduce, not increase, the amount of information that is remembered. If you use cleverly designed visual aids, you may be able to incorporate a few figures and hard facts. But you certainly cannot expect the talk to be the source of reference for this information.

If you need to transfer a mass of solid figures, it is best to give a handout, with the figures tabulated for reference. You can then refer to a sample selection of the figures during the presentation, to illustrate the general point. But the aim of the talk should not be to learn detail. If you are talking on a technical subject, the audience should leave the talk with a desire to go further into the subject, or an impression of the range of complexity the subject embraces. They should not, and cannot, expect to walk out of the room with a mass of figures, facts, and details securely pinned inside their heads. Talks don’t do this. Detailed learning has to be done with paper at a desk; talks are for interest and general information, not the transfer of a dense mass of information.

The first task, then, is to select the material, and reduce the bulk of detail to manageable proportions. Selection, however, requires an aim, and this aim must be specific, not vague. It is impossible to make decisions about whether to reject, or leave in, a particular fact unless there is a very definite image of the audience and its aims in mind. So you must always select your material not for a general talk on the subject, but for a specific speaking task: for this audience, this task, and this amount of time. One consequence of this rule is that each talk you give must be considered separately. A general purpose talk will probably result in a vague presentation which will satisfy none of its audiences.

Another factor which must be considered when selecting information is the unloading rate, and the digestibility of what you are saying. People who are experts in a subject often fail to remember that it has taken them many years to get their minds around it all, and that what seems second nature to them now, may be confusing and alarming to a newcomer. The rate at which new information is offered is an important factor in the ability of the mind to absorb it. This factor, often not even considered, is so important that it is worth spending a little time on it.

Typically, experts assume the audience can absorb information faster than they actually can. I have rarely seen an expert making his subject too simple. So it is fairly safe to assume that you must introduce new ideas more slowly than you think necessary, and never more quickly. There are many techniques available to modify the rate at which new information is provided. You can, for example, modify the rate by repetition, example and anecdote. Simply repeating the same information in different words effectively halves the unloading rate. You can also open up more breathing space between ideas by adding new examples, which illustrate the same point, and you can provide a rest, while focusing on the same point, by including some amusing anecdote which relates to it.

One technique to ease the shock of new information is like getting into cold water by taking a wild plunge. It works by giving the audience a full list of the topics and key words at the beginning of the talk. This is the sudden plunge, and they will then need reassuring that it is not as frightening as it sounds. You can then go back to the beginning, and start again with the first point, slowly making it clear. It is worth spending rather longer on the first point, giving lots of examples and supporting information, because if the audience can be made to understand the first point, they will approach the rest with more confidence. By shocking the audience with their inability to comprehend the whole subject, and then proving to them that they can, after all, be brought to understand the first point they come to, you will boost their confidence in their ability to learn.

Mix old and new Material in Your Speech

Another way of reducing the unloading rate is to ensure that there is a mixture of old and new information. Some speakers seem to think that they must retail only new facts, and can ignore the old facts. This is not so. The old facts are the foundations on which the new facts must be built. These foundations will be buried under all the other daily information the audience must cope with. You must uncover, bring to light, or remind the audience of what they already know before adding new information. It also controls the overall unloading rate. A mixture of familiar facts amongst the new reduces the total strain on memory and comprehension. It gives the audience a satisfying feeling of competence. The feeling of smugness, in the unspoken reaction ‘we know that’, will transfer to a feeling of interest and respect if it is followed by the reaction, ‘but we didn’t know that’. If, just when the feeling is becoming, ‘we can’t cope with all this’, you introduce more familiar material, the audience will feel themselves on firm ground again. By alternating familiar and strange, new and old, the audience’s comprehension is kept flexible and alert.

The technique of mixing familiar and new is supported by theorists of communication. Umberto Eco makes a technical point about the communication of information, which confirms this important principle in selecting information. The content of a presentation cannot be all new; some of it must be familiar, even repetitious, in order to orientate, and rest, the listener’s mind. Eco insists that there must be:

communication dialectic between probability and improbability (that is between the obvious and the new—and ultimately, in a more technical phraseology, between meaning and information). A high rate of improbability runs the risk of not being received, and therefore the message must be tempered in small degree with conventionalities, commonplaces, and must be reiterated…One of the problems in message-coding is the balance between the obvious and the new. How few conventionalities are necessary to communicate a piece of information (as a new thing?).

To achieve this controlled unloading rate, with a mixture of familiar and new information, you must carefully select the examples and analogies. Of course, it is not possible to give a formula for the exact unloading rate appropriate for a particular audience, or to provide an infallible rule so your presentation will be just right. But this doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have thought about the problem, and are aware that you must watch the rate at which you put out new ideas.

Judging the selection of material is more a matter of conscious awareness, than of perfect correctness. Thinking is what matters; don’t blunder on oblivious. Audiences are flexible, subjects have many different ways in which they can be presented, there is usually a willingness to learn in the audience, and an ability to figure it out for themselves. The only rules are to remain aware of audience reaction as you talk, and be prepared to modify what you are saying if blank incomprehension, or glazed stares of boredom, meet what you have said so far.

Vivid and entertaining examples are often the best way to engage an audience’s attention, and to ease the passage of new information. But this does not mean that you should load example after example onto an already satiated audience. Avoid indiscriminate use of all the examples you can think of; choose only the best ones. The examples and analogies you do use must be brief, familiar and concrete. It is often difficult to think of good examples, and one writer on the subject, Donald Bligh, admits that, ‘Personally I find that I can never think of good examples at the time of lecturing. They therefore have to be prepared in advance. In fact it is quite a good idea to collect examples at all times.’ Following the second principle of this chapter, it is a good plan to have more examples than you need, and to make a selection as you talk, depending on which type of examples seems to strike a sympathetic chord, and how much relaxation, or increase, of the unloading rate the situation requires.

There is no doubt that the best way to make the talk memorable is to use materials which are specially relevant to the audience, dramatic, or simply funny. But this can go too far. One speaker, a most distinguished man in his own field, tried to make his lectures memorable in an unusual way. Gray Walter, the famous neurologist, ‘asserted that essential ingredients of a successful lecture were humour, horror and sex. To provide for this alleged desire for sensation, in an erudite lecture on ‘Brain mechanisms and learning’ he used coloured backgrounds for tabulated data in which such outlines as bathing beauties were engraved in white.’ The problem with such tactics is that the audience can sense when they are being pandered to, and soon resent it.

To set out to entertain before anything else will not only fail to communicate the necessary information, it will probably lose the respect of the audience as well. The ideal, as in everything to do with speaking, is to provide as much change and variety as possible. So mix theory with anecdotes; and mix humour with serious points. If you have just given a dry, detailed and strenuous exposition, lighten the atmosphere with an amusing story. And if you have just told a long anecdote, take the opportunity to emphasize a complex theoretical point immediately afterwards. In this way the audience is kept alert by the ever changing demands being made on their attention.

Preparation Is Very Important for Any Speaker

Communication effectively is an art. Effective communication required a people to share his/her thoughts with audience. Speaking is the way of sharing their thoughts. So effective speaking skill is very important to achieve success in communication. And to have such success in communication, it is required that people need to develop their communication skill. Here, i will discuss about the preparation part of speaking which is very important to have success in communication.

If I were asked to give a one word explanation of the sort of confident, organized presentation we all envy, it would be preparation. The confidence comes from the speaker’s knowledge that he or she has everything ready, has thought through the whole subject, and has enough of the right material to support the presentation. The sense of organization comes from the careful arrangements and selection of what is said, so that all the points are part of a logical order. Neither of these virtues are available to the speaker who bets on his luck (or cheek) and just talks off the cuff. Good speakers are prepared.

How do you achieve this? It is as much to do with the audience’s abilities as the speaker’s, and it is about the logic of organization, as much as the psychology of presentation. But the aim of all the advice is the same—that secure and admirable sense of being well prepared. There are two simple pieces of advice which start this process of preparation in the right way. Firstly, ask yourself what the aim of the talk is, rather than what the subject of the talk is. The first is much more specific than the second. If you plan to talk about a particular subject, you may feel the need to mention everything there is to know about that subject. But if the aim of the talk is to arouse the audience’s enthusiasm for a research project on that topic, a brief sketch of the more exciting possibilities would be more relevant. A complete catalogue of every aspect will merely bore them, and will achieve exactly the opposite result.

There are many cases where the aim may be rather different from the subject. The advantage of thinking about the aim is also that thenthe decisions include the audience, and the audience’s perceptions and needs, not just the speaker’s ideas and knowledge. In practice, a very common mistake is to prepare a presentation as a speech on, for example, ‘Heavy water reactors’, without thinking whether the audience is interested in technical details or scare stories. If the aim is to reassure a local population that the heavy water reactor being built next to them is perfectly safe, then a lot of technical details about the design will probably scare them witless! Think of all your decisions when preparing the talk in terms of what you want the talk to achieve, and not in terms of what the bare topic of the talk is.

The second piece of simple advice is to prepare more material than you need. The idea of preparing ‘just the right amount’ is foolish. Until you start talking, you won’t really know how much material you are going to get through, And if you insist on battling on to the bitter end of what you have prepared, you will almost certainly get the timing wrong, as well as turning the talk into a marathon. Talking should never be a dutiful forced march, it should always be an exploration, a discussion, a fascinating glimpse of the subject. It is an opportunity to learn about something new, which has to stop when the allotted time runs out. The best talks all end too soon, and the sense of having more to say, but having no more time, is the most satisfactory impression to leave.

The talk is also more interesting if the audience feel you are stepping smartly through the topic, summarizing far deeper knowledge and just mentioning the more interesting aspects. This impression is created if the speaker has more material than he needs at his finger tips; the need to summarize and curtail while he or she talks keeps up the level of tension, interest, and expectation. An audience should never come out of a talk feeling that the subject, like them, is exhausted. They should always be fired, rather than quenched. This happens best, if you prepare more material than you need. The habit of having extra material also allows you flexibility in timing when giving the talk, and helps you to answer questions at the end.

7 Step Approach to Communicate with Angry People

The key then to defusing these types of situations and handling them more confidently is as follows:

• get the right inner voice
• use the right body language
• apply critical listening
• summarize what the other person has said to check that you have properly understood the situation. (This also reassures them that you have actually listened to them)
• apologize if necessary and empathize
• ask open questions
• tell them what you are going to do to resolve the problem
  

And finally do it!

Compliant- The Last Personality Trait Group

The Type D (compliant) likes to comply with the rules and regulations. This means that they are usually very systematic, precise, hyperefficient and bureaucratic. These people love facts and detail, the more the better.

They can often be shy and self-effacing unless they have a high degree of B in their personality. Equally they could need a great deal of assurance depending on their level of intellect. Their compliant nature means they can often be easily agreeing which makes it difficult for you to know exactly what they are really feeling and thinking. They need to feel completely sure of their position and of others’ expectations.

They can give the impression of coldness and disinterest and will use rules, authority and logical argument to influence the actions of others. They have a tendency to correct errors and inaccuracies that others might consider insignificant.

Managing a Compliant People

If you are managing a Type D then they like long-term goals fully negotiated. They like harmony and tend to avoid direct confrontation. They need a detailed brief and explanation of reasons before doing anything. They can often prevaricate and do not like taking risks. They are concerned with quality, and do not want to accept inferior work regardless of timescales so you will need to allow plenty of time for them to do things. You will also need to delegate very specifically. They can be surprisingly ambitious with lofty goals but an innate lack of assertiveness and unwillingness to become involved in confrontational situations can make it difficult for them to achieve their goals.

They are punctual and like punctuality in others. Coupled with a high intellect, these people are attracted to jobs like systems analysts, researchers, medical consultants, scientists.

Their influencing style is based on logic and facts often quoting authorities and rules and regulations. Their weakness can be rigidity and nitpicking.

Relating to a Compliant People

You will need to give them plenty of time to make up their mind but gently direct them. Be straightforward in your approach, stick to the business in hand and build credibility by listing the pros and cons to any suggestions you make. Reassure them that there won’t be any surprises. Be realistic and accurate and provide solid, tangible, practical evidence. They need time to make any decisions.

Recognising a Compliant People

With this personality type you may get lowered eye contact and fidgeting mannerisms. There will be no dominant body language, in fact the body language is much more likely to be submissive. The handshake can be perfunctory and not terribly firm. Compliant individuals can often speak quietly and can be vague. Again, as with our Type C personality the Type D will enjoy complex hobbies requiring patience and detail. There are, of course, many more complexities of personalities than I have given you here but I hope the above goes some way in helping you to understand that we are all different and because we are we need to accept that different approaches work with different people. Being aware of the different personalities, reading the body language and keeping an open mind so that you try and understand where the other person is coming from can all combine to help you relate to other people more effectively, and, hopefully, give you the ability to communicate with them more confidently.

Measured- Third Group of Personality Traits

The Type C is measured and far more logical and analytical than either our A or our B personality. They are steady, often security minded and don’t like a lot of change. They can be suspicious and sceptical of new ideas and it will take some time to persuade them.

They are consistent, caring and patient. They often make good nurses particularly if their C personality is combined with the people skills of a B Personality. They don’t like taking risks and will only do so if they have weighed up all the pro’s and con’s. They are great listmakers!

Many engineers fall into this category, as they are attracted to the occupation by its analytical, methodical approach. Lawyers, accountants and professional buyers may also fall into this personality type.

Because of their cautious nature Type C’s can have a tendency to procrastinate and over-plan. They are generally warm hearted but when aggressive can be very stubborn and intransient.

Their influencing style is based on logic and facts. Fairness is paramount to a Type C personality.

Managing a Measured Personality People

If you are managing a Type C personality then it is best to set long-term goals with careful and periodic reviews. The Type C needs to be told what you want; they prefer to rely on more assertive people to take the lead.

When introducing change it is best to do it in stages, introducing an element of trial and give them time to adapt. Explain and delegate with detail. Once embarked on a task the C will want to concentrate on it, and doesn’t like interruptions and distractions, or changing the goalposts half way along. They work slowly and thoroughly. For this person to communicate more confidently they need to feel they have your support and encouragement. In informal or antagonistic situations they could clam up.

Relating to a Measured People

In order to communicate more effectively with a Type C personality you should try winning them over with a logical reasoned approach rather than appealing to ideals which would succeed with our Type B or vanity or ego which would succeed with our Type A. Once you have won them over, or got a commitment from them, they are often very loyal and reliable. You need to take time to build relationships with them, giving them time to explore their real feelings.

Your open questions are vital here. These are people who will simply give you a one-word answer if you ask a closed question. They won’t help you out like the Type B who could talk until the cows come home.

You will need to be sincere and show a genuine interest in them. Take time to find areas of common ground. Be honest and open and patiently draw them out in a non-threatening manner. Slow down, move casually and informally. Provide lots of assurances and give clear specific solutions with maximum guarantees. Give them the detail. If you don’t, they will ask for it. You can’t fob them off. Don’t rush them – they don’t like it.

For a Type A this can be very hard to deal with but if you want to communicate more effectively with someone who is a Type C then you must make this effort. Equally if you are a Type C communicating with a Type A then learn to speed up, prepare what you have to away from any meeting and when in the meeting be as direct as you can. I had a good example of this when running one of my courses. The headteacher of a school who was a Type A personality told me that he was having difficulty getting on with his deputy head. The deputy headteacher told me that she was having difficulty getting on with her headteacher. It was apparent to me that she was a Type C personality. She liked detail and he didn’t. I told her that for her next meeting with him she should prepare as thoroughly as she could outside the meeting and that when she went into the meeting she should give the headteacher short sharp answers and only the information he required, leaving out detailed explanations. This she did and reported back to me with the result that, after the meeting her headteacher said, ‘That was the best meeting we’ve had.’ He felt it was a good meeting because she had communicated with him in the style he liked, understood and could respond to.

Whereas our Type B is optimistic and enthusiastic our Type C is pessimistic and cautious. This can cause frustration between the two different personality types but equally the two can complement one another and work and live very well together if they recognize their individual personalities and strengths. Type B can encourage Type C to ‘lighten up’ and take risks and a Type C can reign a Type B back in when he or she goes ‘over the top’! Two Type C’s in a relationship will also work well. It might not be fiery but it could be a long, loyal and comfortable relationship.

Recognising a Measured personality

They are not motivated by status so the designer accessories, big cars etc. will be missing. In addition, there will be no dominant body language; the handshake can be firm or weak. Their dead giveaway though is their facial expression and body language. The Type C will be looking at you rather sceptically. They will sit well back in their chair with their arms folded, not necessarily with hostility, but they will reserve judgment on you and what you are saying until they have weighed you up and decided whether or not they like you.

Their hobbies will be those that require more detail and patience – perhaps fishing, cross stitch, cake decorating.

The Best Way to Have Success in Communication- Getting on Others Wavelength

The more you have in common with someone the easier it is to get along with them.

We are more easily influenced by those we like hence the saying, ‘people buy people’, as any salesperson worth his salt should know. If we like someone we are more inclined to buy from them and to cooperate with them.

Conflict usually results from differences or perceived differences between people. So enhancing this likeability factor can reduce conflict. The more we blend with the other person the less conflict there will be.

Blending with the other person can maximize similarities and minimize conflict.

We can do this by mirroring their body language, not mimicking it but gently matching it. We do this naturally when we are with friends. Just watch people in a café, restaurant or at a bar together and see how similar their body language is, or if they are not hitting it off how distanced and different it becomes.

So when you find yourself in conflict with someone, or disliking them, stop and ask yourself why this person is behaving in the manner they are? Even if you don’t fully understand their reasons, or find them difficult to understand, this will at least prevent you from getting overemotional. Also remember that you can’t change another person so it is no good thinking, ‘I wish they would be more reasonable or compassionate, or understanding, or less hostile.’ Wishing won’t make it so.

Personality traits

So how can we get on someone’s wavelength, even those whom we find it difficult to relate to? I always say to people, ‘You think you‘re normal, but what is normal?’ Normal is different to each and every one of us. We see the world through our own eyes, we think everyone should behave, act and be like us. Well of course they don’t and they’re not like us. We are all different. We all have different personalities and understanding this and recognising this can help us to adapt our approach to another person and get on their wavelength.

In 1926 William Marston came up with a model of Personality Types that is still used today. While people are highly complex and certainly more complex than the descriptions I am going to give you, this model will, I hope, help you to see yourself and others in a different light and enable you to change tactics to communicate more effectively.

We inherit personality traits from our parents, grandparents, great grandparents … Of course this is influenced by other factors like upbringing, environment, education and levels of intellect and maturity but to make things more simple here we will look at the four basic types of personalities. Although we may contain a mixture of these traits some will be stronger than others within us. This dictates how we communicate and behave. See if you can recognize ourself from the descriptions below. Then think about how you might need to change your approach towards another person in order to influence and persuade them, and to manage them.

Now, namely the personality traits are:

• Dominance
• Social
• Measured
• Compliant

In the following blogs i will discuss about these personality traits in detail. Happy reading.

Some Tips To Improve Listening Skill

In below you will find some tips that help you to improve your listening skill further:

• start listening with the first word and then listen intently
• stop what you are doing and listen – don’t be tempted to do two things at once
• turn off all negative thoughts you have about the speaker
• think at the speed they’re talking, don’t jump ahead
• do not interrupt
• find an area of interest
• judge the content and not the delivery
• suspend your judgement and keep an open mind
• actively listen for ideas
• resist distractions if you possibly can
• make listening noises, particularly if you are on the telephone, for example ‘uh, uh, yes’, and if face to face ensure that your body language looks as if it is listening, give good eye contact.
  

Exercises for improving your listening skills

1. Take five minutes a day to sit quietly somewhere, close your eyes and listen to all the sounds around you. Become conscious of them. How many different sounds can you hear? In addition to improving your listening skills this can also be relaxing.
   
2. When you are having a conversation with another person, receive what he or she has said before rushing in to make your contribution. If you feel you want to interrupt, think about pausing and breathing before you start to talk. A pause before you speak can also add significance.
3. Listen to the radio as much as possible - talk programmes, not music. What information did you receive? Can you summarize it?

This is all for you now. Try to practice it at home and then check your improvement.

The Barriers of Effective Listening

There are many things that prevent us from listening, not least of which is laziness. We simply can’t be bothered. Or maybe we’ve never been trained to listen. Our upbringing is such that no one has listened to us so why should we listen to them? No one has taught us how to listen.

The first thing we need to do is to open our minds and have the desire to learn this skill – after all it is good manners to listen. But what prevents us?

1. different perspectives: we see things differently to the person talking and we disagree with them
2. strong emotions: we have very strong feelings on the subject which prevents us from listening; we may also have prejudices
3. physical tiredness or discomfort: we may be tired or hungry; we may be hot or cold; we may be under stress and feel anxious or unwell
4. desire to talk: we love to talk most of the time, to be the centre of attention; we love the sound of our own voice and think that only our opinions really count
5. distractions and mind wandering: we may be distracted because of a noise; or we may be thinking ahead of all the things that need to be done; we may be worried about someone or something
6. reactions to the speaker: we may dislike the person who is talking to us; we may find them boring or opinionated

Listening- The Critical Part of Effective Communication

Listening, really listening, is the hardest thing to do and the highest form of courtesy!

Listening is an essential part of being a good communicator but it is a skill that is perilously close to becoming extinct. As more and more of our communication becomes visual and text driven, i.e. Internet, text and computers we are forgetting how to listen. Listening involves both:

• the ability to understand what is being said, and
• the ability to organize and analyze the messages in order to retain them for subsequent use.

There are two types of listening:

1. Casual listening
2. Critical listening

Casual listening

Casual listening is what we tend to do most of the time. We are only half listening, we retain bits of the conversation, we discard other parts of it. As a result you often get the following scenario between two people: ‘

Don’t forget we’re going out tonight.’

‘Are we? You didn’t mention it.’

‘Yes, I did, I told you two days ago. You weren’t listening.’

We often switch off, particularly when we are listening to someone we know well.

Critical listening

Critical listening requires concentration and stamina. Here you are making a real effort to understand the other person’s point of view. You are listening to them, retaining what they say, storing it away and then retrieving some of it later when you need it. These skills are essential in a sales situation and rather important too in an interview. If you have listened, and I mean really listened, it is highly likely that you will come away with a headache. You have exercised your mental powers to extremes! In both the above situations you are not only trying to concentrate on what the other person is saying but you are also reading their body language, thinking about your own body language and formulating your response to their questions, plus thinking of your own questions to ask. Is it no wonder you end up with a headache?

Tone, Pitch and Pace- 3 Important Aspects of Speaking

How we sound when we speak does influence others and I am not just talking about accents (although those do give out an impression) but rather the tone of your voice, its clarity, its passion and enthusiasm, its variances.

Think about how you talk to someone who is ill – gently and with compassion and understanding. Now think about how you greet an old friend across the street, or prevent a child from running out into the traffic. How do you sound when you scold someone or are short-tempered?

If you talk in a monotone you will sound dull and uninteresting; you will also lack credibility. The more credible you are the more persuasive you will be. No one is going to do anything if you ask them in a boring, quiet monotone!

So try varying the pitch and pace of your voice. Try enthusing it with some passion. A good way of practising this is to read aloud to young children because then you have to put in all the different voices or they very quickly get bored.

If you talk in a high pitched voice (mainly women) so that you sound like a little girl, you will also be less credible. Try slowing your voice down, don’t talk so quickly, take a few more breaths in between talking and lower your voice.

As a general rule speak with clarity, talk in a strong, steady voice neither shouting nor mumbling. If talking to a group of people then let your eye contact reach the person the furthest distance from you to ensure that you project it.

To build rapport with someone match the pace and tone of their voice. I don’t mean mimic them but if they speak softly and slowly then lower your voice and slow it down. If the other person speaks quickly, try and quicken up.

No matter what your message, present it in terms that are of interest to others. Think of who you are communicating with and then decide how you should pitch your voice and what sort of words to use. We are all aware of the person/people who talk jargon either to confuse us or to make us feel small, so make sure you don’t fall into this trap and if you are on the receiving end of this then don’t apologize, to them, for example: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand you’. It is their fault they are not explaining to you correctly so simply say, ‘What do you mean?’ pleasantly and not aggressively.

Believe you are worth listening to and convey that belief to others. The more passionate you are about your subject the more powerful your communication but beware you don’t get too carried away and forget your listener, you could be too enthusiastic and alienate them. Which brings us to our next chapter, listening.

Don’t be too apologetic- It Will Not Good For You As Speaker

When you need to state something keep it brief and to the point: don’t go all around the houses to make your point or over-apologize. For example try saying, ‘I’d like to get started this week’, or ‘Would you like to come over for a coffee?’ Not, ‘I wonder if you’d mind terribly if we er sort of started this next week?’ Or ‘I was wondering if you’ve got nothing else to do, that is if you’re not too busy, if you’d er like to come over for a coffee?’

Be careful too of over justifying yourself. For example, ‘I wouldn’t normally mention this but I’m without the car tomorrow, my husband’s had to take it to work because he’s got to go to London on business and the trains are on strike and I was wondering if you’d mind giving me a lift into work?’

Instead simply say, ‘Could you give me a lift into work tomorrow Alan as I’m without the car?’

If you need to apologize don’t do it profusely, simply say, ‘I’m sorry’. Or if you wish to sound more assertive, then ‘I apologize’.

Practise using ‘I’ statements, which are assertive, for example:

• I feel
• think
• my idea is
• I prefer
• I feel
• as I see it
• my view is
  

And be careful of using phrases that put you down, for example:

• ‘I’m hopeless at this.’
• ‘You know me, I seem to be useless at ...’
• ‘I can’t seem to ...’
  

People will believe it and so will you because your brain is telling you that you can’t do something so you won’t be able to!

Powerful and persuasive words are often those with many vowels in them, for example need and please.

‘We need to do something’ implies urgency and people respond to this rather than ‘We could do something’, which implies a question mark in its structure. We must do something sounds more like a command possibly prompting the response ‘Do I have to?’ or ‘Must I?’ While, ‘You must appreciate’ can prompt the response,‘Why must I?’

Nervous Body Language: That Kills You As Speaker

One hand gripping the other behind the back is an attempt at confidence but there is frustration, lack of self-control and the person is trying hard to seem relaxed – look for how hard the hand is gripping the wrist. If the hands are held quite high behind the back this often indicates timidity. The hand moved even further up the arm indicates tension and nervousness.

Fingers in the mouth can also show people under pressure.

Touching the face or stroking the back of the neck can signal embarrassment and rubbing, stroking or touching the nose means the person is not sure and possibly has negative thoughts; if poor or no eye contact accompanies this then he could be lying.

Touching the ear may indicate that the person doesn’t like what he/she is hearing. Watch for this in meetings and sales situations and examine what it is you have just said to get this response.

Touching the eyes could indicate that the person doesn’t like what he or she is seeing. Watch for a shifting in body language along with this and consider the situation and the dialogue.

Foot lock – this tends to be a woman-only gesture where one foot is wrapped round the other leg. It is construed as a defensive attitude.

Beware of Mannerisms: They Disclose Yourself To Others

We all form certain mannerisms like pulling the eyebrow, rubbing the nose etc. We need to be aware of these because they may be giving out the wrong signals. The best way to know if you are doing this is to watch a video recording of yourself, or get a friend to tell you each time you make a nervous mannerism.

A Senior Communication Expert told me a story, some years ago he was working with a young lady who always put her hand over her mouth when she spoke. This gave out the impression that she was lying or was uncertain of herself. He asked her why she did this and she told him that when she was younger she suffered from terrible acne, which caused her considerable distress and embarrassment so she had got into the habit of covering her face when she spoke so people couldn’t see her skin. The habit had stuck long after her skin had cleared.

Here are some further body language signals that you might like to be aware of.

Sitting down with the hands and arms clasped behind the head

This is a superior gesture or exhibits extreme confidence sometimes bordering on arrogance. It can also be accompanied by the chin held high.

Leg lock – when one ankle is crossed over the knee of the other

This denotes a dominant and competitive personality. The higher the leg is crossed over the more dominant and competitive. If the person is also holding his leg this means he is stubborn and unmoving, he’s made his mind up.

If the thumbs are on display in an upward position this shows that they are in charge! This is often a familiar stance of a barrister in a courtroom. Some speakers also adopt this posture, which can be rather intimidating towards the audience.

Another variation of this is when the thumbs protrude from the pockets, which displays dominance.

Thumbs wrapped round belt: If a man is standing with his legs firmly planted apart, thumbs in belt pose, with fingers pointing down towards crotch area this is an aggressive posture when adopted facing another man. If, however, a man adopts this posture towards a woman then it can be interpreted as a sexual gesture.

In recent years some women have also adopted this posture, in this instance it exhibits an attitude of dominance and sexual control over men.

Hands on hips: This is an aggressive and threatening gesture when used by a man or when used by a woman to another woman. If a woman adopts this posture towards a man then it can be interpreted as a sexual stance.