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Article originally posted on InfoQ. Visit InfoQ
In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke with Matt Abrahams of BoldEcho and Stanford Graduate School of Business on becoming effective communicators, especially around speaking in public.
Key Takeaways
- Everyone has a story to tell
- Make sure you understand who you are speaking to and what it is that you can do to help them
- It’s important to structuring your message in such a way as to make it easy for your audience to understand
- All communication should have a goal which has three parts – information, emotion and action (what, so what, now what)
- Overcoming imposter syndrome – most audiences are there to learn, they want you to be successful
- It takes bravery to admit that we’re not great communicators and start on a path of learning to improve
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- 1:34 Matt’s book – Speaking Up Without Freaking Out 1:46
- 2:04 It’s normal and natural to feel nervous in high-stakes speaking situations
- 2:21 There are lots of techniques to manage the anxiety related to public speaking
- 2:38 Examples of ways to cope with both symptoms and sources of anxiety
- 3:25 Make sure you understand who you are speaking to and what it is that you can do to help them
- 3:50 The importance of structuring your message in such a way as to make it easy for your audience to understand
- 4:08 “Tell me the time, don’t build me the clock” – many technical people are clock builders
- 4:29 Effective communication is about confidence, audience awareness and structure
- 4:57 The Three C’s of communication – confidence, connectedness and being compelling
- 5:07 Competence = confidence; the more confident you appear to your audience the more competent and credible they will see you as
- 5:27 Lots of resources on the No Freaking Speaking website
- 5:43 Connections come from knowing your audience and knowing your context
- 6:01 All communication should have a goal.
- 6:08 A goal has 3 parts – information, emotion and action
- 6:21 Once you have a goal you can pick a structure to convey the message most effectively
- 6:25 One structure is “what, so what, now what”?
- 7:12 Overcoming imposter syndrome – most audiences are there to learn, they want you to be successful
- 7:29 Know that there are things that you know that can provide value – that’s why you were asked to talk
- 8:05 Focus on having a strong non-verbal presence – stance, voice pitch
- 8:35 The audience wants to get something from the speaker, if you demonstrate confidence the audience will see you as confident and credible
- 8:50 Exploring what context means in a speaking situation
- 8:58 Shorter presentations are harder to structure
- 9:10 Time of day makes a difference to the speaker and audience’s energy levels
- 9:25 Understand where your talk fits in a sequence (where there are other talks as part of the communication event)
- 10:00 Creating a communication event devoid of contextual awareness sets you up for failure
- 10:47 Culture (national and organisational) is another contextual aspect to be aware of
- 11:31 Leaders have a responsibility to model appropriate communications and mentor others into doing so
- 11:48 Too often speakers are fixated on content and don’t think about audience context and culture
- 11:55 Building these skills takes time and focus
- 12:04 Building skills is about repetition, reflection and feedback
- 12:23 Consider joining an organisation like ToastMasters to get practice opportunities
- 12:43 Ensure you take time to reflect about how your talk went
- 12:55 Try to build a culture of reflection and feedback – at the end of a meeting ask the participants for feedback on the quality of communication
- 13:38 The importance of vocalising your practice – don’t just think what you will say, practice saying it out loud
- 14:08 It takes bravery to admit that we’re not great communicators and start on a path of learning to improve
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