Effective Communication Skills

I'm Alex Lian and you're about to start a seven-part mini course and concise clear and confident communication I put this course together because I believe it's really the best first step for you in your professional development laying that foundation to develop strong communication skills moving forward I encourage you to watch all seven lessons there's a little practice involved in each one so you can actually hear and then try the ideas out so let's jump right into the first lesson in lesson 1 we're going after long-winded nasai encourage you to watch this and go through as many times as you need to to make this material a habit tip 1 long weather this is a key enemy of good communication I'm always surprised that really talkative people assume that they're good communicators but more talking does not equal good communication in fact a lot of times if these words Gabi chatty verbose and talkative accurately describe you it's probably forming a bad impression especially in professional settings Alison green said it like this you might think well some people are long winded but it doesn't mean he wouldn't do a good job the problem is that a minimum is signals that you're not good at picking up on conversational cues and it raises doubts about your ability to organize your thoughts and can they needed information quickly so strategy one resolve why you sometimes talk too much when do you find yourself multiplying words being overly talkative is it just at work or is it social situations and what are you in the moment thought processes that trigger it are you insecure about something what's going on in your mind that's driving that over talkative habit because all the tips in the world will not undo an unspoken belief that drives that long-winded is so excessive talkativeness is rooted in our unspoken beliefs let's say you're a physician and you're thinking to yourself maybe you don't even realize it but you're thinking I want people to know I'm smart you will most certainly talk too much to prove that and because we live in a polite society people just play along but inside they are having an entirely different thought process about this conversation they will almost never tell you directly that you're long-winded however they will form unfavorable impressions of you anyway and so it's very important to realize the impact that long when new communication can have on your professional relationships and the people around you so people long winter for various reasons what's your reason maybe there's more than one is it insecurity maybe some self-centeredness you want to show everything you know like your vet physician do you like the air time and the attention in other words does it feel good when people are listening to you and you love when everyone's watching you in action do you mistake talking for adding value do you mistake more talking for good communication are there some control issues going on in your heart and your mind in other words you'd like to steer a conversation and be the one talking so you dictate the pace and the flow of things any one of these reasons and there are many others could be driving that long-winded this so it's really important that you take some time and get to the bottom of it strategy 2 is to gauge your long winded miss rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 if you're really concise give yourself a 1 if you're somewhere in the middle depending on situation 5 if you're really long-winded a 10 and of course you can give yourself other scores but I would recommend setting a goal to move at least below a 5 let's say you want to be from a 1 to 4 range depending upon the situation construct strategy number three is to commit to conciseness as FDR said be sincere be brief and be seated and he is talking about presentations it sounds like but I think this demonstrates his commitment to conciseness because conciseness really sets the stage for that clarity and that confidence that we're all after and so commitment in this sense means practicing the tips in this video and in the next six lessons and while you're doing it remember why you want to be concise clear and confident here are some reasons people will pay attention to what you say we communicate this way people remember what you say you'll have more impact and you can lead more effectively so there are lots of good reasons to do so so long-winded this is a key enemy to good communication some takeaway strategies resolve why you sometimes talk too much and then gauge your long-winded 'no stew helped you set that goal and then commit to practicing the tips in this rule Essen and there's a remaining six lesson so your first step is get to the bottom of your unspoken reasons for long-winded us that will really catapult you through this course and help you apply these tips with much more effectiveness looking forward we'll work on how to form a concise overall message concise sentences or work on organizing your thoughts effective pauses avoiding fillers and confident non verbals if you haven't yet subscribed to this channel communication coach I encourage you to do so and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson welcome back to part 2 your second lesson of the 7 lesson if you haven't yet subscribed to this channel communication coach I encourage you to do so at some point in the process because in addition to this free course there's lots of other material on the channel and I keep adding more material every week so let's jump into lesson number two [Music] in our first lesson we looked at long-winded nests and this one we're going to get after how to form a concise overall message so concise tip number two is keep the overall message tight Mark Twain once joked I didn't have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one instead and the point is making there in a humorous way is that it takes time to whittle down your message to the essence it's much easier to just be long-winded but everybody appreciates a concise message whether it's a presentation a meeting a talking Turing and a conversation or your elevator pitch people want you to finish on time and they want you to wrap it up I put elevator pitch in quotations because first of all I like that phrase but also it signals that it's a message that you have to finish in about the time you have in an elevator ride so you have to express what you do or what your organization does and how they add value in a very short amount of time strategy number one is skipped to the heart of the message that's the best way to compress your overall message skip the preamble the qualifications the back story don't think out loud just bottom-line it that's a picture there of a golden retriever I have our little Golden Retriever puppy right now which is reminded me of her so what's the heart of this message so I was driving around the other day doing you know errands and whatnot saw a car go by to look just like yours at least it looked like your car to me do you drive a Toyota anyway I saw this card it made me think of you you know what it may have been a Honda not a Toyota their SUVs look so similar long story short made me think of you and that's why I called it's been too long we'd love to get together we were wondering if you'd like to bring your family over next weekend it might have been a Subaru so if you had to whittle this down to the very core part of this the part that you absolutely want the other person to hear out of this message what would it be if it were me I would say it's been too long we'd love to get together we were wondering if you'd like to bring your family over next weekend if you got off the phone it didn't say these three sentences I think that you probably would have said oh I never really said what I wanted to say if you take away the rest of it you have the heart of the message the opposite is now true if you took away these three sentences and you were just left with the rambling about the car the message would make very little sense and so you want to make sure you focus on what the person needs to know and we do that by using need-to-know versus nice to know thinking to get to the heart of the message what does the person absolutely need to know and what's just nice to know little details that you could leave out and still communicate your message effectively and if the person is let's say they're stressed for time or your reception is not good on the phone what would you focus on that's generally when you're going to get down to the heart of the message strategy number two is to make your point and then zip it so you state the heart of the message and you're talking turn by literally closing your mouth and give the other person a chance to talk look for those head nods and other nonverbal cues that shows that that person is reading you and you stop talking after just a few sentences so let's say you're having a QA with somebody and they ask you have you contacted meeting planner yet what would you cut out of the answer to get to the heart of the message and then zip it then close your mouth here's the answer no not yet I still have to figure out what we need from her I've got a call scheduled with the children ministry leader but I have to see if that call is actually going to happen I'm also waiting to hear back from the musicians after our first choice for music is available then it'll shape the rest of the program there are lots of balls in the air right now but we'll get there I just didn't anticipate so many loose strings you know that would still be loose at this point so remember this is a very direct question have you contacted the meeting planner yet this is yes or no for me I would cut almost all this to make sure I express my main point and then zip it no not yet I still have to figure out what we need from her and this leaves room for the conversation should continue so now it's their turn to talk and hopefully you're noticing these nonverbal cues that signal you to stop a lot of times people miss read this the person says okay alright and they're nodding and we might think oh they really like what I'm saying I'll keep talking but it means just the opposite this is your signal to stop strategy number three finish just under time in many situations like a meeting you'll be given a certain amount of time for that work and you want to wrap it up under the time limit so if you have an hour wrap that meeting up in 55 minutes nobody's going to complain you have a 30 minute presentation finish it in 28 minutes if you ask somebody for five minutes of their time only use four develop a habit of getting under time instead of going overtime and a lot of people go over time especially in meetings and presentations and conversations like this in fact you might take a great speaker that you think is amazing and she's just crushing it at the 25 minute mark and she's supposed to finish at 30 minutes and she doesn't and now she's 35 or 40 45 and now a speaker that was amazing a few minutes ago is now 10 or 15 minutes over time and they're boring everybody to death you do not want to be that kind of communicator you want to finish just under time respect people's time and they will start to think of you as a concise communicator so keep your overall messages tight to do that you want to skip to the heart of the message I think most conversational messages can be delivered about two or three sentences only once you make your point zip it and give the other person a chance to talk that will develop into a conversation and when you have some kind of time limit that you're shooting for finish just under time your first task is to apply this in conversations stories and any kinds of meetings that you have coming up in the near future up next we're going to work on concise and clear sentences and I look forward to seeing you in that lesson welcome back I'm Alex Lyon this is lesson 3 of 7 in the course in this lesson I want to give you a little warning a little heads up a lot of people give push back on this particular strategy that you're going to see where I talk about using plain English plain language to express yourself it's one of the most valuable ways to make your messages more clear more concise and more confident and yet some people resist they want to keep in the sophisticated complicated language so if you feel that you're in that crowd if you're one of those people that doesn't want to do that then check yourself talk figure out what it is that's going on in your mind and address it because again all the tips in the world are not going to change the way you ultimately communicate and to figure out what's happening internally that's driving your communication so let's jump right in in our last lesson we looked at how to form a concise overall message and lesson 3 we'll look at concise sentences concise tip number three is use short sentences Oliver Wendell Holmes a well-known judge from about 100 years ago said speak clearly if you speak at all carved every word before you let it fall it's a very poetic way to say you want to work on short sentences and express yourself concisely short sentences pop they sound much more confident more concrete and much more memorable than long-winded sentences they sound like news headlines topic sentences of paragraphs items in a bulleted list in one line jokes a lot of times people will develop a nice clean crisp way of communicating and it sounds much more confident than long-winded demanding sentences so you want to use as few words as possible strategy number one shave words comedian Jerry Seinfeld talks about how longer jokes are very hard to make funny and it's they're much funnier when you shorten the jokes and make them pop he was talking about the length of jokes and he said if it's too long just a split second too long he will shave letters off of words you count syllables to get it just right it's more like songwriting when he says songwriting he's referring to how songwriters have to fit their words into a certain beat and they will have to come up with creative ways to express themselves in very few words so Seinfeld has a joke about Pop Tarts where he really practices what he preaches he says about Pop Tarts they can't go stale because they were never fresh which is hilarious but it's amazing how he can communicate that in so few words and there's not a single extra letter in this punchline they can't go steel because they were never fresh he doesn't say they will never go steel or they can never go stale that would be too many words you can't go stale cause instead of because they were never fresh there's not I can't think of anything that I would shave off of this and it's much funnier because of it the lesson here is you want to get rid of the clutter so your sentences sound more kind and more confidence so which sentence sticks with you look at two samples about voting if you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote you're in effect voting for the entrenched establishments of the two major parties who please rest assured are not dumb and who are keenly aware that is in their interest to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day that's a very long sentence going to be difficult to remember what the message is here here's B if you don't vote you don't matter which was said by Sean Penn in a movie about a politician from the south if you're asking me which line sticks if you don't vote you don't matter stuck with me for years after I saw that movie one time now I don't know if the politician he was playing actually said that or if the people who wrote the movie just crafted it but it's a well-crafted sentence and again is that a single extra letter or word in that sentence that's why it sounds so confident whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment it sounds confident and it really pops so let's shave the clutter to make this sound like a headline a few things came up complications I guess you could call them that are going to cause some unforeseen delays and I'm not sure if we can get it all done by Wednesday now we might I'm just saying that we're going to have to see what happens and play it by ear how could we shave this clutter to make it sound much more like a news headline so we're me I would do it this way I'm not sure if we get all done by Wednesday now we might you could even reword it slightly I'm not sure if we can get all done by Wednesday because of delays has there anything else we could shave from the sentence shave a few more words like Seinfeld what would he do I think probably he would take the extra few words out that he could and that would make it sound even more concise and confident let's try another one let's shave the clutter what do you recommend we do when we visit Rhode Island well let's see I'd say probably the most amazing place I mean it's really amazing as long as the weather is good is the beach in Rhode Island because that's what we're known for and it's not called the Ocean State for no reason so this is a pretty long answer for a very short question what do you recommend we do and if it were me I would shorten this all the way down and get rid of most everything and I would say the most amazing place is the beach can we shave this even further well we might be able to but you don't want to overcorrect and shave it down to sink Awards I think if you ask someone this question they answered the beach that might sound a little too clipped and a little dismissive so you make sure you forum full thoughts full sentences and you're going to be on safe ground strategy number two use plain English a lot of people perhaps to sound smart perhaps because they love language will dress up what they say and unnecessarily complicated vocabulary so you want to avoid those kinds of bigger words because they don't necessarily add a lot of value utilize if you look it up it just means you use problematical just means problem academia is another way to say College you want to use plain language whenever you can because every once in a while there'll be a thought you can't possibly express plainly and you want to leave room and your sentences for that more sophisticated idea and to do so you want to simplify everything else that you can into very plain English I actually have heard a lot of people coming up through grad school use the word problematical and I just never understood why they would use such a demanding word so don't use flowery language when simple language will do say it in plain English contemplate how would you say this word contemplate how would you translate that I would say think commence is another fancy way to say start and terminate is a fancy way to say and now you don't have to do this in every single case but in general to be concise and to make to make nice concise sentences you want to use plain English let's say this one in plain English I was reflecting on my position have altered my perspective on the matter what's the person really saying I think they're saying I changed my mind and that's how you want to express yourself there's no way to misunderstand a nice plainly worded sentence so use short sentences with as few words as possible your takeaway strategies are to shave the clutter like Seinfeld and other people who really work on compressing those sentences and use plain English whenever you can your takeaway task here is to apply this in conversations and Q&A in the next few days and make a habit out of answering with short concise sentences in our next lesson we're going to look at how to organize your thoughts clearly I look forward to seeing you then you're about to start lesson 4 in the mini course again I'm Alex Lian and if you haven't yet subscribed I encourage you to do so and check the rest of the videos on the channel out on this particular video like the last one some people don't like a couple of the tips because if you fall in this category you might feel like well that's a lot of structure and I don't normally communicate that way well that's true not everybody communicates in a structured orderly way but it is one of the best ways to sound more concise clear and confident so give it a try check your self-talk and motivation why is it that you don't want to communicate this way because if you can get to the bottom of your inner thoughts then you're much more likely to succeed and communicate the clear fashion so let's jump right in in our last lesson we looked at concise statements and then lesson 4 we're going to look at organized thoughts concise tip number 4 organize your thoughts into clear points this is of course one way to remain concise but it also adds an incredible amount of clarity and confidence to your message messages without a clear structure are very hard to follow for your listeners and long lists dilute each items value you've probably sat through presentations where somebody had 20 items or on a list and there's a really no impact there when you have that many items much better to create fewer clear points a clear organization so is clear confident thinking here we have a messy desk and a joke I pulled from a comic if you think this is bad you should see the inside of my head this actually looks a little bit like my desk and I'm all for creativity however once we're sharing our thoughts with somebody else once we're communicating we really have to stay more structured so that they can follow along with what we're saying in a clear and understand way Richard Fineman said it like this if you can't explain it to a six-year-old you really don't understand it and the idea here is that if you really understand something you can explain it in a very clear and structured way for your listeners they talked about being able to give a freshman lecture on a concept and if you can't give a freshman level lecture then you don't yourself understand it so this structure will help us clarify our own thoughts and help it land for other people structure provides a schema or a mental framework that helps keeps thoughts clear for you helps your listeners follow your point it gives your message cohesion or an overarching arc and it helps everybody remember strategy one is to break messages into two to three chunks for example let's say you're having a conversation about getting healthy and you want to share this information with somebody else instead of just rambling you want to break it down into clear points for example you could talk about diet exercise and the importance of working out with a friend and underneath each of those themes or some people call them buckets you would give your details so if you're talking about diet you might talk about counting calories or Weight Watchers etc under exercise the different options and under working out with a friend how you would hold each other a little accountable for staying on track talking to a friend of mine is a real-life example and I talked about his retirement plan he's retired and he said 401 K I have some rental income and a little bit of Social Security instead of giving a long-winded disorganized rambling answer he was able to give me clear seems and then we continued a discussion about each of these three items and he provided some nice detail I was watching a movie about a disabled man from Ghana many years ago and he had one good leg and one to save a leg and he finally got a meeting with a community leader and the leader said what are your priorities and he said I want to help provide independence mobility and sports for the disabled people in Ghana he had just a moment to break the ice with extremely our message and to this day I remember this documentary film that he communicated in that clear and confident way and I instantly thought wow this guy really knows what he's talking about when we do this we want to organize our chunks our main points into some logical pattern a nice logical pattern is going to help people remember and it's going to clarify our thoughts for ourselves before after problems we should benefit cause and effect steps in a sequence or in other words chronological etc lots of different options here you're not limited to this list but it's nice to have a list handy for example let's practice with this stream of thought example about somebody's day I got up got ready ate breakfast and worked out I did some shopping on the way home from the gym I bumped into Katy at the store she wants to get together tonight I actually got some work done during the day shot some videos did some editing they organized the tools in the garage I was hoping to get together with Katy and John tonight but I also have some people to get back to some calls to make or at least a couple of texts to stay on top of some things so this sounds a little bit like rambling but you can basically follow it it's much more clear however if we structure this in two main points for example chronologically morning afternoon and evening and each of those items has a few details underneath it those themes provide a really great way to clarify your message make it much more concise and it will sound very confident compared to a rambling disorganized message it's handy to have a list like this around when you're preparing for meetings important conversations and certainly presentations because you don't have to create this from scratch you can invent new ways but there are lots of great schemas already available for structuring your ideas strategy number two is to then state your roadmap so you have your structure and now you want to forecast those points aloud with key words only so a physician might say to you let's talk about symptoms and then treatments now you have a roadmap for how that conversation is going to go and I recommend also calling out your points along the way so let's say you start with symptoms you talked about that for a few minutes and if you're the physician then you might say now let's turn to your treatment options and that'll be a really clear signal that your shifting gears and it again reminds people of that schema reminds them of your buckets and it helps your message stay clear so structure provides freedom even though it seems like it boxes people in we go back to mindset that we talked about in the early lesson on long-winded this why are we long-winded sometimes people resist applying structure because it feels too restrictive it feels like it's robbing them of something but there are a lot of benefits and there are freedoms that you can experience within a good structure first of all it eliminates tangents which is good for your thinking and it's good for listeners they don't want to hear tangents any more than you want to get off on them but it also provides a place for more details so if you have clear main points then you can find some nice details and sort them into the relevant place and then they'll make sense and it gives even long stories of sense of cohesion so let's say you tell a five-minute story that's disorganized it's going to feel like it lasts forever if you tell a five-minute story with clear beginning middle and end that everybody will be able to follow it it won't feel long at all so structure is a tool to help you sort need-to-know information versus nice to know information we talked about this in an earlier lesson if it doesn't fit into your structure either you have the wrong structure the wrong main points or it's just not need-to-know information it might be just something that's nice to know which is why it doesn't fit in and that way when you communicate with listeners you're giving them high-value information with every sentence so we want to organize our thoughts into clear points or takeaway strategies or to break ideas into two to three chunks and then state your roadmap really clearly before you share your message and then remind people of your points as you move through them so our task is to apply this in conversation meetings and presentations that you have coming up in the coming days and I look forward to seeing in the next lesson on effective pauses hello again friends you're about to do lesson 5 in the course so let's just jump right in in our last lesson we looked at organizing your thoughts clearly in lesson 5 we'll look at effective pauses concise tip number 5 is pause to add emphasis and this really is a conciseness tip however it's going to make you sound much more clear and certainly much more confident pauses in the wrong places can make you sound long-winded pauses in the right place make you sound clear concise and good pauses emphasize your points and add a confident cadence it gives your speech a rhythm or a tempo that those professional speakers and those leaders have pauses are really like a secret weapon in communication Ralph Richardson a well known actor on the stage and screen from years ago said the most precious thing in speech are pauses and I could not agree more strategy number 1 pause at the end of sentences that's where your pauses belong makes you sound more confident it lets listeners accept and remember your message during that pause they get to process it for just a moment and it gives you a natural stopping place to end your talking turn that's one of the goals of being a concise and clear and confident communicator is you make your point and as we said in an earlier lesson then you zip it and it allows you to have a back and forth or a dialogue with other people because the pause gives them a place to jump in so let's listen to where the pauses are here we have a few items to cover today we look at our social media campaign we look at our overall growth and Aaron will take suggestions about changes to the website now these pauses are in the right place there where the punctuation is at the end of the nice concise sentences these are good examples of concise sentences from an earlier lesson and if we were to visualize this it looks a little bit more like bullets in a list where the pause comes right at the end of that bulleted item and then you go on to the next item these are like headlines that we talked about in an earlier lesson or even they're not funny but the length of a punchline for a joke and that's where the pauses belong pauses at the end literally punctuate your statements for listeners it helps them separate the ideas because you have with the sound of your voice separated your ideas you should only pause for about one second just long enough to say the word pause in your head sometimes people pause for two or three or more sentences add that dramatic feel I don't think that's necessary in most cases just long enough to say the word pause or period in your head strategy number two avoid mid thought pauses pauses in the middle of your statements really make it drag and it'll sound labored and long-winded even if you're not using a lot of words so let's listen to what it sounds like when the pauses are in the wrong place we have a few items to cover today we'll look at our social media campaign we'll look at our overall growth and Aaron will take suggestions about changes to the website so it doesn't sound right it sounds like we're hanging we're waiting for that next moment that just full finish your thought and you may have listened to people in conversation where they pause in the middle and it can take an ordinary sentence and make it really sound extra long so we want to pause in the right places strategy 3 is to pause to separate key ideas when we're for example giving a road map to set up a meeting or a presentation we want to pause between items and that meeting or presentation and any time you're listing items two or three or four items you want to pause where the commas are so here's a sentence 80s rock is the best because it has loud drums crunchy guitars and soaring locals so we're pausing where we see the punctuation would naturally be and it gives it that nice confident sound where the ideas are separated some people by the way would say screeching locals instead of soaring vocals but I was trying to be kind because I'm a big fan of 80s rock so pause in the right place for clarity and emphasis our takeaway strategies are to pause at the end of sentences avoid mid-thought pauses that give us that draggy sound and to pause to separate ideas and a list especially things like a previous statement and a presentation or when you're setting up a meeting your task is to practice pausing and all your communication to have that clarity in the next few days it's also going to sound it make it sound much more confident and much more concise for your listeners up next we are going to work on avoiding fillers and I look forward to seeing you in that lesson hello again friends I'm Alex Lyon you're about to do lesson six of seven in this mini course you're almost finished really happy for you if you haven't yet subscribe to the channel now is the time to do so make sure you visit the homepage for the channel click on the subscribe button and you'll start getting notifications for the course so let's jump right in and our last lesson we looked at pauses in this lesson 6 we'll look at avoiding fillers concise tip number six is to avoid fillers call it a concise tip because certainly avoiding fillers is going to make you more concise it'll also add a lot to your clarity and to your confidence sound fillers dragged out and muddled messages for listeners and fillers make you sound very unsure of what you're saying here's some common fillers right sort of kind of something like that as well as um you know so and I know some people that count alms and us during presentations but it's not just annoying it also really goes to your credibility there's some research on powerless versus powerful speech and when listeners and research situations were showed videos of speakers who use lots of fillers they thought they were very unconfident or powerless in their speech they give the same speakers clean scripts so they would not use any fillers and be listeners in the research situation thought wow they really know what they're talking about they're very confident so you can sound confident just by getting rid of your fillers it's a really important issue to get after strategy one is to identify your filler habits these are habits most people have specific fillers that they use over and over again I use kind of I used to use that and I also use so and I'm working on that one but I still use it from time to time you want to listen to yourself and pinpoint your specific habits listen to your recorded presentation for example or you might even ask a trusted friend hey do I use any fillers do I say you know or anything like that and even if they don't have an answer for you on the spot they'll be able to listen to you as you move forward strategy 2 is to replace fillers with pauses talked about this in an earlier lesson how awesome pauses can sound in the right place some people call fillers vocalized pauses in other words we should be pausing but we're filling it in with an utterance that doesn't need to be there pauses give you time to think but they also make you sound more confidence here we have an earlier example with fillers put in there where pauses should be and you'll notice how tentative and how unsure it sounds so we have a few items to cover today and we'll look at our social media campaign and we'll look at our overall growth and erin will take you know suggestions about changes to the website if I were to come to your meeting and speak like this you would notice instantly but I had lots of fillers and I have seen people who are supposed to be in leadership positions doing this and listeners in fact didn't mention while they said um and a lot this matters to people but what we want to do is add pauses in those places where we normally use fillers and we would say the word pause or period in our head like we mentioned in a previous lesson pauses restore that clear confident sound that we're going for and you'll notice that there are some positives in the middle here but they still sound better than the fillers so if we were to look at this example ultimately our goal would be to get rid of the fillers that are in the middle of the sentences and only use the pauses that punctuate our communication in a desired fashion we want to avoid fillers our takeaway strategies are to identify your specific filler habits you don't do a law you just do some and if you isolate your specific habits you're going to much easier time solving that problem and then replace those fillers with actual pauses step one is to practice saying pause in your head instead of using fillers up next we're going to work on confidence nonverbals that will be our last lesson it will superimpose and thread through all the other things we've talked about in a really nice way congratulations you have made it you're about to start the seventh class of seven and concise clear and competent communication if for some reason you found this last video first and you can go back and do the whole course otherwise if you've been going all the way through I'm really happy for you I encourage you to watch these videos as many times as you need to to really make these tips and strategies habit because that's where it's going to start to make a difference in your life so let's wrap things up in our previous lesson we looked at how to get rid of fillers in lesson seven we're going to hit on confident non verbals so tip 7 is confident on verbals enhance your message all the previous six lessons are mostly to do with words and how you sound verbally but these nonverbal messages can enhance or detract from what you're saying so people form impressions about how you come across through nonverbal communication distracting nonverbals will diminish or take away from you communication your message and confident nonverbals will add to it to say something with confidence means that you sound and look confident not just that you're saying confident words strategy number one use direct eye contact most people drastically underestimate the power of direct eye contact make direct eye contact when speaking and listening both are very important strive for 80 percent of the time in your conversations and 99 percent of the time during presentations most of us underestimate the need that others have for us to be looking directly at them when we speak and so those numbers will give you a good gauge Adrian Furnham a PhD researcher that's spent a lot of time working on eye contact said the confidence the bright and the socially dominant look more with direct eye contact well it is the opposite for the socially anxious in this society we generally interpret direct eye contact as competent and the lack of direct eye contact as signaling some kind of issue oftentimes social anxiety or even just a lack of confidence in general direct means right into their eyes not like these two people who are looking elsewhere sometimes above people's heads sometimes over their shoulders you do not want to be in this kind of situation when you're looking directly at somebody it says hey I see you and they look back and it's say I see you too there's a connection there so what does that look like in practice like you're looking directly into the lens of the camera someone says hey look right here we're going to take a picture you want to look right into their eyes and again in a conversation it's 80% of the time you want you to want to stare but you want to look at them the vast majority of the time to show them that you're communicating you're locked into what you're saying and you're locked into listening to what they say strategy to is to avoid up talk this is a nonverbal tendency up talk describes the upward inflection used to make a statement sound like a question sometimes called up speak and it sounds like this I wanted to meet to discuss the plans I was hoping to have that nailed down today many of the new hires need this training badly now clearly these are not questions that you've probably heard up speak or up talk from people maybe you do it it's becoming much more common among the younger generation and it's become a real issue in professional settings but instead of this you want your sentences to go down at the end so if there's a period you want them to go down like the period signals I wanted to me to discuss the plants I was hoping to have that nailed down today I knew the new hires need this training badly that's a statement and that's what it should sound like you may not realize however that you're up talking a lot of people don't even know they're doing it I recommend asking a trusted friend to listen to you talk to see if you do it and then commit if you are doing up talk I want you to commit to landing at the end of sentences and boy is this a hard habit to break but it's well worth it because you don't want to sound like the person who's never sure of what they're saying strategy three is to smile who doesn't like a smile people often even don't realize that they're scowling or have that stone-faced expression when they're walking around talking to people but many people just don't smile and as a result they don't sound confident they don't look confident to other people even if their words are confident they're not going to come across as feeling really comfortable with what they say because confident people smile so you want to practice smiling a little as you talk I don't think you should plaster on a phony smile that's just not me but you want to practice smiling a little so in other words instead of a stone face or that scowl be aware of your facial expression and if you're happy then show it with your face Sarah Silverman a comedian was talking to a young friend of hers who had that scowl on her face even though she claimed she wasn't upset and Sarah Silverman said I'm going to change your life right now if that's your default face put a smile on there so a lot of us need to warm up our facial expressions so we come across more confident in what we're saying so use confident nonverbal or takeaway strategies from this lesson are to use direct eye contact that is number one avoid up talk and if you do this you want to ask a friend to listen and give you that give you that advice and then come down at the end of your sentences and then practice smiling a little warm that face up and communicate that confidence so practice these tips and strategies as Jim Rohn said motivation is what gets you started habit is what keeps you going speaking of nice concise statements that's an amazing one and it couldn't be more true so you're learning some things by watching these lessons once I recommend you watch them as many times as you need to to put these tips into practice and make them a habit it's been a pleasure learning with you through this mini course I'm concise clear and confident communication I encourage you to put them into practice and I look forward to learning with you and the future

Channel: Communication Coach Alex Lyon

Views: 216,514

Rating: 4.9112396 out of 5

Keywords: communication skills coach, communication skills, Communication Skills, How To Improve Communication Skill, effective communication, good communication skills, effective communication skills, improving communication skills, how to improve my communication skills, communication course, communication skills course, communication skills course online, effective communication skills training, communication skills training, effective communication skills tactical training

Id: 6pYSbdGiDYw

Length: 43min 30sec (2610 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2017