How to make an impact in your everyday communication | Eric Molin | TEDxRWTHAachen

I'd like to begin with a quick question for everyone and if you've ever had this experience just hold your hand up in the air that if you've ever had something that's been important to you it could be an idea it could be something that you've been thinking about that you want to share maybe with an audience of one maybe with a small group maybe with a large group so you've got this idea you've got this message and for whatever reason you just didn't whether because you couldn't think of the right way to formulate it the right way to say it or perhaps you didn't have the courage at that moment has anyone here ever had that experience got to see your hands if you have okay a few of us it's quite normal by the way next question that you have a message and you did try to share it you presented it and The Listener just rejected it they weren't interested maybe they didn't even listen or they didn't understand despite you giving it your best shot has that ever happened to you could I see your hands okay so it's my goal that by the end of my talk you'll have just a small handful of ideas and tools that first off you'll grab opportunities to get out there and share what's important to you and you'll have better outcomes from those talks my name is Eric Molin and this is what I do I help people say what they have to say to the people they have to say it to to get the results that they're looking for these are the four ideas I'm going to be talking to you about today this is the impact presenting method and as you can see it's not particularly rocket science I'm going to walk you through these four steps and the best way that you can use them in your Communications so we go back to that first question anxiety speaking anxiety actually stops a lot of people from going on stage as Harmon mentioned it is one of the number one fears that people have close to 74 percent of people have this fear and so question is this how many of you get anxious before you have to give a talk maybe to one person or to a group can I see your hands okay a few hands kind of halfway going up okay here's a question something to think about is this exclusively anxiety what do I mean by that so there's a lot of reasons to get anxious before we talk maybe we're yeah we are afraid of rejection we're afraid that we can't get it out but there's a secondary emotion that's always in the background and in fact it tends to be the dominant emotion but we don't look for it so we don't see it and that emotion is excitement now there's been some research on this but one of the experiments that I was most impressed with was done by Allison wood Brooks of Harvard Business School published in Harvard Business Review where she took two groups of people and she said okay you're gonna go out and you're gonna get presentations to a group an audience of strangers the first group was given advice and just here's the question again how many of you when saying to someone ah I have to give a talk I'm so nervous have ever gotten this advice ah just relax it'll be fine has anyone has anyone ever had that can I see your hand somebody's told you yeah just relax it'll be fine okay great and did it work that's it so that was the one group the second group was given a different set of instructions which were before you get out on stage we want you to keep in mind you're participating in a really important experiment which Can Help Unlimited number of people with anxiety so before you get out there remind yourself how important it is what you're about to do and get excited about it so instead of telling yourself to calm down like the first group the second group was that tell yourself and celebrate this excitement very interesting that the second group that told themselves to be excited outperformed the first group on every metric that was measured the audience was surveyed afterwards how did you find the speakers and in the second group they found that the speakers were seen as more persistent more confident but also seen as more competence and spent longer on stage now what does this have to do with all of you well if you think yeah I'm gonna have to talk about something and yeah I am anxious do yourself a huge favor please if take this away from my talk to also remind yourself what is the upside of a successful presentation some of you may have to present your schoolwork to your professor or to a class or to an Examining Board and if you're successful you'll graduate and get out of here some of you may have research that you're just that you're passionate about that you know can change lives and if you're successful in your presentation you'll get the funding necessary to realize that or it could just simply be presenting yourself at a job interview and if you do well you'll get hired all of those outcomes are things that you can get excited about and if you focus on that that's what you'll start to feel instead of ah you know the anxiety the shaking hands the butterflies and the stem you'll feel more of ah this is something that is really going to change my life to change the lives of others and focus on that and you'll have a much better outcome so that is the first step is taking your anxiety and changing it to anticipation actually you don't even have to change it it's there you just have to recognize the feeling that's a little bit of what comes now before the second step is how do we take our message and package it so that people not only understand it but they feel what we feel this is where I talk about brain friendly content so I want you all to imagine the last five presentations you've been to and tell me if this sounds familiar you walk in you grab a seat the presenter gets on stage good morning everyone click and here we have 300 400 words maybe on a slide and the speaker turns around and proceeds to read it to you has that ever happened to you can I see your hands if you've had that EXP okay and do we enjoy that as an audience and forget about enjoyment is that even effective so here I am in Germany we have a large International audience I'm willing to bet that a lot of you enjoy movies with subtitles when you watch a movie with subtitles what are you doing are you reading the subtitles or are you enjoying the movie and this is the thing which is so critical is that people can't read and listen to you at the same time and if they have to choose they're going to choose to read so this is not brain friendly content what is brain friendly content knowledge is not brain friendly content knowledge is fact is not even the most important thing because if you think about it right now chat GPT a few you know queries okay a prompt this is what I need and you have all the knowledge in the world at your fingertips within seconds so anybody can do this that's not what brings value to your audience it makes them want to listen but your experience with that subject this is what people want to hear they want to know why is this important to you so when you're creating your message again for whatever audience it is make sure to tell them how it was that you ended up there in front of them what do I mean if you're pitching for research for example at what stage did you realize that this was a huge problem that needed solving what challenges did you face see when we share our experience with a listener we start to harmonize we start to produce hormones in our brain which make us want to solve whatever problem is being shared with us and so whenever possible whenever possible include that personal story and I see a lot of you in the audience you might be thinking yeah I'm young I don't have a lot of experiences to share that absolutely doesn't matter you can share somebody else's experience you can share the experience of a friend a family member your father your mother an uncle and how that inspired you and just including that will make absolutely a huge impact on your listener that's what it means to have brain friendly content so whenever you're doing this if you do that you will have better outcomes the second benefit of including an experience is it also reduces your own anxiety because instead of having to remember a long list of bullet points you just have to remember the experience and you will because there's nothing special there to remember I mean it's in your memory it's there so that's a little bit about how to approach it that's a little bit about packaging the third step is dare to be enthusiastic how many of you have had such a experience with a presenter good morning everybody my name is Eric molden I'm here today to talk to you about something that's really important I'm excited you can see how excited I am have we had that experience too can I see the hands the thing is if it's not important to you it won't be important to your audience if it's you're not passionate about it your audience The Listener won't be passionate either and while yes storytelling matters if you think about it this way in step two this is like wrapping a present for someone that you care about you know you're taking this message you're putting it in the Box you're wrapping it you're delivered but the delivery is important you don't just say hey here's your present and just throw it at them instead you want to make sure that they fully experience what you experience and the best way to do that is whenever possible get out of your chair and stand up when you're talking if you're on at home home office virtual Zoom you can do that there as well and I've seen huge improvements from people instead of sitting in a little corner of their kitchen you know trying to be enthusiastic to get up and move around but also use your hands when you're speaking and then now there's a third piece of Reese the fourth piece of research here that Vanessa van Edwards she's a researcher in the U.S with the company science of people they do behavioral research and she wanted to know what makes certain TED Talks go viral and why others just flop and what she found were that TED Talks where the speakers used their hands more were rated higher than those where they didn't in fact the highest rated talks the speaker used their hands almost 650 times in an 18 minute period the lowest rated talks 250 times so almost a third less so get out there if you're gonna do that and let your hands help you get across your message this is what people will see and feel much more than the content of your language that's the third step and the fourth step finally is feedback so very early on in my career I was got experience with being videoed and I learned a tremendous amount about myself because yeah we as speakers don't have the most accurate idea of how we come across to the audience but when you see yourself on video you do so my advice to all of you is whenever you have an important presentation ask somebody hey can you shoot video of me now I know none of us are going to want to watch that video I didn't want to watch mine but in my case for example I I'm neurodivergent I was diagnosed with Asperger's on the autism spectrum and people who are diagnosed as such have issues in communication and what I saw in my video was that there were gestures there were things I was doing that were weakening my message that people could see as a distraction from the important things I was trying to tell them and through recognizing and seeing that I was able to stop doing them and so if you want to become a better public speaker film yourself watch yourself and don't be afraid to ask people for their input just one key piece of advice don't say hey how did I do but instead ask them what's something that I did well what's something that you enjoyed and the more you ask that question the more you'll build an accurate representation of who you are and the fact is most of us are a lot better at public speaking than we give ourselves credit for so that's my takeaway for all of you first of all get excited about it second of all include the personal experience of how you got there in front of them third of all be enthusiastic show how you feel about your message not just in your words but in your body language and finally look for something that you can improve and look for something that you're doing well every time and if all of you follow that advice the impact you can make will be truly unlimited thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 2,116

Keywords: Communication, Education, English, Learning, Personal growth, Presentation, Self improvement, Speech, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:53662]

Id: Z9d7qH0FdJo

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 10 2023