Improve Your Communication Skills

sometimes i catch myself wondering what makes a good communicator or speaker then i realize it is authenticity and passion authenticity what's up youtube communication we spend a good deal of our waking moments good deal of our lives communicating isn't it we communicate in various manners various mediums and in various ways sometimes we are conscious of that and sometimes we are not so given that we communicate in so many ways using so many medium and so much of our lives maybe you should look at what we could do to improve our communication skills isn't it when this video that's what we're gonna do or at least that's what i'm gonna try and do i'm not an expert in this field but i have had a few experiences and i'd like to share that i've learned a few things in my own career in my own life not just in the software field but in other areas as well and because people who know me and have sort of spent time with me have in many many ways give me feedback in odd manners that essentially says there is something about the way i talk or the way i explain things to people that has a huge impact on them and this is not just in software it's you know whatever else you know i do so i sat back a few years ago trying to understand what is it that i'm doing or what is it that i feel that others are not doing and are doing you know so i'm feeding off of some people who are also good communicators and i try and incorporate that in what i do when i communicate and conversely if i see somebody doing something they shouldn't be doing then i'm making sure i don't do that so again i'm not some sort of an expert in this field but i want to share with you specifically to do with sort of the career you know when you're at the workplace or these days because we are spending most of our time on probably software you know meeting software where we either just hear each other's voices or maybe in some cases video and voices so i'll talk a little bit about that area as well but mainly it's about communicating with your peers communicating within a professional organization and maybe you can use some of that to communicate with your family with your friends i'm also going to be touching about touching on public speaking for those of you who are interested in wanting to be public speakers then i'm going to be sharing some of my experiences there as well if you don't want to don't intend to don't plan to be a public speaker i'm going to say why not why shouldn't you be so i would highly recommend people who are trying to be good communicators to put themselves out there you know and yes maybe the first few times you're going to fail drastically but that's how you're going to learn but you're not going to learn a thing without failure so the only way to learn is to fail and learn from the failures and move forward if you think you can prepare yourself for the very first speech or the very first whatever without and you're going to be a blast on day one at least in my experience that's not happening it has to come from a lot of experience so you need to get that experience okay so the first question should be why should we improve our communication skills certainly at the workplace but even as i said with your friends and family and other people maybe you know you're looking to talk to an investor or i know a prospective employer in an interview right so these these tips that i'm trying to impart today are sort of going to help you in various areas of your lives i hope i'll also share some anecdotes from my own personal experiences maybe some of that will ring a bell in your minds i'm sure many of you have had similar experiences you've probably not paid attention to it like i didn't for many many years i just thought you know it's just somebody trying to be nice to me or something but because it happened so many times that i had to eventually kind of sit back and say like this is not like like a coincidence right so anyway i'm going to share some of my anecdotal experiences over the course of this video hopefully it's not boring to you or hopefully that inspires you to look at look back in your at your own lives and see what you know has transpired in your past to extract from that and use that analyze it and use that for your own benefit so why improve our communication skills essentially better communication gives you better influence what is influence it's very broader i'm using in a very broad sense there's many many things influence in terms of you are able to change people's minds influence in terms of people are willing to listen to what you have to say influence in terms of um people following you because you're doing something many many ways but hopefully it's all being used in a positive sense you want to influence people in the negative sense it also it also plays a big big role in your career in promotions there are many aspects i'll talk about that as far as promotions are concerned also many many aspects to it not just better communication but then many of the other things so if you want to be understood if you want to be able to explain if you want people to hear what you have to say at the workplace in your family amongst friends communication is the key so i'm going to hit upon some basic communication skills that you need to improve right off the bat i think i see this a lot amongst a lot of people at the workplace and you know in my family amongst friends on tv well not so much tv but youtube [Music] and if you can make those minor adjustments i mean they may not be easy to make but they're minor in the scheme of things i think immediately it'll be a game changer for you the fillers you use when you talk the arms and the eyes and the you know whatever the fillers right even whatever by the way is a filler i use something like you know sometimes but i'm not a i check myself but mainly there are people who use you know a lot i like you know these are all fillers and what i would recommend in place of these fillers is just pause pausing is extremely powerful you can use pausing to your advantage you can use pausing to get people hooked because if you're saying something then one of the sayings i use a lot would be something like common practice you see how you're waiting if you haven't heard the phrase before you you wonder what what about common practice right common practice is not common sense so two things have happened one is i've kept you on the hook but you're also able to catch up with what i'm saying common practice okay quantum practice you're starting to get examples in your head of common practice i've not just said it as common practices not common sense but that won't make sense to anyone you might have to hear me four five times even then the impact is not going to be as great as the way i say with the pause so you can use pauses extremely importantly now you don't want to overdo it but i use it a lot when i speak even when i'm making my videos when i'm on a call with people when i'm in person when i'm speaking in the public this is a very powerful tool so rather than using the arms and the errors and you knows and the whatevers the likes just pause it gives you a moment to think and rephrase your sentences of whatever you need to do i'm not sure why exactly you say like or whatever or whatever but pause okay that's the first thing i think so i've been told by colleagues at work shiv every time you come on the phone people just stop and listen why is that i said like how would i know [Music] but did happen so many people saying similar kinds of things including my managers and people who are an audience on my team i've got think like i don't know what it is that like what could i be doing i'm just saying but you know what's on my mind what i realized then is i'm saying it in a clear succinct manner there are no fillers people are able to continue their train of thought because i'm speaking in a very streamlined fashion i'm not adding the um the moment he says um and i can speak for myself when i hear people saying arms and the likes my mind is on off and on a tangent you're not keeping my attention and now it's giving me if i was a listener an opportunity to kind of button if you will because my mind's gone off on a different tangent something of something else but you're speaking of something else so it's best to speak in a clear concise manner and concise is key you don't want to kind of meander and kind of get to the point i know it's cool my history teacher would say something like i don't know if you guys have it of course today especially in india but back in when i was in school history was something like okay explain in 500 words why blah blah blah blah blah blah whatever you know some historic event or this historic person said something or did something whatever in 500 words i can tell you that in a sentence and i would and my http says if you're sending me telegrams sokka does it fine line between being overly concise especially when you're talking about something for the first time with this new group of people if you're talking with your team and they've heard you before and you know again about saying the same thing then yes of course be as concise as you possibly need to be but when you're speaking to another set of people who never heard you talking about that one thing or are not really familiar with it that subject or whatever the topic of discussion might be you might have to be a little less telegraphic but certainly you don't meander you got to be very clear in the way you speak sp streamline imagine yourself learning about something you start here you go there you go there you go there you go there and you get here you have to know how to formulate your sentences your conversation to make it as a progressive you know start to end beginning middle and end rather than going if you've seen some of those movies you know the non-linear movies they'll start at the end then they'll go back to something in the middle then they'll go back to something in the front and they'll come back you can't speak like that if you want to be understood okay people don't have the time to piece it all in their heads you need to speak in a way that they are forming a picture at least that's what i'm trying i don't know what other people do especially when i'm talking about something technical or you know dietary based oh by the way remind speaking of diets in case anyone's interested here i have been fasting since the last video i made so that's two weeks water only fast i plan to do it for another to be so basically a whole month of water only if you are interested in this sort of thing about diet and health and all that please visit my other channel on living with intent i'll put a link in the descriptions below okay that's that i don't want to bore anyone here in the technical field and i lost my train of thought what i was talking about okay yes it depends on what the field is but for me i always try and because i'm picturizing in my head i'm constructing a thing in my head and as i'm constructing it from from from the ground up i'm starting to explain that so that i'm going in a flow in a certain flow that is going to help you understand what this thing is i'm not jumping around i'm speaking slow enough to give you the opportunity to catch up especially if it's new to you or something is new to you i have to be cognizant of who i'm speaking to if it's a crowd of people i'm speaking to if it's managers if i say you know who are not so technical or maybe used to be technical you have to know your audience and speak accordingly now you can only do those kind of things if you know your subject all right also tell you when i first came to the u.s i think a lot of indians have they speak very fast and i certainly did when i came here people were trying to lip read i'm not sure what they were trying to do but they're like like looking at my left hand i was like what is he saying exactly [Music] and in fact one of my ceo says if you're speaking too fast i can't read your lips i said why are you reading my lips because i can't understand what you say so be cognizant if you're working offshore for a team that's onshore in whichever country if you're in india for example or if you come from other ethnic backgrounds you know other countries i'm not sure whatever the difficulty people might have with your accents those are all things you need to consider right okay so speaking of an understanding and knowing your topic so that you can you can talk to different groups of people you can talk to the junior dev the mid dev the senior dev you can talk to your leads you can talk to the managers you can talk to the ceos they each require a different level of depth but a different focus right managers are more interested in benefits and time ceos might be more interested in in cost and savings or what that product fetches if it's a you know product so you have to be able to twist and turn the same thing to different people based on what their focus is and you need to understand that focus i mean you'd have done that before before you go and talk to your managers before you go and talk to your ceo for example start getting caught kind of off guard all right talking about advancements in in your career and promotions demonstrating or being a good communicator and people recognizing you're a good communicator is key i know many people are saying but you know in this company i'm never going to get promoted i'm thinking it's not because there's some prejudice against you or whatever your ethnic background may be it is because you are not communicating they cannot have people in management positions unless you are a good communicator this that's just it if you're an architect i can tell you what if you're an architect and you don't communicate you need to go talk to your team and ask them if you are doing a good job of communicating okay it's most likely that they're going to say you're not which means you need to improve your communication skills you need to get this constant feedback from your team because as an architect your primary job is communication you're communicating the design and the architect to your teams you're making sure they understand what it is they're doing and why they're doing it so that they are buying in to your recommendation it is not a i do because i said so job architecture is not about just putting the foot down and saying that's it's my system my architecture you shall do what i tell you now it's about communicating your design to your team in such a way that they are buying in you need their buy-in you need them to be sold on your design you need them to be sold on what it is they're doing and spending their day and day out that team will be a force to reckon with if you communicate your intentions your reasonings and you're open to their feedback so that you can improve your design i know many many architects they just say this is my system i've designed it just do what i tell you no that's not what architecture is an architect primary job is communication communication to the team communication to the stakeholders you know upstream as to why your design why your architecture is the right architecture for whatever it is that you're trying to build what benefits it gives the business from a moderate standpoint maybe from a business advantage standpoint and all those things and for the team from a technical standpoint right but along with communication there are some other things that could influence your ability to advance in your career you know getting promotions one of my job one of my bosses in a previous job said shift dress for where you want to be not where you're at or something that effect essentially what you're saying is if you're in certain position and you want to get to that next position how do people in that position dress up you need to dress like that now so people will perceive you to be there right but it's i think it's a lot more than that it's not just about dressing it's about how you carry yourself i mean you're going to sit down you know and slouch are you going to be sitting up straight when you walk do you walk with your shoulders kind of caved in or do you walk you know with the shoulders back when you stand and talk to people are you straight or are you gonna like oh god they know they you know body language body language is i don't know enough about body language at all but i know there is a lot of influence and that's one of the ways you communicate without even knowing it'd be communicating through body language you know i could be washing the dishes and i'm communicating something while i'm washing dishes maybe if you watched me watching dishes you probably would think oh yeah i think he doesn't like this thing at all or he's he's in the zone you know he's just doing his washing of dishes but his mind is somewhere else i don't know but i'm just saying body language is key so at the workplace even if you are amongst friends or family especially when the conversation is an important conversation important in whatever you think is important body language the way you carry yourself the way you sit your facial expressions all these things make a difference how much influence you have on people depends on a whole lot on this this body language so now it's not just the verbal communication you might do but also the way you carry yourself the way you dress i used to be quite a bit heavier you know 10 12 years ago and i can tell you now it may sound so unfair to some of you who are still heavier you know than you should be it's a fact people relate better to people look good male female and it is not a conscious thing it's a subconscious thing the same people who were treating me kind of okay you know many years ago started to treat me differently when i went for interviews it was like a whole nother experience i mean i was shocked to say the least that the same me talking in the same manner just had a completely different level of influence over the people i'm communicating with just because i had lost weight it's not i don't think a conscious thing it's just a subconscious thing it just happens you know and i would say the same way in the way you you know hair and you know i know an i.t feel we have long hair and unkind beards and sloppy dressing jeans and whatever you know it's up to you but i would say if you're depending on the company you're in right [Music] like i can't speak for everyone's companies but generally speaking i would say that in the career you know in the workplace keeping yourself well groomed and well dressed and a good body weight carrying your self correctly posture sitting down standing up talking to people walking everything it's just something you form as a habit once it becomes a habit that's just how you you do it you don't have to constantly remind yourself but it's going to take a while for you to get to the point where that becomes a habit and a lot of women will do that you know it's like it gives the wrong signal like why you sort of are you scared of me are you are you scared of like interacting with people you're not sure of yourself like i'm not sure what's going on right just stand straight keep your shoulders back nothing's gonna happen in fact what you're gonna do is give people a sense of confidence even if you don't even if you're not at least they'll see you as somebody who's confident and then you'll start to believe it and so on and so forth on the subject of communication as we do today through the internet on these meeting software like microsoft teams or zoom or whatever microphones if you can't be if people cannot hear you clearly i don't mean loudly i'm telling you clearly big difference right if they can't hear you clearly they're not listening if they're having trouble understanding you because there's something wrong with your audio especially the microphone side they're not paying attention so it is i know many people who bought and i can't really tell you the the make of the model of these headsets that probably have a boom arm microphone which is important you want a microphone like the iphone things with the ear thing and a microphone dangling but that's not what want you want something that brings the microphone close to your mouth not in front of you where you start hearing the the peas you know the the plosives as we call it you want to keep it here so it's not in the front of your mouth but it's like on the side i should reach there and okay so you just make a one-time investment so that people can understand what you have to say i mean i don't think there's a whole lot so look around see you know the people might have if you hear people in the meeting who sound extremely clear i don't mean loud i mean clear then ask them what are you using for your like headset or whatever it is that you're doing so i think that's a very important thing if you're on video then certainly you need to have enough lighting oh the thing is the room you're talking and i know a lot of people you know just because we have been caught by surprise like i mean we didn't expect to be working from home and maybe we don't have the space or the setup to be working from home you need to prevent echoes reverberations in your rooms you need to have carpeting around you on the floor you need to have curtains or some soft materials on the walls around you and maybe even on the ceiling so that it's not an echo that echo or reverb causes your voice to be extremely difficult to understand even though they can hear you loud and clear the problem is that loudness along with the echo is interfering with your with the ability for people to understand what you're saying so be mindful of these things we this is our life i think for the next six months maybe you know maybe different depending on which part of the world you're in but nonetheless i mean even if you do work from home two three days in a week then it applies to you as well so that's important audio is important just stephen spielberg have said and i love this the saying it says he said audio is half the picture get it beautifully said because audio is half the picture in the sense there's audio video but also already have the picture meaning audio has half the influence even though you're making a movie audio is half the influence the visual is the other half so audio is key i know a lot of people on my channel here will ask me what mic do you use do this if they hear the difference so if you speak clear concise efficiently then there are a or why would you do that why would you want to do that of course people will pay attention to what you have to say people will remember also what you have to say you saw a pause there people will remember what you have to say pausing is very very important when you talk because it gives people the time to catch up it gives people a time to understand and at their own pace what it is you're saying before you move forward you'll be a lot more effective in what you're saying doesn't the impact you will have on people and their ability to assimilate and the ability to to listen believe what you're saying is going to be a lot more impactful okay while you're talking your tone of voice is key under what multiple situations there's one tone of voice that you need to maintain i don't mean the monotonous way of talking i mean a certain level i know people who are on our you know scrum calls and other meeting times when i meet with them they are talking as if i'm you i am yes i'm halfway across the world sometimes and with some people or i'm in another state or another city with you know when i talk to some people especially today but if you you if you're trying to project to me because i'm so far away that's not going to help so you don't want to project you want to kind of talk much much louder than you normally do as if i talk to you like you're there so if you're sitting there with the camera which is like probably two arm lengths away from me now then i talk to you at that level at that volume level that tone all right so there's a few things that happen with that keeping that that tone of voice it keeps people calm because when you project it makes people uneasy especially if you're doing a public speaking thing you got a microphone literally right here sometimes [Music] or here yes there's a huge auditorium of people thousands of people in front of you they can all hear you by the way you just talk normally and the audio person will adjust your volume based on how you're talking right so if you talk like this normally even though there's a you know thousand people in front i was gonna say a million people i've never had a million people i don't have that kind of influence but if if you have the microphone here or over here you will if you talk normally considering that the microphone is like you know either two inches away or six inches away from your mouth there's no reason to project if you have a headset on your uh on your headset microphone on airside [Music] same thing the microphone's right here no need to project if there's a microphone here this is about 80 well my span about 10 inches about 10 inches away from my mouth i speak according to that because i'm looking at a camera now i'm actually looking at you and i'm saying okay you're here right i don't need to project my voice you're right here that tone of voice it turns out is also soothing and calming because there are certain i don't know about the sound in the voice but you know there are multiple harmonics that are emitted at that volume for most people and that somehow is more convincing is more calming people want to hear and listen to what you have to say because you're speaking and in that tone of voice be calm and be assertive don't get anxious don't get whiny and a lot of people start to whine when they're getting all worked up about you're not listening to me you're not hearing me you're like no just be calm assertive calm and assertive sort of meaning you are saying it something with you mean it without being overly aggressive calm positive if you when you need to be it's like you're being conversative all the time but generally speaking when you want to be heard and listen to speak in the tone of voice that keeps people calm if you're constantly projecting and raising your voice first of all you won't last a whole session you know the time that i speak like for a whole day and i can't last a whole day i'm going to have to project all day long so you have to learn to be in control of your voice now we're going to talk about communication when it comes to items emails written communication skills but sometimes even verbal mainly at the workplace right i'm going to give you some examples that i've had over the years so you will get a sense of what i'm saying let's imagine i am or email written you know skills and this could apply to verbal also depending on how you're interacting with your people most of the time i am hey then i say hey are you free yes i'm free i have a question what the heck i mean this is probably used to be the case maybe when you're doing i don't know back in the day when the internet was just started and maybe there was no bandwidth then you had a text editor or you know tough screen or something maybe that made sense you know these days that doesn't make sense you have a question to ask you might just ask it in one breath hey i have a question about blah blah blah blah you know and just speak it out just going back and forth 20 times just to kind of get to the point doesn't even make sense right so communication as it takes many forms and of course we use many mediums these days but it's also about how you interact with people either in person verbally or through email or through text and then the second aspect is if you ask someone a question and that person has to in turn ask you a question because they haven't understood your question then that's a signal for you to improve the way you asked the question most times it is because you have not brought them in the context there's no context you just started to say something and ask them a question they have no idea what you're talking about so it is incumbent upon you to give them a context and then ask the question even though let's say you know i'm on your team we had a meeting in the morning and then i've gone off to do my work you know what i'm doing right as the let's say the lead you know what i'm doing and then towards the end of the day i say blah blah blah it's happening but who where what like give the context so on my part i should say hey you remember i was working on blah blah and this is blah blah and therefore this and now blah blah blah right yes it takes time but you know what people would enjoy receiving your ims literally they would look forward to receiving your items or your emails or having you talk on the on the calls it is a very powerful thing communication it influences many many aspects about your interpersonal interactions with people in the teams and at home family friends all of that so don't take these things lightly always bring people in the context ask your questions in such a way that they don't have another question to understand your question they may have another question to dig deeper if you will but even that you should have anticipated for example you know i did try on this and i had an acceptance got an exception what exception what is the message well i don't remember well that is not communication if you were a dev i mean i can send a user calling up and saying i saw an error on the screen but i don't remember it that's a totally different thing as a dev if you were talking to people on your team if you can't give that basic information about what the problem was what type of exception it was what the error message was what you did what's the point it doesn't make sense now you can translate that or you can take that and translate that into different business verticals or depending what you're trying to do in your life the idea is to give full information not just half-page information because you don't have the time to communicate if you want to be heard you need to take the time to communicate nobody's going to listen to you if you don't explain things correctly so if you have a problem say you know i was trying blah blah blah and when i did this i got this exception and this was the message maybe take a screenshot of this like one of those things you need by using a screenshot might actually help extract all the information possible so that when you go to someone for help they have no questions about what else for them to come into the frame of mind so that they can help you make sense it is your responsibility as the one asking for help or is the one having trouble to provide this person with every possible information that they will need in order to be able to help you without having to ask you any more questions but did you try this did you try that unless this you know maybe it's beyond your death maybe you're a junior dev and you couldn't possibly have thought about doing that okay so i'm not saying like to beat yourself about something you could have never thought about but it's in your within your realm you should have thought about it but at the very least extract all the information you possibly can and ask the question or make that statement in a way that that basic information is understood i was working on blah blah blah yesterday and i did this and this is what happened and based on that i got this exception of type blah and had this message okay that's enough you can't just say i got an exception what exception what message right the bare minimum so the idea is when you are trying to communicate with people bring them into context give them all the information you possibly can so that they understand or in some cases if you're asking for help they can help you if they have to ask you more questions on top of your original statement to discover better what it is you're trying to say you've not done a good job of trying to explain or communicate that to them okay so that that means i'll give you a few more examples which are i laugh at that now because you know it's like it takes me a while to understand what somebody's saying but it's a good example so i'm going to read something from i took these notes so there's one only two examples by the way the so-and-so class is returning a different set of data and causing an issue okay i know the so-and-so class part different set of data causing an issue what different set of data what issue is is it people being lazy when they're trying to communicate but that's the wrong thing to do that's the wrong time to be lazy communication is such a key aspect of our lives we spend so much of time communicating consciously and subconsciously that we can't afford to take it lightly you can't make statements like exercise classes returning some a different set of data what the what is the difference of data what was it expecting in the first place what is it returning now i don't know i mean you're working on the system yes i mean you know maybe i should be clued in maybe you think yeah you should know everything maybe not it doesn't matter provide the context it is expecting this it got that and this causing some issue what issue give me that information as well right what issue okay then another example was in this case the person was asked to do a certain test if you will i mean you know we have to figure out if the system would work on this machine or that machine or through these folders or that folder whatever so that was the basic thing that this person was asked to do and then i got a like a message from from this person um i i performed the test uh in this on this machine and it worked as expected i observe one thing though the comparer is not working as expected the only is it's only working if the files are in the same order huh it may not make sense to you rambling like what because for the task that the person was given to do all i needed to hear was it's working oh it's not working and the first sentence was is you know it's working that test passed which means we are our hypothesis or something has been verified so we know we're good all right cool however i observed blah blah blah blah blah blah you're like what comparer like what the heck is going on what comparer and then i realize he's talking about his unit tests completely different topic in the same breath literally you know if you want to change topic maybe you should use a different you know how an i am you hit enter that becomes one thing and maybe you can hit enter again or maybe you bring me in the content oh and by the way you know i was doing this testing and in this testing blog have you experienced stuff like this have you done things like this i'm not claiming that i'm far less in my ability to communicate i'm still learning myself i'm just hoping to impart certain pointers here as i've learned over the years but yes i also have a long way to go but these are things that i am making sure i do and maybe that's why i'm bringing them up in in this video because i think these are simple things to fix you want your team members to look forward to your items to look forward to hearing you on the calls look forward to hearing uh receiving emails from you you need to communicate if you want a promotion at your workplace if you want your leads and managers to recognize that you are different from everyone else communication okay let's talk now about more towards public speaking but you might be able to use that honestly public speaking in the sense of in a conference room maybe you're just talking to a bunch of friends or you know a big family and you're trying to influence them in some way about something right that's important to you so it could apply to those things and of course all the stuff i talked about in the previous sort of chapter if you will in this video applies to this and vice versa everything i say here could also apply to your sort of professional communication the first thing i will say i know a lot of people want to think that they could read up and start talking about it read one day understand it next day they can start talking or start teaching it no it's not possible i i'm not the smartest person i know i'm not the sharpest student tool mr shared but there is a problem with that way of thinking and the problem is authenticity i think being authentic in who you are and what you're trying to teach people is key if you are not authentic in in whatever you're saying by that i mean if you want to teach someone a topic you should know that topic inside and out if you want to talk about to some somebody about that and health you should know that that should be in bread in you you should be living and breathing it then it's authentic if you're just making it up if you're simply doing it for the sake of speaking or doing it for the sake of looking smart that's not authentic and people will see through it people will see through it the other reason to be authentic is and of course with authenticity also comes a lot of practice meaning it's once it's in you once it's a part of you that topic that subject once you've been living and breathing it it is just you you follow what i'm saying there is no memorization required there's no practice required at that point but of course to get there it requires a lot of practice to get there requires that you have used that thing you've spoken that topic use the technology many many many many times over so you can speak to it just extemple if you're speaking on whatever the topic is it has to be a part of you the best speakers i found are people who just know their subject they are so in tune with what they're saying there is you can't beat it they have anticipated all your questions they know exactly how to say something to get you to ask that question and then they will answer it that does not come with just practice certainly practice is required certainly hours and hours of practice is required but it comes because you feel you believe and breathe and feel that topic you live and you feel it that is you are completely completely authentic inauthenticity or incongruency is easily detected people may not even realize it's not like oh this guy's inauthentic it's they're not it's not clicking they're not making a connection they're just tuning off they sense it they feel it can i'll give you some anecdotes some real life experiences i've had from many many years ago when i was in a different life in some cases i'll rush through a few of them another life i was working i used to be an electronics engineer and at a factory and manufacture electronic components for automobiles and these were kits that i produced so at one point early in the morning somebody one of my clients or not my clients but a new client called up saying hey i want all right kiddos sorry in the morning i said okay well you tell me where your video is i'll come and install it myself because i mean there's no way to get somebody else to come at that point in the morning get to leave for his factory to go somewhere long distance and fine so i went there you know installed and i don't do a lot of talking i'm not a very talkative person at least uh some people might think i am but i'm i don't think i can talk my head off about a certain topic but generally i'm not a very talkative person busy doing my thing you know just installing this kit in this car and you know i got my head on the hood in the hood and he's standing by watching not saying much ask me a few questions every once in a while and you know i'd go on and then we had a bit of a chit chat you know after i'd done i tested the whole thing and see working fine and i was expecting to to get paid and he asked me a few point questions he's older than me and i was a kid at the time i was like in my 20s and uh he says you know i just i watch you work it's it's so much sincerity in the way you do stuff i'm gonna send a bunch of my friends to you okay he sent 30 people i mean that like made my day you know of course i couldn't do it all in the day but you know you know what i mean that to me that was like the first experience i had um because in that whole field there were many many experiences i had like that too many to even you know call you know bore you here with but the in the software area i'd build a software product one time this is not like i was not employed by anyone it was my own software product and i'd gone to talk to a certain client a very big client and i got my foot in the door uh with the with the father the the main person and he had two sons who were like my age both part of the business but i'd sort of got an introduction with the father and so i asked him when i met him you know a few days ago prior to that that you know i'd like to meet you say i come to the office and you know we can talk because they got an appointment and so now i'm at the office here talking to them and halfway not even halfway maybe quarter way into the demonstration i had a projector and you know demonstrating the software we've built and it all was all going well until one of the suns are saying can you interface so integrate with blah blah blah software and i said no we know that the software doesn't do that yet and he said well it's key for the software to integrate with the software as we don't do it at this point and i honestly promise that we would make some sort of an integration between the software that was an accounting software this was a completely different software i said but um i can look at it maybe you know if it in the future if you want you know i can look at that anyway couldn't get on with the presentation i was a little disappointed i'm i was hoping they wouldn't notice that and and then i packed up you're still talking about it you know we're talking which while i'm packing up my projector and laptop and everything else and then you know finally i thank them for the time and showcase walked out and i'm they're at their office on the ground floor or in the us as you call it first floor and i'm walking towards my car i hear somebody calling my name and look back is the the father the the ceo and says we don't come back and you know walk back he says i want to do something with you what can we do together hey you got a long story short they became one of my biggest clients i mean they were a big company and so they became one of our biggest clients that's what i'm talking about sincerity authenticity it is key i'll give you another story about sincerity authentic authenticity in the same field and the same the same product kind of thing they've gone to another customer he said well you know i have to get all my people to see the the software and if they all like it i all like it i think oh my gosh how many people can i convince you know then we'll buy it it was a very expensive software so it wasn't like you know something to sneeze at so i'm in this conference room at their location and the whole room is full and he's right at the back this person the ceo and as i'm getting the demo he's not look at all looking you know he's just i mean he's looking but not actually paying attention and not asking questions the other asking questions i know they're involved i'm doing my damn i'm you know in my elements doing my demo i know this product i believe this product is going to help any company that uses it so it's not like i'm selling them snake oil i am fully confident about the product i know the product inside and out you can ask me any question about this thing i can tell you anything and think about it and i totally believe that i'm selling you a good thing okay so that's the sincerity and authenticity part of it anyway if you do the demo and i've gone to the office i'm hoping to make a sale here and so i said hey by the way so i'll be going to sign up dotted line he says uh yeah i said but you never saw the product he said i don't need to see the product i was watching you all all the time and you was you sold me like in the first 10 minutes that's the authenticity and the sincerity that comes out people pick up on it it is extremely powerful so when you're talking about a topic if you're feeling not so confident about the topic then people will pick up on that if you're confident about the topic people will pick up on that so if you want to be a public speaker the first thing you want to do is understand what you're talking about live and breathe it it has to be a part of you it can't be a memorized thing and there's another reason for memorization or not having it memorized we have one brain so there's one cpu core right because there's one cpu core we can only do one thing at a time you can multitask but that means you're stopping this part to do that part on one core if you have to remember what to talk about i mean you'll see me i'm not even in this communication thing i'm not a big you know master talking about this stuff i hardly ever talk about it but i'm speaking from my experiences i don't need notes necessarily i'm not really there's no teleprompter there you know underneath the camera wherever people keep them i'm just speaking i have certain bullet points just a high level thing just so i you know don't want to talk about them but i'm only looking at that most of the time so if you have to remember things you have to talk about i'm not the bullet points necessarily but like the general gist of things then a lot of cpu cycles are going to be used for that and your focus is going to be on trying to remember these things you know what's going to happen when you're speaking even in front of friends or colleagues body language changes tone of voice you're not paying attention to you're not making eye contact with the audience you have no time left no cpu cycles left to focus on the things that actually do matter when you're speaking so when you're speaking publicly the idea is the topic you know by heart the topic is near and dear to you it's a lived experienced topic you know that by heart it's something you talk about you dream about you think about all the time when you're on stage talking to people when i'm on camera here talking to you all i'm more focused on how i am delivering the topic not so much on what i'm saying as in the the parts and the pieces public speaking is a little more challenging i think in the camera for me especially challenging i'm looking at something i don't there's no feedback i'm not seeing people i'm i'm very good at the pub i won't say very good i'm comfortable on the public speaking side because i feed off of the audience and that's what you want to do there'll be many people typically scattered across the audience who'll give you visual cues feedback they'll be nodding the head they'll be smiling they'll make some facial expression that lets you know that they're hearing and listening to you pick up those people across the room so you can be looking here here here here here here so the audience from a distance away i think they're looking you're looking at them but you're looking at these few people maybe some people in the front maybe some people are back that is key the way you walk on the stage where you carry yourself the way you're dressed all the same same things apply the tone of voice same thing applies the subject has to be second nature you have no cpu cycles or require no cpu cycles for the subject all your cpu cycles should be focused on the audience and the way you deliver the speech if you ask somebody's names you need to remember that name till the end all the names till the end of the day or the topic and make sure you use their names through the speech if so that you want to make it interactive many years ago i had a college professor who chemistry college professor who on the her first day asked us to tell her tell us tell her our names there are 30 people in the class and she remembered every one of them and guess what we were talking about after we came out of class you're saying holy crap this woman remembered every one of our names it was uncanny anyway together long story short i started doing that when i was doing public speaking when i'm doing training i meet a brand new set of people you know 30 people in in like a batch and i make it a point to remember everyone's names and i will call out the names one for my own practice but two also they feel connected you have a question yes can you what's your name so answer okay ask me the question i got the name and from that point forward i will remember that name and then i'll use it i'll do some things like saying like okay what do you have to say what do you have to say yeah and you by name what do you say like immediately right so as i learn people's names i'll use them during the talk interaction is key you can't be the one standing up on a pedestal i'm the superior person therefore you shall just just listen to me kind of thing you want people to think you're just them you just happen to be in the stage imparting your knowledge tomorrow it will be them and that interaction is key constant interaction questioning getting people to feel comfortable making eye contact around the stage all that is key but number one is confidence in what you're speaking you need to know that topic by heart you have no cpu cycles left for that topic during the speak speech i mean and all your cpu cycles should be used towards how you carry yourself how you conduct yourself how you look at people how you interact with people how you make them feel comfortable crack jokes at yourself you know i mean i've had some incredible experiences that today look really stupid but i will tell my team to let them feel that i'm not special i have just learned over the years which is where i am where i'm at it i wasn't born with the stuff so if i could get from there to here so can you people need to feel that they are not going to be left behind but they are also capable of getting where you're at there are a lot of people in the audience who have sort of these aspirations for being where you are at wondering how did you get there so make let them know hey you know i can do it you can do it it's just that simple you know but you have to say that sincerely in the sense that you have to make them feel at all times this is not i'm not special i just happen to have the experience i've done this therefore i know and now i'm here trying to impart that to you okay this is the the last point is to do with pronunciation now most of us let's say you know i can speak for myself and you guys can translate that into your own you know what the countries you come from and if you're interacting with people from other countries maybe speaking other languages right so if you're let's say there's an onshore team and an offshore team and the offshore team should be trying to speak more like the onshore team is if that makes sense if i'm here in the u.s i come from india we say things slightly differently in india when i come to the us it is in my it is the onus is on me to speak such that i can be understood all right if you're on a call with me and you're offshore and you come from you know with your country it becomes your responsibility then to try and adapt to how we speak the majority you know the the main language what that language may be so i'll give you some examples between english and other languages or maybe the way english is spoken in other countries and so that you can you can understand what these examples are so i've got them listed out here so i can just talk to them one by one so the first one i encountered that immediately threw me off was multiplied by and divided by in india we say if i said in india if i said 22 the answer will be four in america 22 is one in india if i said two by two the answer would be one in america two by two would mean four so this took me totally by surprise because you can imagine the first conversation how that went people thought i didn't know how to do my simple math right so i had to learn i had to learn to adapt to that okay i'm living here it's not like i'm an offshore team i'm living here so i definitely had to learn to adapt my way of speaking so they understood the second one was aluminium versus the aluminum the display keeps saying aluminium i said isn't that hard spell alduminium just no i said no because the spellings are different it's not just the pronunciation in this case the spellings are actually different and so yes today i said aluminum just because i live here and so i don't have to be explaining myself to people all the time so it's incumbent upon people to make certain adjustments i was on a call one time you're talking about you know like a cash and i'm saying cash cash cash cash all the time and then one of the guys on the official side said kashi and i said do you not all this time when i've been saying cache did you not hear what i've been saying just a cache i mean that's what it should be so just alter the way you pronounce pronounce things right so i think in in the workplace certainly this makes more sense in in a social setting maybe it's not so important in the workplace you need to be understood right i mean the reason we communicate with people is so that we are hoping to get understood be understood then might as well put in the effort to be understood so that if you start to speak a little bit more like the people are working with are working for the more they will assimilate you into the team and the more they look forward to talking to you and hearing from you all right that brings me to the end of this video i hope you've enjoyed it i hope i've not been going on too long rambling on and you can use some of these pointers so again i hope you've enjoyed this video i hope you learned a few things if you have please give me a thumbs up and i will see you next time

Channel: Shiv Kumar

Views: 3,470

Keywords: Communication, Communication Skills, Impacting others, Influence, influencing others, public speaking, training, teaching, voice, posture, tone of voice

Id: sIrdDDXkYRQ

Length: 61min 51sec (3711 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021