Always have a point when you communicate
Raymond Nelson
Always have a point when you communicate
“Good afternoon to all of you. Today, Raymond Nelson will talk to us about communication and help you with tips to make a good presentation. Raymond is the founder of Black Isle Communication, a company that he founded in Australia 20 years ago. He currently operates from UK, Australia and other countries as an expert who helps people with their communication skills. He has also been recognised by the Queen of England. He is a member of Her Majesty’s Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms and Her Majesty’s Household, officiating at state occasions in London. He will now share his expertise on spoken communication.”
– Rtn. Pranay Vakil
Thank you very much for your kind welcome. Good afternoon, everybody. I was reading about a survey recently. It was a survey of 3,000 CEOs, chairpersons of boards and managing directors. The survey asked these people to put in order a number of fears and the things that they were frightened of. The phobias listed included the fear of spiders, snakes, drowning, heights and dying. However, 44% of the respondents said that speaking in public was their greatest fear. So if you feel similarly, join the club. It’s a big international club of people who don’t like presenting.
Thirty years ago, I could not have done what I am doing today. The reason I can do it now is because I know how to do it. Being a good communicator requires skills. These skills are easier than most skills, for the simple reason that all we are doing is talking. They are available to everybody and once you acquire those important skills, anybody can be a good communicator.
You need these skills because no matter how good your idea is or how good your product may be, if you can’t connect and engage with an audience then that idea will still stay in your head. That product may still stay on the shelf. Being a good communicator is, thus, critical for all of us in our personal as well as business development.
I define a presentation in a broader way than just standing up and presenting. I define a presentation as any spoken communication of importance. It could be you talking to each other over lunch or networking before that. It could be you conversing with a big group or attending a meeting. All day and every day we are communicating. If we have good skills then we can do it well all the time. Here are some ideas and thoughts to consider.
Irrespective of the circumstances, when you are communicating there are always two goals in mind. The first is the obvious goal of leaving behind a message—of having a point to make. Too often at the end of someone’s talk we ask ourselves, “What was his/her point?” It is important to have in mind a point that you want people to remember. The rest of your talk then gets automatically designed to give evidence, illustrations and reasoning to support that point. However, people often pick topics but don’t make a point. If I say that I am going to talk about the reconstruction of Afghanistan then it isn’t a point, is it? It’s a topic. Instead, open your talk with, “I am going to talk regarding the reconstruction of Afghanistan. No reconstruction can take place in Afghanistan until peace and security has been restored.” You are, thus, giving a reference point to the audience and they are going to listen to you, expecting you to justify how that reconstruction can take place.
When you start to develop your talk, be careful of saying too much. I expect some of you have baked a cake in your life. The recipe says put four eggs in a bowl. Add all the other ingredients, stir it, put it in the oven and take it out. You now have a beautiful cake. But what if you had five eggs in your rack and decided to crack in that extra egg? Do you think it will make your cake taste better? The answer is no. The cake will collapse under the weight of the unnecessary ingredient. Likewise, your presentation will collapse under the weight of unnecessary information. You only need to say what needs to be said rather than saying everything you know. If the audience wants to know more, they can ask. If they need more then you could send it out to them in a supplementary form or
through handouts.
Now there’s another word that goes with message. And that word is memorable. You have to make your presentation interesting to make it memorable. You have to get into the heads of the listener and think of ways to relate it to his/her experiences. It is only then that they will remember it. A memorable message comes from thinking of anecdotes, stories, metaphors, visuals
and PowerPoint.
You are used to PowerPoint presentations, aren’t you? “Good morning, everybody.” (Click) Up goes the first visual. But that’s not the way to present. The better you are at presenting, the less you will need visuals. Use a visual only if you can justify that it will add value or provide clarity to your point. Don’t use them just because they are available. Visuals can often compete and distract. Using them is just a simple way of taking away the focus from you. What you need to have instead are stories and anecdotes. Try and think of ways to make your point relevant. Mentally illustrate them with analogies or stories that the audience can relate to.
The second goal is you. When you are presenting, the personality of the speaker becomes extremely important in terms of the outcome. You have to be yourself at your best. You have to lift your game sufficiently so that you come across in a genuine, honest and enthusiastic way. You need to give the impression of a person with compassion, respect, authority and presence. All these subtle aspects of the person will have the audience say, “Yes. I’d like to do business with this person” or “I am glad he is the boss.” You can’t say these things to the audience. They have to sense it.
Let us take President Barack Obama’s example. When he was competing against Mrs. Clinton six years ago, to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for Presidency, he had a common point every time he talked. His point was that we need change and we can do it. It was such a strong and powerful point. We could all relate to it. If you look at the campaign, he and Mrs. Clinton were effectively saying the same thing—after all, they were both Democrats. Then why did Americans choose Obama over Mrs. Clinton? There must have been something about his personality that persuaded them to do so.
So don’t think that facts speak for themselves—they don’t. You have to get behind the facts and get your personality engaged. Have a “conversational style” and not a “presentational style” when you speak to your audience.
I’ll now move on to the tools of communication. The first and probably the most important tool of being conversational is understanding the word ‘pace’. There are two ways of looking at pace. The first way is what you could call ‘the rate of words’. I am now going to draw your attention to an important skill that is related to the rate of words. The skill I am talking about is having an emotional connection with what you are saying. When you are communicating, have a sense of passion and connection with what you are saying, to make
a difference.
Another observation of mine about conversation relates to language and vocabulary. There are about 1,50,000 words in the English dictionary. A recent bit of research said that if you know 1,000 words then you can communicate effectively in English. But there are a lot of people who feel it is the opportunity to start dipping into the 1,50,000 words instead of staying with 1,000. They show off and in the process, end up confusing people.
Listening is hard work. If you think of the five senses—taste, touch, sound, smell and sight —the sense that requires most concentration is listening (sound). It is the job of the communicator to make the listening process as easy as possible for the listener. Don’t make it difficult for the audience by using language they are not familiar with. Keep it simple.
Coming back to the rate of words, there’s another element related to pace. It is called the rate of ideas. People who go on too quickly give one idea after another without giving the audience time to digest. Make use of silence. Surprisingly, silence is one of the key tools of being a good communicator. One idea after another does not give people time to digest what you’re saying.
So I’ve shown you how being a good communicator is a skill that anybody can acquire. I’ve shown you that there are two goals while communicating—one is to convey a clear message and make it memorable. The other is, most importantly, that you convey a very strong sense of your personality. It is the second goal that I am urging you to look at. See how you can lift your game and acquire these skills to be yourself in a confident and conversational way.
Excerpts from a Q&A session:
Q: Thanks for those tips, Sir. Could you explain how to handle questions after a speech?
Raymond Nelson: I would listen to the question, pause, think about it and then give my answer. That would be my recommendation. I don’t think any qualification is required in question-handling. A key learning is to answer the question. Think first; don’t jump in. Pause, as it will give you time to think.
Q: A number of leading schools in India are moving towards technology. What are your views on that?
Raymond Nelson: Earlier, I was a PowerPoint addict, as it drew all the pressure off me. Using the screen was preferable to being the focus of attention. My advice is less visual, more focus on the individual. But in teaching, it is slightly different because it has a different purpose. I would still be on the side of fewer visuals even if teaching might require more.
Q: How do you time your lecture? Also, do you make the point of your talk at the beginning or at the end?
Raymond Nelson: My recommendation is that you make the point at the beginning. You give people a reference point when you do so, like I said in my Afghanistan example. Give your audience an outline of what you are going to talk about. It is a bit like the newspaper headline. The headline is the message of the article. As for your conclusion, it should be a mirror of the start, with a couple of supporting points.
Q: You’ve mentioned that visuals distract. What about communication tools such as mobile phones and the Internet? Do they distract?
Raymond Nelson: I would absolutely agree with you. Listening, as I pointed out, is difficult. So the less distraction we have, the easier it is. Mobile phones and computers should be switched off during meetings. When you are listening, make sure you only listen. Commit to listening. Do you like being interrupted when you are talking? No. Then why would you do it to somebody else? It’s just a
simple courtesy.
Q: Often when we talk to each other, the tone of essential points is missed out as the voice
thins. As a result of that, the point or a particular word is not caught. What are your suggestions for it?
Raymond Nelson: The force of the voice often tends to drift away, so it needs more energy. By that I mean stressing and underlining words. You have to go right up till the end. That is why energy is one of the important tools of communication.