Public Speaking, Presentation & Leadership Skills

Tips for Listening – Leadership Skill The basic of leading is to have a very constructive communication with the persons you want to lead. It is simply not possible to be a great leader without being a great communicator. This partially accounts for why we don’t encounter great leadership more often. The big miss for most leaders is that they fail to understand that the purpose of communication is not to message, but to engage – THIS REQUIRES LISTENING. Don’t be fooled into thinking that being heard is more important than hearing. The first rule in communication is to seek understanding before seeking to be understood. Communication is not a one way street. Great leaders, never miss an opportunity to listen. In fact, they aggressively seek out new and better ways to listen. In the previous blog we discussed the other benefits of listening skills. Here we will be looking into the skills for becoming a better listener. Tips of becoming better listener Listen with an o...

While some may be impressed with how well you speak, the right people will be impressed with how well you listen. Great leaders are great listeners, and therefore my message today is a simple one – talk less and listen more. The best leaders are proactive, strategic, and intuitive listeners. Listen not hear Everyone wants to be heard and understood, but at one time or another most people don't listen and fail to understand the meaning of another person's words. It’s a fundamental human need to have your feelings acknowledged, whether or not someone agrees with you. Honest to goodness listening creates an intimate connection and makes you feel cared about. You can hear someone speak without listening to the words. Hearing is an involuntary process that starts with noise, vibrations, the movement of fluid in the ears and sound sent to the brain. Simple! Where it gets a little complicated is when the noise actually arrives to its final destination: the brain! Thi...

speech title Deserves more thought The title is your audience’s first exposure to your speech. It potentially will appear in an event program or agenda. It will be used when you are introduced and welcomed on the podium. It is the “Tag Line” for your speech and provides a first opportunity to influence and warm up your audience. It is your first (and perhaps only) chance to market your speech. A compelling title which invokes curiosity has a potentiality to attract a large audience.  A title could be used to plant an assumption or confuse / misdirect the audience to add emphasis to the opening message of your speech. i.e. My icebreaker speech was Titled “ADDICTION” though it talked about my love for travel. Either way, your title should complement your speech and be just as considered as the body. Tips for writing a speech title Finding a good speech title is hard. It requires the same creative effort as any other element of your speech. However there are some tips...

Project 5 – The Body Speaks - Speech As discussed in my previous blog my Toastmaster Project 5 was named “The Choice”. The speech was a scarstic take on the choices we make in the urban fast paced society and how it impacts us at the end.  As described in Toastmaster Project 2 – Organise your speech – used the beginning to introduce the problem - put in couple of examples in the middle to highlight the issue – and talked of the action required in the conclusion. In red are the body movement I had attempted of incorporating. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~“THE CHOICE”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Few days ago, I was reading a humorous speech loud. It started with: If you want to be a monkey, eat bananas and insects If you want to be a giraffe, eat shrubs, leaves and barks If you want to be a buffalo, eat the movie posters If you want to be a lion eat the monkey, giraffe, and buffalo My Three and half year old Son, who was doing his trademark gymnastics, asked “If you wan...

Importance Of Body Language Many people who give speeches don’t realize the importance of body language and nonverbal communication. The truth is that people will see you before they hear you speak, and how they see you influence how they hear you. If we are trying to make a good impression – both socially and in business – we often smile and hold contact the other person’s eyes as we shake their hand. The difficulty is that we give off thousands of other unconscious signals through our body language that other people will ‘read’ instantly and instinctively. By shaking their hand or standing in a particular way, we might trigger off old memories in the person we are trying to impress. Maybe an old friend stood exactly like that, in which case our advances might be treated sympathetically. But if we stand like the back-stabbing colleague who has treated them badly, our advances are likely to be treated as hostile. Body Language is all the non-verbal communication we ma...