Speaking persuasively is a useful skill not only for those who are going to speak at a conference or dream of becoming a stand-up comedian. In ordinary life there are many situations when everything depends on your ability to win the attention of the public.
It is difficult to convince investors to invest in a project if your thoughts are confused during the presentation. Even beautiful slides won’t save you. Sincere congratulations are unlikely to happen if you cannot put two words together when the microphone reaches you at the holiday. Colleagues will not listen to you if your solution is the best, but you described it crumpled and chaotic.
The inability to speak in public can seriously slow you down in a dozen different areas. But performance anxiety is completely normal. Even great TED speakers get nervous before going on stage, and journalist Irina Shikhman said in a recent video that she experiences jitters before every interview. Just a second, there are already about 100 recorded conversations on her channel.
Practice and special exercises will help you not to let fear hold you back, not to hide behind your back or run out of the room when it’s your turn to speak.
Learn to control your voice better
The voice is the speaker's main instrument. To master it well means to choose the appropriate intonation, a convincing manner, and the right volume. Practice voice control and record exercises on audio so you can listen to yourself from the outside.
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- Timbre. Say the same phrases in either a low or high voice. Feel how their meaning changes. Speak “through the nose” - a higher tone, “through the throat” - in your normal voice and “through the chest” - more enveloping and sonorous. A chest voice helps the prosody of public speech sound more convincing. It is known that voters are more willing to vote What Science Says About “Sounding Presidential” for politicians with deep, chesty voices.
- Prosody. This is the doctrine of stress. Practice emphasizing a specific syllable, word in a sentence, or part of a phrase. Learn to place precise accents and highlight with your voice exactly what you want to emphasize.
- Speed. Consciously alternate the pace of speech, speak faster and slower. Learn to pause and don’t be afraid of silence - not every second needs to be filled with words. Pauses can be very meaningful.
- Volume. Practice adjusting the intensity of your voice. Try to charge people with a cheerful and loud sound, switch to a mysterious half-whisper that makes them listen to you.
If you don't know how to approach work, you can work with a voice and speech coach to better understand which direction to move.
How to speak so that people listen to you
Simply speaking your speech and speaking it so that you are listened to are two different things. No matter what smart and important thoughts you try to convey to your interlocutor, he may simply not “hear” you. And the reason for this will not always be in your interlocutor. Maybe it’s you who don’t know how to speak convincingly and interest people with your words?
Communicating effectively with people is really difficult. Ask, for example, any public speaker, and he will confirm that keeping the attention and interest of the audience is as difficult as getting up at seven in the morning every day for a night owl. No, perhaps it is even more difficult.
For a businessman, the ability to make oneself listen is simply necessary. Otherwise, not a single deal, small or large, will end the way he wants it.
American TV presenter Larry King knows how to talk to people so that they don't pretend to listen to you, but actually listen. He even wrote a book on this topic, “How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere,” which became mega-popular all over the world. If you don’t have time to read it, then we offer 12 tips from this book that will help you start changing your approach to business (and other) communication with people.
1. If you want to learn how to speak effectively, do it as much and often as possible.
Correct speech can be compared to any sports game or driving a car. The more you practice, the better you get. One theory will not do here. You need practice, every day and with a variety of interlocutors.
2. Feel free to talk to yourself.
If you live alone, then there will be no problems at all - talk to yourself out loud. Especially if you are about to give a public speech or are preparing for a serious business conversation, speak your speech preparations out loud. This will also be some kind of training.
If you are embarrassed by your family with whom you live, then do it while locking yourself in your room, or in the car on the way to work. And don’t just deliver a prepared speech, but do it as if you were already talking with your interlocutor. With each training session, polish your phrases, intonation, tone, and tempo.
3. If you are not sure what exactly needs to be said, it is better to remain silent.
It is better to be suspected of being too stupid to carry on a conversation than to speak without your interlocutors having any doubts about this.
4. Talk to the mirror.
This technique is used by many who prepare for public speaking, and it has repeatedly proven its effectiveness. But try using this technique in everyday communication. Just stand in front of the mirror and start talking to your reflection as if you were talking to another person.
First, you will learn to make eye contact with the other person, and this is very important in any conversation. Secondly, you will see how you look during a conversation. This way you can find your weaknesses and work on them. Maybe it will be your facial expression or excessive gestures.
5. Use slang and jargon to a minimum.
Such words are not acceptable to everyone. If you get too carried away with slang, you risk being misunderstood.
6. Listen to yourself.
When you're talking to someone, the flow of your speech can sometimes be difficult to control. And few people do this intentionally. Try to listen to your own speech and perhaps you will discover many unexpected things. What if you often don’t finish sentences or tend to repeat the same thought several times? Interjections “uh”, “well” and the like are rarely noticed by anyone in their speech, but they really spoil it.
7. Put yourself in the shoes of your interlocutor.
Communication is not a one-way action, and any conversation involves at least two people (training in front of a mirror doesn’t count :)). If you want your interlocutor to be honest with you, be honest with him. If you want openness and ease, then show it on your part. The well-known expression “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” should also be applied when communicating.
Get rid of some habits
Audio expert and business coach Julian Treasure believes that certain social habits hinder the ability to deliver persuasive speech—what he calls the “deadly sins of communication.” Here's what the expert advises against:
- Gossip. Don't talk bad about people behind their back. They don’t listen to gossipers because they know that in five minutes they will be gossiping about those they are talking to now.
- Condemnation. Don't blame others for their choices. People feel condemned as an encroachment on their freedom and shut down.
- Negative. Try not to reduce everything to a negative connotation. A speaker who sees everything in dark colors does not evoke the desire to listen.
- Complaints. Don't grumble and complain about everything around you. Complaining doesn't give you inspiration to solve a problem, it forces you to get deeper into it.
- Excuses and finding someone to blame. Few people want to listen to a person who is making excuses or looking for someone to blame.
- Exaggerations. Don’t try to embellish too much, save special words for truly outstanding phenomena. Exaggerations can sound like lies, and people don't want to listen to people who are deceiving them.
- Dogmatism. Do not position your point of view as the only correct one. Give others the opportunity to choose facts over opinions.
How not to listen to each other?
The three most common mistakes:
The first mistake: you do not listen to your interlocutor, but only pretend. You can even assent, nod, but your thoughts are somewhere far away. Mutual understanding is obviously impossible.
The second mistake: you seem to be listening, but only separate fragments of what the interlocutor is saying reach your consciousness. As a result, your reaction to what was said is inadequate, because you may have heard something important.
Third mistake: you hear only words, but do not notice the feelings and experiences of your interlocutor. As a result, you mistakenly interpret words through the prism of your experience, not noticing that the interlocutor may have a completely different meaning in them.
Follow the HAIL principle
This principle will help you earn the attention and trust of other people. Check if your speech fits these four criteria:
- H - honesty - honesty. Speak truthfully and do not hold anything back.
- A - authenticity - authenticity. Be yourself, don't pretend to be something you're not.
- I - integrity - integrity. First of all, follow your own words, live what you talk about.
- L - love - love. Sincerely wish people well and love them.
Love Language #2: Time
The most valuable thing we have. Your boyfriend is ready to communicate with you at any moment. He puts aside what he's doing to listen to you. He arrives at the first call... Meets you after work and accompanies you on a shopping trip. He is literally giving you a part of his life. Because he expresses his feelings using the language of time. He expects the same from you.
How to communicate with him? Sit next to him often. Catch his gaze, show that you are listening carefully. Don't be distracted by other things. If you are having a conversation, put down your phone, close your laptop - no need to check your email or look at Instagram “even with one eye”! This is not the kind of man who will be satisfied with morning chat on the go, when you jump from the bathroom to the kitchen, pulling on tights. But he will be happy if you go to a match of his favorite team together, start walking together from time to time and tell stories, or get into the habit of watching TV series in the evenings, snuggling up to each other.
Show your loved one that he is much more important to you than everyone else. When you are around, you are completely his. You have common experiences and memories. General history. It is important.
Learn to create pictures with words
When you speak, images appear in other people's minds. If your speech is full of abstract concepts, the picture will not add up. An idea that is difficult to visualize will not be remembered by the audience or interlocutors. Convey visual images using speech. For example, look at two descriptions of the same situation.
- It's hard to imagine the picture:
I worked a lot and was completely devastated. I didn’t feel rewarded from my work, and my ambitions remained unfulfilled. I dreamed of opening my own business, such as a restaurant or coffee shop.
- It's easy to imagine the picture:
The office seemed like a prison to me: I sat in my office from eight in the morning until eight in the evening. The boss’s screams could be heard from behind the wall, and letters of complaints were pouring into the post office. I looked at the monitor and spent hours imagining myself grinding coffee beans at the bar counter of my restaurant.
How to make people listen to you?
An important role in communication is played not only by the meaning of words, but also by facial expressions, voice, gestures, intonation of speech ...
How to influence your interlocutor in such a way that he remembers and takes into account the maximum of what you say?
Beautiful and Successful can give the following recommendations :
- State the essence of the issue clearly , with a minimum number of “auxiliary” figures of speech and irrelevant information. For example: “If I’m not home by 7, feed the dog.” The one to whom you are presenting your request will probably forget or confuse something if you say: “Well, today, maybe I’ll go visit Masha, and Marinka is coming to see her - we haven’t seen each other for a hundred years, and Sharik is at home, and his food is in the refrigerator, and if you don’t go to the football game, then make sure you don’t forget!!!”
- Look into the eyes of your interlocutor while saying the most important things. You can talk about Masha, and about Marinka, and about football, but say the words “feed the dog” while looking straight into the eyes!
- If you want to make people listen to you, speak confidently , at a natural pace, watch your diction.
- Do you want your interlocutor to remember well what was said? State only the key question , as concisely and clearly as possible - do not engage in long conversations on other topics.
- Do not accompany the dialogue with active gestures - then people will look at you more than listen to you.
- Watch your facial expressions - frequent blinking, jerking your head, scratching your nose or ears, biting your lip and other unsympathetic movements also distract attention from the conversation, and also make a negative impression.
- When speaking, do not cover your mouth with your hand - for better perception, it is better for people to see the movements of their lips when pronouncing words.
- Don't raise your voice ! The louder a person speaks, the shorter the period of time when his words are perceived. What is said in a sincere whisper to a loved one is usually remembered in its entirety. Do we remember well the speeches of the boss at organizational meetings, the reports of politicians from the podium, or the angry screams of a neighbor in the entrance?
Clearly highlight the main idea
TED conference curator Chris Anderson, who helps speakers prepare for their presentations, advises focusing on one idea at a time. This is the message you want to leave in the minds of your listeners. Concentrate on it and don’t try to cover everything at once so that the audience’s attention doesn’t wander.
If you give different examples, each of them should echo the main idea in one way or another. Circular storytelling works well. When you first raise a question, you move away from it and talk about different aspects of it, and at the end you bring the speech back to the question and give an answer that follows from your reasoning.
Advice from psychologists ↑
- clearly formulate for yourself the thought that you want to convey to your interlocutor and say it to yourself (or even better, out loud, in front of the mirror);
- You need to speak quite expressively to be heard, but do not allow too strong emotions to prevail over your mind;
- During the conversation, repeatedly check whether the interlocutor understands you, ask questions;
- speak specifically and extremely briefly, do not overload your speech with unnecessary information;
- develop your speech, too poor a vocabulary does not allow you to speak expressively;
- hone your skills on those close to you; it is equally difficult to get one person to listen, as well as a large audience;
- Be prepared, in turn, to listen carefully to your interlocutor, this is the only way to come to a compromise solution.
Rely on ideas that are close to your listeners
Other people will listen to you if they care about the issue you are addressing. If the audience doesn't understand your topic at all, put it in an understandable context and describe it using metaphors that people are familiar with.
For example, geneticist Jennifer Doudna said that her invention allows us to make changes to DNA in the same way that text editors give us the opportunity to change already printed text. And speaker Tim Urban explained how the brains of procrastinators work with the help of drawn men. This made it easier for his audience to understand what neurotransmitters are.
Learning to speak
The general public has access to a lot of literature, training, and techniques on how to learn to speak competently. We comprehend science, it would seem, we speak correctly, but they don’t want to listen to us or are not heard?
Where to look for the trick, those threads that will help you reach your interlocutor, how to learn to speak so that you are correctly understood, listened to and heard? What is the secret of how to talk?
Mastery Lessons
We speak correctly only when the subject of conversation has been thoroughly studied by us.
No matter what setting the conversation takes place in: speaking in front of an audience, talking with a friend, talking in the family or presenting, we must apply four techniques:
- link to an authoritative source. When we want to convince a person of something, we must first find out which source will be interesting to him. It will be necessary to refer to it later. For example, will your interlocutor listen to the opinion of a public person or to the opinion of Vasya from the second entrance? That is, an undeniable opinion should be brought into the conversation;
- link to the opinion of a specialist or expert. You should find scientific facts and statistical data in order to form your own evidence base from them. Many people believe facts without question;
- appeal to mass opinion. People, not knowing what to do, often pay attention to what others are doing. Use this trick, convince the person that many people think this way;
- personal experience. If your opinion is authoritative, then your personal experience will definitely be listened to.
Learn body language
Experiments by social psychologist Amy Cuddy have confirmed that body language can change consciousness. For example, when we are happy, we smile. But this also works in the opposite direction: when we force ourselves to smile, we become happier.
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Make it work for you: express your authority with your body if you don’t yet feel it with your brain. Demonstration of confidence and power - an open pose, arms spread to the sides, filling the space with oneself. On the contrary, a closed posture, folded hands, clenched fists - this is a lack of control, fear, a desire to hide. If you force yourself to adopt an open posture, your brain will receive a signal that you feel confident.
About the beauty of speech
When it comes to how to speak correctly, one remembers the colloquial speech of the intelligentsia of past years. In the documentary chronicle you can hear the speech of each of them.
Faina Ranevskaya (actress), Nikolai Drozdov (hosted the program “In the Animal World”), Yuri Senkevich (hosted the program “Travelers Club”) are wonderful representatives of connoisseurs of the art of words from whom you can learn to speak competently.
These are people who express their thoughts in such beautiful words, which are heard less and less these days, or have even completely disappeared from speech patterns. The beautiful Russian language is gradually turning into surrogate phrases from all countries of the world. It’s a shame, but a self-respecting, intelligent person will not replace the word “beautiful” with the word “cool” or “remarkable.”
Beautiful speech - the speaker’s weapon and what distinguishes it
For those who believe that the Russian language is still great and do not know how to learn to speak competently, there are basic rules that will help them. We are all speakers at heart, each person has words to express their thoughts. But this does not mean that everything we say is correct.
A skilled speaker always knows how to talk and has several advantages over the general mass of people:
- erudition and erudition. The more knowledge a person has, the better he can express his thoughts, the richer his vocabulary, and the easier it is for him to speak beautifully. This is the essential equipment for giving an inspiring and impressive speech;
- intelligible and clear speech, absence of diction defects, persuasiveness and understandable presentation - very important qualities for a person speaking in front of an audience;
- to some extent, every speaker must be a psychologist in order to understand the mood of the masses and join in in an appropriate manner. It is unlikely that anyone will listen to a sad, sleepy person talking. The speech of a true speaker takes possession of the souls of the listeners;
- the speaker knows exactly the difference between oral and written speech, and will not allow himself to read his speech instead of speaking beautifully and confidently, looking into the eyes of his opponents.
Love Language #5: Help
Your boyfriend does not know how to organize romantic surprises. It’s hard to imagine him with a bouquet of red roses and a bottle of prosecco. But he is ready to solve any everyday problem, take your mother to the doctor and water your favorite cactus while you are on a business trip. The taps in your home never leak and you don’t even notice how shopping bags fall from the trunk into the apartment.
If you want to show your love, respond in kind. Help is love through action. An exchange of time and effort aimed at making the life of another person more pleasant and easier.
Find a way to show your loved one specific support. A cozy home, a delicious dinner, an ironed shirt - this is how you can show reciprocal love. But in such a dialogue it is important not to be shy about asking. “Please pick me up from work tomorrow, help me drop off my clothes at the dry cleaners, call the office and let them send a technician to check the meter!” - this is all normal and in the order of things. And, of course, don’t forget to say “thank you.” Your loved one demonstrates his love through help - let him know that you notice everything and are very grateful!
