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4 Speaking Skills for Managers - Supercharge Your Influence and Impact · Enhance.training

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking skills for managers, you know your ability to communicate, persuade, direct and get others to do what you need are a massive part of being successful.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Listen carefully to any successful senior manager, board director or vice president and they almost speak a different language.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: How they speak is quite specific.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: You pay attention not because of their position but because of how they communicate.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: How they use their voice and how they construct their messages are simple, compelling and invite action from their listeners.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: The most amazing communicator that you know was once exactly where you are now.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: They have improved their speaking skills to increase their influence and impact.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can do exactly the same thing.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: The more influence you exert on others, the more impact you will create as a manager or leader, which is very rewarding personally and professionally.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: The four speaking skills for any manager to improve your influence when speaking to groups are what we are discussing today, and they are firstly, be sure about your purpose when communicating.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, how to access conviction and confidence.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Third, create easy-to-follow message structures.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And fourth, seven actions to deliver a clearer, more engaging message.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: I started my career as a shy, quiet individual who absolutely hated speaking to groups of more than one.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I would stumble my words, feel like my stomach was going to fall out, I'd have a soft voice which did not sound confident even to myself.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I worked at speaking in groups.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I have led many teams in top companies.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've added millions to company profitability through initiatives that I championed.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I presented to boards and at company events.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I speak to around 100,000 people each month through YouTube and Spotify.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: My point is that if I can improve from a rubbish speaker to being a good speaker, so can anyone.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: The most important step you can take is the first one.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: The first speaking skill for managers to improve is to be sure about your purpose when communicating.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you are not sure why you are speaking and what you want, there is no chance your audience will either.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Here are six good reasons to speak in a work setting.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, to share information and educate others.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, to work on building relationships and connection with others.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Third, persuading them to support your idea or solution.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, asking them to make a decision, fifth, asking for permission, and sixth because you need them to take a specific action.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Be clear about what you want from the other person.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: When you're clear about the purpose of your communication, you can structure your message properly.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: The better the structure, the easier it is for the listener to understand and potentially take action.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: When I coach managers and leaders on speaking to groups, I ask them to explain the purpose of what they want to communicate.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yet more often than not, there is a long pause, and they are deep in thought.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have an immediate answer to the why, you need to think about your purpose for speaking.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, to be a lot more persuasive, make your purpose primarily about your audience rather than you.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: This makes your audience much more likely to listen, understand and accept what you're saying or do what you want.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was facing five members of a leadership team of a business with around 180 million in sales, and I could see from their body language that they were going to say yes.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I had just asked them to give me permission to completely change the basis of how the business ordered the goods they sold to the customers.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Get the ordering wrong, and we would run out of stock to sell, impacting sales and the leaders' jobs.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Get the ordering right, and the business's bank balance would increase by over£15 million.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't really position the proposal as a way to increase cash.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I positioned the proposal as a way for this leadership team to personally look good to their shareholders during a period of poor trading.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Work out what matters most to your audience to get them to say yes.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Align your purpose with what your audience wants to be a lot more persuasive.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jess Coles.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, Enhance.training provides resources and courses for you to build management expertise and confidence to lead any team to their best performance.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to take a look in the podcast description for more resources to help you improve your leadership expertise so that you can move your career forward faster and have a happier, more productive team.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: The second speaking skill for managers is learning how to access conviction and confidence.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know your conviction and confidence matters when you are speaking if you want others to listen.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what you do when a person you're listening to is hesitant and uses language like you know should or could, probably, or I think.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: You tune out a bit or questions start building in your mind.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: The more you believe what you are saying, the more others will listen and pay attention to what you are saying.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I met a consultant who was brilliant at speaking confidently and with a lot of conviction, even if what he was saying didn't have much substance.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Listeners were keen to believe based on his conviction.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: High conviction works very well in the short term.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: High conviction combined with real substance works much better in the longer term.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: People do get wise.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: To create real substance, ground what you're communicating in examples and evidence.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Just think about your own experiences.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone has an opinion.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you use their emotions and opinions to persuade, you'll come up against different opinions and not get very far.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: When you use evidence, data and examples for the basis of your idea or solutions, what you ask for becomes a lot more compelling and much harder to argue against.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Build your arguments with logic, data, examples and evidence.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Downplay emotions and opinions.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think we should take the first option because in my experience this is a lot more successful.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or option three is going to result in the highest profits and take six days less to implement compared to the next best option.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Option three delivers against all the requirements for the solution.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: I recommend taking option three.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, it is very clear which approach is likely to get a lot more support.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Prove to yourself before you prove to others.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: You will sound a lot more confident and speak with a lot more conviction, and what you say will have evidence and data to show substance.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: The third speaking skill for managers is to create easy-to-follow message structures.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: A clear structure will help your audience understand what you are communicating or asking for quickly.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Before speaking, always plan out the key points that you want to communicate.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: This could be a five-second pause, or it could be an hour of planning and scripting.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Be clear on the talking points that you want to say and then create sensible structures to include them.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Three useful structures.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: The first PSB or problem, solution and benefits.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is good for quick and simple communications.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Outline the problem to give context and background, explain what the solution is and why it solves the problem, and get then go through the benefits of the solution.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: The second structure is recode or recommendation, context, options, data and evaluation.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is good for building business cases and persuading.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: State your recommendation, i.e.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: what you want them to do.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then provide the context or problems to your audience.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Then explain the options that you have considered, share the data and evidence that backs up your recommendation, and then finally go through how you evaluated the options and arrived at your recommendation.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: You may notice that Rico goes from high level into the detail as you progress.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: The third structure, car, or context, action and result.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is useful for conveying information.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Context is the situation before taking action or the problems, etc.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Action is what was done, and the results is the outcome of those actions.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is useful to contrast the results to the context or the before and after.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of other useful structures.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Generally, put your most important information first.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Keep working on reducing the number of words and sentences that you use while keeping the same meaning.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Being concise is a skill that gets better and better with practice.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: An exercise that I set many of my coaching clients.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Take any newspaper article and then summarize the one to two key messages in two sentences or less, or in about 10 to 30 words.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Keep doing this exercise every day, and you'll be a lot more concise in no time when speaking to others.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Another very useful tip to come across as concise and confident.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Practice speaking in bullet points.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Use a short pause instead.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: This creates two sentences instead of one longer one.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Again, shorter sentences with a pause make it easier to understand.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Try it out.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, here are seven actions to deliver clearer, more engaging messages.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Practice using as many of these actions each day when speaking to others.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: They all feel a bit clunky and awkward to start with, but that will quickly pass.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Remain conscious of each of these actions and keep revisiting them and ask yourself how can I improve further.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: First, speak slowly and deliberately to your audience.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: The aim is to be clear in how you form each word so you are easy to understand.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Speak slower than you think you need to, but not too slowly.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Second, to be clear, use plain, simple language as much as possible.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Don't try to impress others by using complex or big words.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Keep your language simple, using everyday words so others understand quickly.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Third, avoid using jargon as much as possible.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you need to include technical language, make sure everything else that you speak uses everyday words.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, to remain engaging when you talk, vary the pace of your voice.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Use pauses for emphasis and change the tone of your voice.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: A voice at the same pace, pitch, and volume is boring to listen to.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Create variety.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth, to appear more confident and authoritative, speak louder than you would normally do when you are speaking one-to-one.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Your voice should fill the room appropriately so everyone can hear.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: In practice, this means speaking, say, 10-20% louder than when speaking to groups than you would speak to an individual.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: When you're speaking with a louder voice, you'll feel a lot more confident too.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sixth, for words that you want to emphasize, speak them more slowly than others in the sentence.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Slower words combined with pauses give the listener a mental space to take in that particular word rather than taking in several words at once, which takes more brain power to understand.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And seventh, when you have finished speaking, keep looking up and keeping eye contact with the next speaker to increase other people's confidence in what you have just said.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Keep practicing.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Use all the tips and actions that we've been through today.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Commit to yourself that you will seek out opportunities to speak to and persuade groups each week at work.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Practice is the best way to improve your speaking skills.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, in summary, we've been through four speaking skills for managers that will help you be more influential when you're speaking to groups, which in turn will increase the impact you have.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: The more influence you build, the more effective you will be at leading your team.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: As a reminder, the four speaking skills for managers to improve your influence when speaking to groups are firstly, be sure about your purpose when communicating.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, how to access conviction and confidence.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Third, create easy to follow message structures.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've shared three examples, but there are plenty more out there.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Find ones that really work for you.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And fourth, we've shared seven actions to deliver a clearer, more engaging message.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to take a look in the podcast description for more resources to help you improve your leadership expertise so that you can move your career forward faster and have a happier, more productive team.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions on four speaking skills for managers, supercharge your influence and impact, please email me at support at enhance.training and I'll get back to you.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for listening, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.