Latest / Enhance.training / Speak With The Confidence Of A Leader – 5 Vital Speaking Techniques
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: Use five techniques to speak with the confidence of a leader.
- 0:04SPEAKER_00: Communication is probably the most important skill set for leaders and managers.
- 0:08SPEAKER_00: At the heart of leading others is building relationships, earning trust, and making the lives of those we lead better.
- 0:15SPEAKER_00: Good communication enables all of these outcomes.
- 0:19SPEAKER_00: Confidently speaking like a leader will make, first of all, you feel more confident and in turn build the confidence in you of those you speak to.
- 0:28SPEAKER_00: Secondly, to make your messages and points clearer and more concise, which will hold the audience's attention much better.
- 0:36SPEAKER_00: Third, you'll have a lot more success speaking to leaders and peers and they will take you a lot more seriously.
- 0:42SPEAKER_00: Fourth, being better at communicating will make you more effective in your job.
- 0:46SPEAKER_00: Fifth, bosses will feel like you are promotion material.
- 0:50SPEAKER_00: All of this will make you feel happier and more effective at work, which will translate into better and faster career success.
- 0:58SPEAKER_00: To help you speak with the confidence of a leader, we are going through five vital speaking techniques for you to learn and practice.
- 1:06SPEAKER_00: Firstly, know your audience to be a very confident speaker.
- 1:10SPEAKER_00: Secondly, be transparent and honest when speaking.
- 1:14SPEAKER_00: Third, create clear digestible messages.
- 1:17SPEAKER_00: Fourth, practice your public speaking skills, and fifth, master your non-verbal communication.
- 1:24SPEAKER_00: The better you get at each of these, the more clearly and confidently you'll communicate, and the more likely your audience will be engaged and listen to and understand what you want from them.
- 1:35SPEAKER_00: To speak with the confidence of a leader, you must know your audience.
- 1:39SPEAKER_00: If you don't know your audience, it is very hard for even very confident and charismatic leaders to communicate in an engaging and clear way.
- 1:48SPEAKER_00: Before you start speaking, think carefully about, firstly, their roles and responsibilities and how what you are speaking about relates to them.
- 1:57SPEAKER_00: Secondly, the level of knowledge your audience has about the topic you are speaking about.
- 2:03SPEAKER_00: Third, the interests and concerns of your audience.
- 2:06SPEAKER_00: Fourth, what pressures they are under at the moment.
- 2:09SPEAKER_00: Fifth, the goals and objectives they have been tasked with achieving.
- 2:13SPEAKER_00: And sixth, their social norms and typical communication style.
- 2:17SPEAKER_00: How might you adapt your speaking style to fit in with these?
- 2:21SPEAKER_00: Before you speak, put yourself in your audience's shoes and think through what your thoughts and feelings might be if you were in their place.
- 2:30SPEAKER_00: Demonstrate empathy, and you'll get a lot more attention, acceptance and understanding from your audience.
- 2:36SPEAKER_00: Two practical, quick ways that you can learn more about your audience are.
- 2:41SPEAKER_00: Firstly, asking them questions and listening to what they tell you and think about what this means for what you want to speak about.
- 2:48SPEAKER_00: Secondly, to speak to colleagues or those with more knowledge of your audience's situation, thoughts and feelings before you speak to your audience.
- 2:58SPEAKER_00: Always put yourself in your audience's shoes before speaking to them.
- 3:02SPEAKER_00: You'll speak a lot more confidently as a result.
- 3:06SPEAKER_00: My name is Jess Coles.
- 3:08SPEAKER_00: If you're new to this podcast, Enhanced.training provides resources and courses for you to build management expertise and confidence to lead any team to their best performance.
- 3:18SPEAKER_00: Do visit us at enhanced.training and take a look at the course and coaching options to quickly build your management expertise and confidence so that you can get the very best from the people that you manage and lead.
- 3:30SPEAKER_00: Second, confident leaders speak with transparency and honesty.
- 3:34SPEAKER_00: When an audience trusts their leader, they put more effort into listening to what the leader says.
- 3:40SPEAKER_00: Trust in the leader inspires confidence in that leader.
- 3:44SPEAKER_00: With trust, the audience is much more likely to do as the leader asks as well.
- 3:49SPEAKER_00: Building and keeping trust is very important to enable the leader to be effective in their roles and to do a good job of leading others.
- 3:57SPEAKER_00: Confident and effective leaders speak with as much transparency and honesty as they can to build and maintain the trust of their audience.
- 4:06SPEAKER_00: Being realistic and balanced is a big part of speaking with transparency and honesty.
- 4:12SPEAKER_00: A couple of examples of being honest when speaking to others.
- 4:16SPEAKER_00: Firstly, talking about the upsides and acknowledging the downsides.
- 4:20SPEAKER_00: Secondly, explain the benefits of making changes while taking the audience through the challenges of implementing that change.
- 4:27SPEAKER_00: Third, giving praise when you're genuinely impressed rather than going through the motions to try and motivate a team.
- 4:34SPEAKER_00: As leaders, we want to shout about the positives and downplay the negatives.
- 4:38SPEAKER_00: We want our teams to be motivated and feeling safe rather than worrying about the risks and challenges they face.
- 4:45SPEAKER_00: Employees will compare what the leaders tell them to their own experiences and what they've heard on the company rumor mill.
- 4:52SPEAKER_00: If the gap between what you say and what they are experiencing is too big, your audience will tune out and stop trusting you.
- 5:01SPEAKER_00: Be honest and transparent as much as you can when speaking to teams and employees.
- 5:07SPEAKER_00: You'll build a lot more trust and credibility, which in turn makes you a much more effective leader.
- 5:13SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, to speak with the confidence of a leader, create clear, digestible messages.
- 5:19SPEAKER_00: The more concise and well structured you can make your messages when speaking, the easier it will be for your audience to hear, understand and take those messages in.
- 5:29SPEAKER_00: Before starting to speak, be clear in your own mind the purpose of your communication.
- 5:34SPEAKER_00: For instance, are you conveying information, for example, a vision, a goal or a plan, or educating your audience?
- 5:41SPEAKER_00: Or secondly, are you asking your audience to take action?
- 5:45SPEAKER_00: Or are you communicating options to get a decision from them?
- 5:49SPEAKER_00: Or fourth, are you asking permission to undertake a set of actions or activities?
- 5:54SPEAKER_00: The outcome you want from speaking to your audience will influence the structure of your message and how you speak to your audience.
- 6:02SPEAKER_00: For example, if I wanted to get a decision from a group of board directors, the structure I might use would start with a decision I want them to take.
- 6:11SPEAKER_00: Then I would list out the options available and then I would ask for them to make the decision.
- 6:17SPEAKER_00: If I were asking a team to make a change, I might outline the change I want to happen first, then take the team through the benefits of making that change.
- 6:27SPEAKER_00: I might take questions from the team.
- 6:29SPEAKER_00: I would then ask them to commit to making the change and then outline step by step how they need to make that change.
- 6:37SPEAKER_00: Work at making your messaging concise, that is using as few words and sentences as possible to get a clear message across.
- 6:45SPEAKER_00: You should aim to get your main point or request across in one or two sentences.
- 6:52SPEAKER_00: The clearer your messaging, the quicker and easier your audience will understand it and take the action you want.
- 6:58SPEAKER_00: Keep practicing.
- 6:59SPEAKER_00: The quicker and easier your audience understands your message, the more confident you will become in speaking.
- 7:06SPEAKER_00: Create clear structures and be concise to speak like a leader.
- 7:10SPEAKER_00: Fourth, confident leaders speak well by practicing their public speaking skills.
- 7:16SPEAKER_00: When you speak to any group, you have the opportunity to practice your public speaking skills.
- 7:21SPEAKER_00: Really confident leaders who are good at speaking to say 4,000 people started off being poor at public speaking.
- 7:28SPEAKER_00: At some point they will have been exactly where you are now.
- 7:33SPEAKER_00: The greater numbers of people we speak to, the more we worry about saying the wrong thing, making mistakes, boring our audience, looking silly, and all the other fears that come into our heads about things that could go wrong.
- 7:46SPEAKER_00: The four most important actions I know to control your fears when speaking to a large audience are firstly transform the feelings of fear into feelings of excitement in your head.
- 7:58SPEAKER_00: Secondly, focus on your audience and your message rather than on your fears.
- 8:03SPEAKER_00: Third, do visualization exercises where you picture yourself speaking to your audience and it's going very well.
- 8:10SPEAKER_00: Fourth, finally, your performance is your practice, so practice speaking out loud ten plus times before speaking to your audience.
- 8:19SPEAKER_00: Make the time to practice speaking out loud.
- 8:22SPEAKER_00: Recording yourself is a great way to aid self-learning and improving how you speak to groups of people.
- 8:28SPEAKER_00: Fifth, to speak with the confidence of a leader, master your non-verbal communication.
- 8:34SPEAKER_00: The majority of our communication when speaking face to face with an audience does not come through our actual words we say.
- 8:42SPEAKER_00: Our tone, pitch and pace of voice, our facial expressions and our body language are all important to communicating the meaning of our message.
- 8:50SPEAKER_00: Just think how confused or angry you feel when a person communicates with words a positive message, yet uses a very bored or angry voice.
- 9:00SPEAKER_00: You wonder about the confusing body language and forget to take in what is actually being said.
- 9:07SPEAKER_00: Always align the words you say with your non-verbal communication.
- 9:12SPEAKER_00: This is very important to help the audience concentrate on what you're communicating to them and help them take it in and understand it.
- 9:20SPEAKER_00: To speak with a confidence of a leader, pay a lot of attention to.
- 9:24SPEAKER_00: Firstly, the tone, the volume, the speed and the pitch of your voice.
- 9:29SPEAKER_00: Secondly, when and how you use pauses to emphasize your points and to allow your audience to take in what you have said.
- 9:37SPEAKER_00: Third, the facial expressions you use, for example, to convey sympathy and concern when communicating a difficult message.
- 9:44SPEAKER_00: Fourth, how you engage your audience with your eye contact.
- 9:48SPEAKER_00: Fifth, how you use your arms and hand gestures.
- 9:52SPEAKER_00: And then sixth, the way you hold your body and posture when speaking.
- 9:56SPEAKER_00: A great way to practice all of these is to film yourself with your phone while speaking.
- 10:02SPEAKER_00: Look at all the nonverbal communication that you are conveying and ask yourself, how can I improve my nonverbal communication to improve the engagement of my audience and the clarity of my message?
- 10:13SPEAKER_00: To speak like a CEO, work on improving how you use your nonverbal communication.
- 10:19SPEAKER_00: So, in summary, speaking and communicating clearly at work is vital in any role.
- 10:25SPEAKER_00: Speaking with confidence is a lot more important to managers and leaders because their roles create a lot of value through the people they lead.
- 10:33SPEAKER_00: Practice each of the techniques we have discussed today, and firstly, you'll speak with a lot more confidence as a leader.
- 10:39SPEAKER_00: Secondly, when speaking effectively with executives or when presenting to a board of directors or large audiences.
- 10:47SPEAKER_00: The five vital speaking techniques for you to learn and practice to speak with the confidence of a leader are firstly know your audience to be a confident speaker.
- 10:57SPEAKER_00: Secondly, be transparent and honest when speaking.
- 11:01SPEAKER_00: Third, create clear digestible messages.
- 11:04SPEAKER_00: Fourth, practice your public speaking skills.
- 11:06SPEAKER_00: And fifth, master your non-verbal communication.
- 11:11SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions on speak with the confidence of a leader, five vital speaking techniques, please leave a comment below and I'll get back to you.
- 11:20SPEAKER_00: Do visit us at enhance.training and take a look at the course and coaching options to quickly build your management expertise and confidence so that you can get the very best from the people that you manage and lead.
- 11:32SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for watching, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.
- 11:36SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions on speak with the confidence of a leader, five vital speaking techniques, please email me at support at enhance.