Speech Tips
Be a Knight in Shining Armor
What to do When Listening? Be a knight in shining armor.
Listen to your clients, customers, colleagues, friends, family, and when you hear them talk about something they need, step in and offer help. “What can I do to help?” Or your help could come in the form of offering information or introducing them to another person who could help them.
How to Talk to a Sad Person
In the New York Times several days ago was an article about how to talk to a sad person. During holidays we expect people to be happy and the New York Times recognizes that is not always the case.
What do you do when notice a person who looks sad?
Here are some tips.
1. Tell the person what you notice and ask if they’re sad. It’s often a relief to a person that you notice.
2. Mildly ask them why. If they do acknowledge to feeling down, ask them why without being brash. It make take 30 seconds, 1 minute or longer for them to begin talking. Wait patiently without saying anything.
3. Sum up or reflect back what they said so they know you heard them and you understood. This will show empathy. Empathy means you understand what it must feel like to be in their situation.
What Happens When You Don’t Listen & the Unforeseen Danger of Misinterpretation
What Happens When You Don’t Listen & the Unforeseen Danger of Misinterpretation…
Poor listening skills can lead to misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and missed opportunities.
But even if you do listen by paying attention and hearing all the words, you can still misinterpret what you hear.
How can that happen? A frequent cause is not having all the information or making an assumption which is not accurate.
Example– Your client is married and both husband and wife work remotely at home. You know this because your client talks about both taking care of the two-year old. You remember your client saying that the husband helped her get her job. She works remotely for a hospital system whose home base is in Minnesota. You assume they both work for the same company and decided (for some reason) to live in Pennsylvania.
ACK!!! Your assumptions are wrong. Turns out they live in Pennsylvania in the city of her husband’s professorial job at a university and he does blended work— on site at the university and remote work. They do not work for the same company.
So how to avoid misinformation and inaccurate assumptions? Use clarifying questions like: “Let me see if I understand accurately …” or “Do I understand correctly…” or “Tell me if I have the picture right…”
Develop your skill of listening and asking clarifying questions to increase connection with people, inspire trust and rapport, and build strong relationships that lead to greater satisfaction and successful outcomes.
English Speaking Skills- Make a Goal – Use a Visual Cue
English Speaking Skills- Keep Your Vision In Front of You
Do you have a dream? A dream is bigger than a goal. Here’s a tip- put your dream vision in front of you.
Simple idea- place a visual symbol of your dream in front of you. We move psychologically toward what we constantly see.
What you are want is not “kind of good” communication, At a minimum, you want English speech communication free of “What? What did you say?”
The purpose of your dream for communication is to make connection with people in daily life, at work, or in school with clear, easy to understand speaking voice, and easy to cognitively understand information message. Add to that an English speaking voice which communicates emotion and is pleasing to the ear.
How do you keep your vision of your dream in front of you?
Find a picture of someone you admire – a relative, friend, teacher, broadcaster, or famous person. Or find a photo from a newspaper, magazine or online of people happily communicating. Put it on your bathroom mirror or over your desk— any place you notice everyday.
This visual reminder will help you move toward what you see. Then when you have choices— of talking or not talking, engaging in conversation or remaining quiet, volunteering to answer a question in a small or large group— then you’ll remember the visual aid picture/photo. And you’ll take the extra effort to do clear articulation– leveled-up clear talk mode or careful leveled-up clear talk mode. You’ll do accurate word syllable accent stress. And if you have learned the skill– voice inflection in utterances or sentences which communicates emotion.
hat visual photo or picture will inspire you to do direct practice or more preparation for English speech a few minutes longer before your presentation , meeting or even a conversation. The frequent noticing of your picture or photo will inspire you to put extra effort and focus whenever you take the opportunity to do deliberate practice of your best English speech communication skills in daily life. Your picture will remind you of your dream of better than good— to do great— English speech communication. And you will stride to that dream step by step. It gets easier, and then you will feel leaps. You’ll do what the most masterful people do– direct practice which is like doing homework on your own for your skill, and taking every opportunity to practice your articulation, diction, word syllable accent stress and voice inflection skills.
Or– your picture will inspire you to get more– more systematic, optimal learning for higher level English speech communication skills. Check out your local schools or Clear Talk Mastery — get the best instruction you can.
Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.
Consider doing a CTM coached course– which now leads to yields and gains once thought impossible.
Or on a super limited budget, do systematic and fast acting learning each week using our subscription called ClearTalk Weekly, www.subscription.cleartalkmastery.com
Get and Stay in Touch
Staying in Touch
Previous Monday speech tips focused on different kinds of calls you will be making to friends or colleagues. Examples of openers for different kinds of calls gives you confidence with telephone communication. Be alert to the tone of voice– you can hear emotion not only in the pitch of the voice but also in the pauses. Do follow-up questions which show that you care. Use emotion in your voice — empathy and caring, gladness, surprise, congratulations. Because the shape of the lips and other mouth muscles change with emotion, people can actually hear your emotion even if they cannot see your face or body.
In the United States, 50% of all adults are single. 30% of all adults live alone. Reach out. Get and stay in touch with friends, colleagues and family. That gives you and them support over a lifetime – people who care about your ups and downs.
