How Are Your Verbals?

Whether you are a Speaker or a "thinking about it" speaker, you need to think about this...

When you speak, do you inspire, persuade, and enthuse, or do you send people to sleep? When you look out over your audience, are they captivated by you and you have their full attention? Or when you look out over the room is one group discussing something secret with their heads together, someone else sneaking out of the room with some other sneaky friends, and people starting to do their own thing? Maybe some really are snoring! You get the idea.

If you fall into the latter category, fear not my dull friend...

Good verbal skills can be easily acquired, and to get you started, here are a few tips:

• Speak energetically, with enthusiasm - vary your pitch - don't just speak in a monotone - sound excited.
  
• Speak with feeling. Speak with sincerity - of course, in speaking thus, you must always mean what you say!
  
• Don't "preach" - give examples. People understand more by example. Get your point across via a story.
  
• Speak clearly, slowly, and in simple terms that everyone can understand - don't try to impress by using big words or jargon!
  
• Speak animatedly - make twinkling eye contact - move your hands a little (but don't conduct an orchestra!)

That should do for starters... oh, forgot something really important - pick an interesting subject! (Creative Uses for Toenail Clippings just may not do it for everybody, get what I mean?)

Until next time...

Terri Levine
http://www.comprehensivecoachingu.com
http://www.terrilevine.com
http://www.coachinstitute.com