Guaranteeing clarity of your message is becoming harder because of increasing disruption and distraction in today’s business environment. You still need to get people to read, see, listen and understand what you are trying to say.
How can you be seen as the expert you really are? You need to be more effective and memorable in how you communicate by being able to:
- Think and speak on your feet.
- Write clearly, concisely, persuasively – and fast!
- Be more dynamic and persuasive in presentations.
‘How you say it’ is just as important as what you say, our delegates say that 95% of their workplace communication is ad-hoc and informal. They are put on-the-spot throughout the day by:
- Being called into an impromptu meeting, with no time to prepare.
- Needing to explain their thoughts, in a clear and concise way, to their boss or another stakeholder.
- Being asked a difficult question, with little or no time to think, giving a hurried and jumbled response.
Being able to Think on Your Feet® is a skill that will ensure you are able to communicate with Clarity, Brevity and Impact™. Think on Your Feet® helps you address and stay calm in these informal situations by teaching you how to structure you’re thinking through:
- Using the best communication strategy for each situation.
- Focusing a topic into bite-sized chunks for easy retention.
- Presenting ideas clearly, concisely, and memorably.
Our top tip to help Think on Your Feet® delegates make this a success? Apart from practice:
- Inform – be informative, packaging information logically and succinctly.
- Promote – position your arguments to persuade your audience and prove your expertise.
- Engage – be appealing, paint a picture with images and analogies.
More about Think on Your Feet®…
Write clearly, concisely, persuasively – and fast!
Have you ever taken a piece of work to your boss, for it to be pulled apart? Have you ever read a document and thought, “I wish I could write like that”? We all think it’s tough, but we are all capable to write documents like a professional.
It’s all about being able to express ourselves well in our everyday business documents like reports, emails etc. You probably got your job through a successful CV that didn’t overload the reader and allowed them to skim-read the content – like you, they have no time. When writing, not just your CV, you should consider how to:
- Get your reader’s attention.
- Ensure your key message is clear and understood.
- Save yourself and your reader time.
We increase our productivity by writing effectively, efficiently and fast – by using the Writing Dynamics™ three-stage writing system:
- PLAN – using creative and structured thinking;
- DRAFT – quickly and effectively;
- And EDIT – with impact to be memorable.
More about Writing Dynamics™…
Be more dynamic and persuasive in presentations
If you have to stand up in front of people and give a presentation, you will know how nerve-wracking it is. When we have finished we often hope that we remembered what we wanted to say, didn’t skip key points and didn’t bore the audience. So how do you ensure that your presentation is effective and memorable? Remember:
- Your audience.
- Take your time to prepare.
- No death by PowerPoint®.
The Skilled Presenter™ focuses on the presentation skills that professional speakers use. It ensures you prepare and deliver like a professional and focus on how listeners’ perceive you – so you will deliver that knock-out presentation every time.
One of the exercises covered in the workshop is the ‘dry-run’. You do it to focus on the timing of your presentation, so you won’t overrun or finish too early.
Roger HB Davies CEO, McLuhan & Davies Communications, Inc. says “Listeners commonly complain that speakers waste their time and talk too long. If you don’t do a dry run, you risk preparing forty minutes of material for a twenty-minute presentation. At the fifteen-minute mark, you’re surprised when you’re only halfway through your material. You panic. You speed up the last part, glide over the most important points, and never get that hard-hitting conclusion you planned.
The Skilled Presenter™ always does at least one dry run to focus on timing. Be willing to remove major sections of your presentation. Ask the following questions: Do my listeners really want to know this? Is it engaging? Is it persuasive?
On the other hand, if your dry run shows your presentation is short, stretch the time by adding more examples or by devoting more time to a question-and-answer period.”
More about The Skilled Presenter™…
