Up Front Communication

Helping people and businesses through the art of communication

Wisdom from Stella Adler

Wisdom from Stella Adler

Stella Adler was speaking about actors. Her words apply to you, too. Actor, speaker, dancer, activist, employee, manager, whatever you are – this is the key to stepping up and letting your voice ring out with power and sincerity.

Off the Introspective Cuff

One of the keys to being able to ramble out a good, solid off-the-cuff or spontaneous speech is introspection – and lots of it.

The purpose behind this introspection isn’t to indulge in endless navel-gazing.  That’s what Facebook and Instagram are for.  This self-reflection is to develop an acute awareness of your values, your personal drivers, and your thoughts on life, the universe, and everything.*

When making spontaneous speeches, we need to rely on tidbits of information that we hold in our head.  There isn’t time to ponder and compose an answer, and we may be lacking data critical to making an informed argument.  We can, however, always give our opinion on matters.  This is where the introspection comes in: if we spend time thinking about how our own brain works, we can address subjects from a personal angle.  This may not result in a speech with heavy hitting evidence and data to back up your opinion, but it will result in something (relatively) thoughtful.  You can speak to how you think about the topic or situation, about what affects your views and opinions, about how it relates to your own context.  And – prize of prize – you can do so with sincerity because you are ultimately revealing a part of yourself to your audience, and you take the time to think about yourself and your context.

Speaking is about sharing. We don’t always have the luxury of being able to share facts, but we can always share a piece of ourselves.  But in order to share ourselves, we must understand ourselves first.

 

 

 

*42.

Interest

If you want to be interesting, you must be interested.

Be interested in everything; be interested in current events, in culture, in daily life.  Be interested in new ways of doing things, in activities you’ve never tried, in subjects you don’t know much about.

Definitely be interested in the people you are talking to.  The more interested you are about them – the more questions you ask them and the more opportunity you give them to tell their story – the more interested they’ll be in you.  They’ll wonder why it is that you are so interested in them, why you are giving them the precious gift of time and attention.  They’ll start to wonder about you, ask you questions in turn, and remember you in greater detail.

The key is to make this interest genuine.  It may seem next to impossible to display real interest in something you find really dull, but usually there is at least a silver thread of fascination in just about any topic. If you find yourself having difficulty finding a subject interesting, drill down into it and find some way that it affects you on a personal level.  If the person you are talking to is desperately boring, ask them questions and then ask more questions for every answer until they reveal some odd or delightful nugget.  The fact that the interesting nugget is unexpected will make it even more interesting.  If you are having trouble finding some glimmer of interest in that person, you either haven’t asked enough questions or you aren’t really listening to them.  We humans are an odd bunch, which means endless opportunity for fascination if you are willing to look hard enough.

Approach just about everything you encounter with open curiosity.  The interest-rebound effect that it has on you is due to the fact that it expands your worldview, increases the breadth of subjects you can converse about, and encourages others to be interested as well.

The added advantage, of course, is that it also makes life a whole lot more fun.

Precious time

Time is important.

We all know this.  We lead busy lives. Our days fly by. Time is valuable. Time is precious. Time is money. We bill hourly and count down minutes.

The premium on time is what makes it so powerful.  Time is a gift. It is respect. It is consideration.

You need to give time to get it. While we are constantly on the hunt for time savers, often what we need to do is give more time to the communication process. This is true for speaking, for teaching, for explaining, for convincing.  We don’t need to speed up and jam our content into less time, we need to slow down and give the message the time it needs to be delivered.

Give your words space. It takes time to gather our thoughts, to put them into words, to speak them, for the listener to hear them and process them. Breathe. Time is a blessing. It enhances the most important part of messages and demonstrates that you value the conversation you are having.

Taking time may be as simple as slowing down how quickly you speak (contrary to popular belief, making speedy, quick, snappy retorts often does not make you seem more intelligent; in many, many contexts or situations it can make you appear panicky and reactionary or worse).   It may mean keeping your mouth shut and giving the other person time to speak.  It might require filling the air with silence instead of words – one of the hardest things to do.  It may even mean giving a long chunk of time for your message to be digested. Step outside the room, sleep on it, give yourself or the other person hours or days to think about the conversation and build a calm response instead of blurting a fast reaction.

Time is one of the most beautiful communication tools. Make the most of it.

How-to: Writing Recommendations for LinkedIn Contacts

Lately, I have been brushing up my LinkedIn profile.  If you don’t use LinkedIn, I strongly recommend that you create a profile.  It really is a great way to keep in touch with professional and business contacts and build your professional network.

LinkedIn has a couple of different tools you can use to vet the work, skills, and abilities of your contacts: Endorse and Recommend.  Endorsements allow you to either click on skills that already appear in your contact’s profile or enter in new skills. This “endorses” the skills that appear on your contact’s profile; other people will see your name and photo beside that skills. It effectively states that you agree that the contact possesses those particular abilities.

Recommend is an even stronger tool.  It lets you write a few sentences describing the work and abilities of your contact; you can describe what it is like to work with this person, how having them as a colleague or business associate has affected you, and how they will benefit other employers or clients. It is like a mini-referral. Recommendations appear under the relevant work title of the contact, which puts the recommendation into context. You can send messages through LinkedIn requesting recommendations from other people and post recommendations to anyone in your contacts list.

As you can tell, I’m a fan.  The only problem is that LinkedIn’s current interface makes it tricky to find the Recommend function. I’ve had several people ask me how to do this, so I’ve created the following tutorial to guide you through the process.  Enjoy!

Note: For best viewing quality, watch the tutorial on YouTube using the ‘Large Player’ setting.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikwCqS8SoXc&w=420&h=315]

Are you a LinkedIn user? If so, what are your favourite features?

 

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