Week 5 - Communication

Our next week on communication was split into two parts: for the first two days, we had guest lecturer Dr.Abha take us through effective presentation skills and techniques, and in the next two days Viji took us through improving our personal and professional conversations.

Public Speaking Session - Dr.Abha - Takeaways

More people are afraid of public speaking than of death! That is how mortifying people find public speaking. But the root cause of the problem typically is not that one cannot speak, or one does not have any knowledge; rather, it simply boils down to the fear of being judged by the people listening.

Once we realize this, we can be better equipped to deal with "stage fright". An effective method to both improve our presentations and getting rid of our fear, is to dedicate ourselves to perfecting our speech. If we are fully engaged in our work and we reach the flow state, the opinion of others barely matters to us anymore.

We started off focusing on the most fundamental aspect: structuring. Dr.Abha pointed out that it is easy for anyone to go on rambling about a topic of their interest, but the true challenge is to deliver information in a crisp and engaging manner.

Two primary structures were introduced in this session:

3 T Structure:

• Tell your audience what you will be talking about: Make sure your audience has a clear picture of what they are dedicating their time to and establish why it's important.
• Tell your audience: Deliver all your talking points.
• Tell your audience what you have spoken about: the most impactful part of the speech, ie, the callback. Use this to summarize key takeaways, and present your call to action.

4 P Structure

• Position: Tell your audience what you're talking about and/or what your opinion is.
• Problem: Speak about why this subject opinion is important/credible.
• Possibility: What does all this mean to your audience moving forward.
• Proposal: Your call to action for the audience.

In the second session, we talked about the delivery of presentations. To quickly summarize the key areas that were discussed:

• Personal projection: A good message without conviction would cause apathy. A weak topic conveyed with strong conviction would only ruse a short-term frenzy. Focusing on strong messages, and delivering them with utmost conviction is required to uphold sustained action.
• Humor: Humor can add personality to presentations, but must be used carefully. When used gently, it can be used to deliver an easily understandable context about the topic at hand. But one must make sure it mustn't be offensive and isn't off-topic.
• Questions: Questions can be used to deliver a stronger in many ways, a few of which are:
• Rhetorical question: Making the audience think.
• Factual Recall: To introduce/callback facts
• Opinion: To elicit an emotional response.
• Comparison: Once again, to make the audience critically analyze.
• Clarification: To elaborate/clarify something you have said.
• Voice Projection: The way we speak and pronounce can have a profound impact on the tone and hence the emotion with which our message is being delivered. A few quick tips to sharpen the same:
• Pick up the pace whenever you want to show excitement.
• Slow down and use pauses to emphasize points.
• Use repetitions (and list of threes) to make sure key phrases are retained by the audience.
• Body Language: It is common knowledge among experts that the nonverbal cues a good speaker give have more impact than their verbal delivery itself. Some tips to keep in mind:
• Keep your hands, and body in general, open. This shows openness. A person who closes up looks like they have something to hide.
• Maintain eye contact with your audience. Look around the crowd, not just at one spot. Eye contact is a communication of respect to your audience.
• Information Delivery: One must convey information in a concise and clear manner. This involves not only a crisp speech, but also strong supporting material in the form of good quality slides. They must be creative, essentially 'talking with pictures'.

Improving Conversational Ability - Viji ma'am

The primary topic of this session and the activities we did associated to it, revolved around being assertive during personal conversations. Some of the takeaways from this session were:

• Assertiveness vs Aggression: Try to be convincing about your point of view, but don't be dominating. One cannot be assertive without being open to the other person's concerns/views. It requires respect for oneself as well as the person one is talking to. A conversation isn't a shouting match; the goal of a conversation isn't to prove you are better, but rather to benefit from it, even if that means you learn to change your opinions. An assertive dialogue can lead to a win-win situation.
• Practical tip: If you are talking to someone about something they did that affected you, don't be accusatory. Rather, use a tone that emphasizes your distress. Say "I'm hurt", instead of "You hurt me".
• Polite vs passive: As mentioned previously, it is crucial to be respectful of the other person's opinion. But on the flip side of aggression, some people tend to not at all respect their own point of view. This is equally bad. While being polite, make sure you are able to put your point across. Do not compromise on your values to satisfy another person.
• Practical tip: This is all about confidence in oneself. Make sure you do not view/treat yourself as a floormat. (Reference an ode to Sean Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens, a personal favorite of mine growing up).
• Proximity to person: One must be careful while trying to be assertive. It is more effective with people you are very close to. To relative strangers, assertiveness that isn't well executed can come off as aggressive.