A Speaker’s Guide to Effective Communication

One of the best decisions in my life was to become a member of Toastmasters International. It has helped me refine my public speaking skills, expand my network, and hone my leadership skills. The dedicated members at Toastmasters provide constructive feedback in a safe, supportive environment. I find the seasoned speakers a source of inspiration. There is always something to learn in every meeting.

Earlier this year, Geoff Smith (whom I have known from my Toastmasters Club) informed us that he has written a book on “A Speaker’s Guide to Effective Communication”. Geoff has been a Toastmasters member for 45 years and is a recipient of the Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM),??their highest award for speaking excellence. In the book, Geoff has captured his learning and provided tips on the basics of communication, resolving conflicts, conversational and public speaking, effective speech evaluation, and the art of storytelling. As I read the book over the holidays, I thought of jotting down a few key messages from the book:

• Effective communication with the people around you is vital in creating an authentic self.
• An essential pre-condition in developing communication skills is empathy. It is the heart and soul of good communication. It involves actively trying to understand the speaker’s feelings and attitude from their point of view and not your own. The question often asked is whether empathy is an inherent part of our basic makeup, or whether it can be developed as part of our own ongoing survival needs.?
• Listening can be regarded as one of the most vital skills in communication. Unfortunately, it is usually the one that is most neglected. Humans are not trained to listen. It is a skill that is not inherent but which can be learned.?
• The five major steps for effective communication are: 1) The way you speak, 2) The words you use, 3) The body language you adopt, 4) How your words are affecting your audience, 5) Knowing what you want to communicate and achieve
• While listening, make sure to provide regular feedback: Show that you understand where the speaker is coming from by reflecting on their “expressed” feelings. Examples: “You must have really enjoyed that”, “That must have been a shock to you” but try to avoid saying “I fully understand how you feel” or words to that effect. You cannot “know” how they feel and only very rarely will you be actually “in their shoes.” Often this can tend to belittle their experience.
• When using communication skills to resolve conflict, remember the axiom in modern psychology is that emotion will always win when emotion and reason are in conflict.?
• Conversational Speaking: Your words do not create your listener’s actions; your words evoke the emotions that then power those actions. Avoid using should, must, and but as these three are probably the most subversive words in the English language and great care is advisable when using them. ‘Should” and “must” imply that there is a universal law that somehow directs people’s behavior and “but” invariably negates a previous compliment.
• The Structure of a Speech should generally have the following components:?

1. Hook to get the attention of the audience?
2. Content to keep their attention and?
3. An Effective Close so they will remember the speech and why they spent time listening to it.?

• Competent speech evaluation is one of the core experiences of Toastmasters. While evaluating a speech, choose what you are going to evaluate. There could be different approaches:?

1. Approach to Structure: Check for Hook, Body, Close?
2. Approach to Style:??Evaluate the speaker’s style of delivery and not content. Style can be broken down into three areas. Sound (including pitch), body language, and personality factors.
3. Approach to Mission: Evaluate according to (a) the specifics requested by the speaker or (b) the goals outlined in the program.
4. Approach to Interest: Relate to the interest of the speech. This approach is both subjective and objective in that it covers the evaluator’s personal and subjective interest in the speech content and objectively their opinion of the group’s needs.

• Words are to a speaker what colour is to an artist and it is the power of words that can form the basis of real inspirational eloquence. The English language is one of the world’s finest in terms of its volume, scope, and expressive capacity and there are several powerful tools that a speaker can use to turn an ordinary speech into a masterpiece. These include Onomatopoeia, Alliteration, Hyperbole, Metaphor, Anaphora, and Comparison.?

1. Onomatopoeia: Sound of action matches word sound. i.e., “The Sword swished silently”, “He bullied his way into the meeting”?
2. Alliteration: Same sound at beginning of at least three consecutive words. i.e. “She looked at him with cold calculating contempt”, “He rose out of bed with self-righteous revenge in his heart”?
3. Hyperbole: Exaggerated non-literal statements to emphasize a point i.e. “I’ve told you a thousand times please put your plates in the sink”, “I am so hungry I could eat a horse”?
4. Metaphor: This is an exaggerated scenario for dramatic comparison i.e.:” He fought like a lion”?
5. Anaphora: Identical repetition of the opening phrases of several related sentences (normally three or even more times). “I have a dream” (Martin Luther King), “We will fight them on the beaches” (Winston Churchill, Britain’s war-time leader), Barrack Obama” We can---“at his nomination speech for the US Presidency.

There are many more wonderful nuggets in the book to improve your communication style. I have always admired Geoff’s public speaking style and am glad to see him share his experiences in the book.