Speaking With Confidence: The Power of Structure
Being an influential professional is more important today than ever before, especially for those working in the accounting, finance and tech fields.
Getting our complex ideas across simply helps us speak clearly and concisely, but it also helps our clients feel comfortable, open to hearing our message and, most importantly, it makes them feel smart.
As professionals, we often feel that we simply need to communicate our facts and findings and our clients will understand why they’re important, what the implications are and what they need to do next. Instead, most often, it leads them to feeling confused, lost and too embarrassed to ask perceivably stupid questions.
What we need to do is formulate our messages with appropriate structures. This clarifies our message and makes our clients feel smart, and this is important because it means they will like us.
‘Liking’ is one of the six principles laid out by Robert Cialdini in his seminal book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, which swept through the business community back in 1984 and is still highly relevant today.
The other five principles are reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, scarcity, and later added a seventh principle of 'unity' was added.
Knowing these six (or seven) principles alone will not enable you to be more influential.
You have to embody them, make them your own and—in the language learning vernacular— become fluent in them in order to be in-fluent-ial.
The same is true for becoming a strong, professional communicator. Knowing a few structures is interesting but unhelpful unless you become fluent in them.
Many of my clients begin their engagement with me stating they want to build vocabulary and refine their grammar. These are important elements for being a confident and articulate communicator. However, they are not what makes you influential.
1. Trust is built through the skill of curiosity and listening.
Getting to know who you are talking to is imperative in knowing how to frame and guide your communication. To speak, you first have to know what problem you are solving for the person you are communicating with.
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2. Influence comes from carefully structuring your message.
The right structure will take your complex idea, consider your client’s needs and formulate that idea in a way that systematically takes your client by the hand through your thinking, its implications and the ideal outcome. Structure allows your client to feel what life will be like once your idea is implemented.
It is your job, as the communicator, to generate intrigue in the outcome and drive all your communication towards that end.
Becoming fluent in a range of structures will allow you to neatly organise your thoughts within a few moments and connect with your client. From that point of connection, you can help them makes sense of their problem and guide them gradually toward your solution. By this stage, they will be hanging on your every word.
Once you do this again and again, you are serving your client as the rare, likeable authority who listens with attention and curiosity and is committed to guiding them consistently to their definition of success.
Fluency in applying structures is the key to building trust and influence.
3. Your confidence is achieved through stronger vocabulary and grammar skills.
These are remedially developed through regular and consistent feedback.
Get your career and life heading in the direction you desire. Learn structures and build your fluency by joining me in my community group on the second Tuesday of each month – find out more about Read to Lead here
Leonie Tillman is an international communication specialist and the Director of English for Business working with the staff of multinational organisations to increase their linguistic and cultural communication confidence – [email protected]