Premise:
Someone asked me today what are the most basic and foundational ideas that can help us in becoming a good communicator, specially when it comes to speaking from a stage.
This could be at a team meeting addressing a small team or at an all-hands call addressing 1000’s of employees or to a set of customers or partners or investors.
Here are possibly the most foundational belief’s that I have learnt from my own lived experience and what I have learnt from my mentors that can help us become good communicators from a stage.
1. You dont matter {Until you Do}:
One of the most common reason why speaking from a stage becomes difficult is because we become conscious of ourselves. The way that we can overcome this is to believe that we don’t really matter that much and that everyone is busy with themselves and their own challenges.
This is true when we start out and over time when we build trust with the audience, we start to matter. However, by that time, we will usually have overcome the consciousness because of the mutual trust that we have built over time.
2. They dont care {Until you give them a reason to care}:
The trust that I mention above is built over time when we give them a reason to care about what you have to share. Whom do we care more about – us or them?
Why should they care to listen to us and our message? We need to find and answer this question so they care about what we have to say.
3. No one’s listening {Unless you speak their language and to their aspirations}:
Once we know why they should care and listen to us, it is important to speak their language. Every group has their own language that they speak which identifies people as part of the group. Knowing and speaking that language makes us part of the group.
When we answer the question about why they should care in their own language, we get their attention.
In conclusion:
In conclusion, I would suggest that we should start learning the language of the people we want to speak to, understand their aspirations, tell they why they should care in their own language and do this consistently over time.
They will start trusting us and we will get confident and gradually we will start feeling less and less conscious when on stage and get better and better at speaking from the stage and making a difference.
