Matt Abrahams of BoldEcho on Becoming Effective Communicators

• 1:34 Matt’s book – Speaking Up Without Freaking Out 1:46
• 2:04 It’s normal and natural to feel nervous in high-stakes speaking situations
• 2:21 There are lots of techniques to manage the anxiety related to public speaking
• 2:38 Examples of ways to cope with both symptoms and sources of anxiety
• 3:25 Make sure you understand who you are speaking to and what it is that you can do to help them
• 3:50 The importance of structuring your message in such a way as to make it easy for your audience to understand
• 4:08 “Tell me the time, don’t build me the clock” – many technical people are clock builders
• 4:29 Effective communication is about confidence, audience awareness and structure
• 4:57 The Three C’s of communication – confidence, connectedness and being compelling
• 5:07 Competence = confidence; the more confident you appear to your audience the more competent and credible they will see you as
• 5:27 Lots of resources on the No Freaking Speaking website
• 5:43 Connections come from knowing your audience and knowing your context
• 6:01 All communication should have a goal.
• 6:08 A goal has 3 parts - information, emotion and action
• 6:21 Once you have a goal you can pick a structure to convey the message most effectively
• 6:25 One structure is “what, so what, now what”?
• 7:12 Overcoming imposter syndrome – most audiences are there to learn, they want you to be successful
• 7:29 Know that there are things that you know that can provide value – that’s why you were asked to talk
• 8:05 Focus on having a strong non-verbal presence – stance, voice pitch
• 8:35 The audience wants to get something from the speaker, if you demonstrate confidence the audience will see you as confident and credible
• 8:50 Exploring what context means in a speaking situation
• 8:58 Shorter presentations are harder to structure
• 9:10 Time of day makes a difference to the speaker and audience’s energy levels
• 9:25 Understand where your talk fits in a sequence (where there are other talks as part of the communication event)
• 10:00 Creating a communication event devoid of contextual awareness sets you up for failure
• 10:47 Culture (national and organisational) is another contextual aspect to be aware of
• 11:31 Leaders have a responsibility to model appropriate communications and mentor others into doing so
• 11:48 Too often speakers are fixated on content and don’t think about audience context and culture
• 11:55 Building these skills takes time and focus
• 12:04 Building skills is about repetition, reflection and feedback
• 12:23 Consider joining an organisation like ToastMasters to get practice opportunities
• 12:43 Ensure you take time to reflect about how your talk went
• 12:55 Try to build a culture of reflection and feedback – at the end of a meeting ask the participants for feedback on the quality of communication
• 13:38 The importance of vocalising your practice – don’t just think what you will say, practice saying it out loud
• 14:08 It takes bravery to admit that we’re not great communicators and start on a path of learning to improve

Mentioned:

• Qcon San Francisco
• BoldEcho
• Stanford Graduate School of Business
• Blog – No Freaking Speaking and Matt’s book
• Imposter Syndrome
• ToastMasters