Talk Less, Listen More, Be Authentic

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Getting Understood!

Competencies: communication skills, influence skills

Who benefits: all employees

Consultant Usage: background material for communication consultants and trainers

What’s it about? Today is a 3-in-1 offering on communication skills.

Want to improve your oral communications and influence skills?  Try Talk Less, Say More.  This book got my attention with the following opening:

“Face-to-face communication skills are plummeting in the twenty-first century.  What does it take to be an influential communicator in today’s information-overload, attention-deficit, distraction-driven world?  Do you have to morph into a superhuman communicator to keep people tuned in to your ideas when you’re face to face?

“No, when it comes to communicating influentially in our fast-paced, Twitter-happy society, less is more.”

Want to be a better listener?  Try Just Listen.  This book also emphasizes talking less (well it does help as the first step in listening!). 

The book offers a “when pushed, pull” philosophy.  Getting through to difficult people is often just working hard to understand them and letting them know you are trying to understand them.  The techniques in the book have been around quite a while: “listen, ask, mirror, and reflect back.”  But the author is thorough, persuasive, and interesting.  The writing is solid as are the author’s credentials.

Want to be a better speaker?  Try Trust Me.  This book is about the two conversations always being spoken simultaneously by any public speaker: The Verbal and the Non-Verbal.  “When the two conversations are aligned, a communication can be persuasive, powerful, and consistent.”

The author offers a four step process to being an authentic (and thus interesting and believable) public speaker.  He summarizes those steps this way:

1.  “Form the attitude and intent to be open, and then let your body naturally express that intent. This feeling of openness will naturally affect the content of what you are saying, and it’s that natural evolution that is at the heart of the process.
2.  “Become connected to your audience. This creates a mutual energy, and you will naturally begin to think in terms of what the audience wants and needs in shaping your content.
3.  “Ask yourself, what’s my underlying emotion? Why does this matter to me? Becoming passionate about what you have to say naturally makes your audience care about it too.
4.  “Really listen to the audience. Understanding their needs and reactions will enable you to direct your communication in mutually beneficial ways.”

So if being a better communicator is on your development list, one (or more) of these three books should have something for you.

Catch you later.

[tags]communication skills, influence skills, listening skills, speaking skills, oral communication, presentation skills, listening techniques, envisia, envisia learning, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.