Multiple communication channels available 24/7 are a mixed blessing. They allow to spread the message quickly and in multiple formats. However, it can be easy to lose sight of what really needs to be said. Hence, we could technology on a pause for a moment and focus on the message. There are three simple steps to shape the overarching communications strategy and prepare a clear message.
1. 👩🏻🤝🧑🏻 First, REALLY know your audience
2. 🌟 Then ask, “What do they need to hear?”
3. 🛣 Now for the fun part: building your strategy. Involve your internal stakeholders 👩💻 Contributors, 🕵️♂️ Reviewers, and 👩💼 Approver(s)
By building your confidence as well as your competence, you build executive presence. True self-esteem doesn’t mean that one has to assert ourselves at the expense of other people. People with positive self-esteem can acknowledge their own worth and validate the positive qualities of others.
📖 Learn something new—there is no cut-off age for learning and in today’s pandemic online world, there’s no limit to what you can learn.
🤩 Adopt a mantra—a positive affirmation can sometimes serve as a reminder of your self-worth. Find a quote, affirmation, or mantra, print it out, and place it where you’ll see it every day.
🤗 Show compassion and self-respect—one strategy is to be more compassionate in the way you talk to yourself.
♥ Forgive yourself—everybody, without exception, makes mistakes. Healthy self-forgiveness involves the right amount of remorse, which helps you learn from your mistakes and fuel positive change.
📝 Journal your accomplishments—by articulating your accomplishments and recording them on paper, you force yourself to increase your awareness on the positive side of the equation.
A strong opening and a memorable closing are the most important parts of any speech. To craft a strong end, think about why and how you want your speech to be remembered.
🦸♀️ Call to action—tell your audience to take action, make it clear and specific
🌈 Close the story arc—set up a question at the beginning of your speech and use your ending to answer it
👨🏫 Tell them what you’ve just told—summarize main points of your speech, use a summary slide instead of a ‘thank you’ slide
⚒ Punchline—finish with a short, memorable sentence, an interesting quote, a cartoon or animation
Beginning speakers focus on themselves—how to speak best to the audience. Experienced speakers learn to shift the focus onto the audience and their needs. For this shift you need to understand how to break down the wall between speaker and audience and. These eight tips from experts help you to connect with the audience: 🎭 Tell great stories 🙋♀️ Ask powerful questions 🤗 Tap into empathy 🤝 Build their trust 🎹 Use contrast and variety ♥ Make the personal, universal 🤦♀️ Embrace mistakes 🦸♂️ Be real. Let them be real
🥱 Never deliver a hybrid presentation you wouldn’t want to sit through—in-person or online
🐱💻 Hybrid presenting creates unique obstacles to overcome—tech (CHECK YOUR MIC!), taking care of both audiences, considering the impact of your visuals, engaging in networking and socializing, being mindful of your scene and screen moves
💃 Speakers need to combine their in-person skills with their more recently built virtual presenting skills The goal of hybrid presenting is the same as all presentations: form a connection with the audience to move them from point A to point B. But your job as a speaker is undoubtedly harder with hybrid presentations. There are now two audiences you need to connect with at the same time. But the flexibility and opportunity that we gain from the hybrid environment is worth the effort.
Hand and finger gestures amplify the impact of your spoken words by as much as five times. In fact, people will remember more of what you said if you gesture while you speak. This works well for online and hybrid public speaking, as often video shows only upper body. You could use gestures as Amplifiers, Signifiers, and Delineators. 👉 https://rosemaryravinal.com/let-your-hands-do-your-talking/
Humour is often used as a communication device, to charm and to offend, to mock and to encourage, but ultimately to persuade. Despite the common usage, the question “to joke or not to joke?” still provoke heated debates. Scientists cannot miss this research opportunity. A team from University of South California conducted an analysis to better understand the contingencies of humour effects. The results are summarised in a paper “A Priest, a Rabbi, and a Minister Walk into a Bar: A Meta-Analysis of Humor Effects on Persuasion“. They scrutinized some hundred studies and find three interesting things about effects of humour on persuasion.
First, indeed humour has effect on persuasion. Overall this effect is weak, but robust. But, humor has a moderate-level influence on knowledge, but only a weak impact on attitudes and behavioral intent. In other words, use jokes to support learning. But don’t expect gigs would significantly change attitudes and behaviuor.
Second, jokes should be relatable. The study found that the most effective is humour central to the message, addressed to the topic important for people (or, as authors put it related-humor for highly-involved individuals). When humor was central to the message tended to exert more impact on knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intent, compared to messages that used humor only peripherally. What is is more important, effects were stronger when the topic of the message had direct consequences for the participants’ lives (what authors call highly-involved individuals). Hence, surprisingly, humorous instructions on important things work better. Safety procedures during a flight or a message advocating against drinking and driving addressed to students, just to name a few.
Third, use it but don’t abuse it. No jokes is bad, too many jokes is even worse. The results revealed an inverted U-shaped effect of humor intensity on persuasion. Small amounts of humor may not be enough to draw attention. Too much humor overwhelm the processing of information, things getting “too funny”. One need to calibrate and moderate. The good news is that one should just avoid extremes. There is a broad range of humour intensity, where it works well.
Figure. The plotted regression of humour intensity on persuasion.
