How Do I Communicate With Greater Clarity, Confidence, and Credibility?

how many of you have ever asked someone to repeat what they just said have you ever had to ask them more than one time what about a third time what happens then do you get a little frustrated on both sides on both sides exactly in 2009 we actually did research and that was one of our questions how many times would you ask someone to repeat what you said and pretty much after two times people were getting a little frustrated what about your communication skills are people asking you to repeat what you just said yes our

goal tonight is for you to learn the skills so that you can always communicate with Clarity confidence and credibility for anyone who doesn't know I'm Jane Latz founder and president of corporate speech Solutions and our goal our mission is to give you you the skills provide you with the training so that you can always communicate with greater Clarity confidence and credibility so a few of you echoed the issue of power Timothy Kagel says in his book The exceptional presenter that people with strong powerful voices exude self confidence so here's an example you tell me what

you see as the difference today September 15th and we are in New York City today is September 15th and we are in New York City same words same content what did you notice George a smile one can't get rid of that one and more volume in your voice and with that volume what did you feel what did I exude right and this is what almost we're all here for some way shape or form you all mentioned confidence when I created this company the thought of the word confidence was not in any of my taglines my

tagline is we help you say it better but day after day I would get the phone call from different individuals and somewhere in that conversation confidence came up we're going to talk today about the skills technical skills you're going to walk away with actual techniques that you can practice and when you practice them you can walk into any meeting and exude confidence even when you're not feeling it I can't always say to you you're going to be 100% confident when you're surrounded by the CEOs the CFOs whoever is in the meeting with you but I

can give you the skills so that you can at least exude the confidence and the number one is the power in your voice for those of you who don't know my background is as a speech language pathologist so I'm not going to teach you anything that is not safe for your voice it's all about VOC projection not screaming I often speak to groups that go 50 deep 75 deep and I often forget to turn on my microphone and I say can you hear me okay in the back and they always say yes and I never

get laryngitis and I never get a sore throat so I'm going to teach you how to do that because there's two things one people don't recognize when they're speaking in a soft voice and that's one of the beauties that some of you have seen when you work one onone and I use my audio feedback because you think you're speaking in a strong voice until I show you no this isn't even moving you Flatline some of you have experienced that with me and then when we use vocal projection you see all of a sudden the wave

is much bigger so it all starts with the diaphragm this is the part I hate I'm always pointing to my belly in the middle of a presentation but it all starts with our belly this is our power source how do we make sound we bring the power up and it moves our vocal cords it does not come from our neck if you see the veins popping out then you are not projecting the breath adequately so right now I want you all to just sit up tall take a breath and I want you to inhale through

your nose and exhale and we're going to do that again you're going to inhale for the count of three through your nose and exhale for the count of five now a little trick is don't you all feel a little more relaxed so you're going into that big meeting and you think about how nervous you are you've already just started on step one of relaxation just must breathe now I'm going to show you how to use that breath for power everything I do I'm going to demonstrate and then you'll do after me so the first step

is I'm going to take a breath in and I'm going to count to 10 on that exhalation don't think too much so we're going to breathe in and instead of we're using that breath to speak on it's like gas you go into the gas station you put the fuel in and that's what you can drive away way on so watch 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 now you're all going to do that together take a nice breath sit up tall 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 good some

of you had more energy that's great because now we're going to go to 20 I'll do it first and then you'll all do it I'm skipping right over 15 because you all sounded strong it goes like this one 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 you all ready and by the way that's why I told you all to bring water the second thing besides for powering up from the diaphragm is water any one of you that ever speak go into the public speaking Arena

bring your water with you two reasons one because you never know when your voice is going to get the anxiety and you're going to just and that's going to cause more anxiety and two someone's going to ask you a question and you're not sure of the answer that's a great question so it it really helps you to pause and think I'm going to take a breath and I'm going to hold the sound ah for as long as I can like this your going to do even better so this is where it's a little fun you've

already been sitting for a while so I want you all don't jump up yet you're all going to stand up and you're going to take a breath when I say start you're all going to say ah and hold it for as long as you can but please anyone uh CPR trained here don't be ah fabulous three all right so go for as long as you can this is a record I never had three people excellent so push it so I want you to hold ah for as long as you can get out that the rust

dust off those skills and as soon as you are done you're going to sit down everyone who stayed standing and I said enough if you feel like people have to ask you to repeat cuz you're soft spoken what that means is you're not you have the breath support you're just not using it in the right way you have the breath support the last men standing men and women you have it some of the other people that sat down a little sooner um you could do this so easily at home our smartphones all have stopwatches I

would like all of you minimum to be be to be able to sustain a for at least about 18 seconds I say 18 to 24 some of you went way further challenge yourself start you know test it and then the next say go a little further and a little further these exercises that we've gone through are proven to naturally develop the power in your voice and remember that power is going to command the attention of anyone that you're speaking to okay a lot of you spoke about Clarity this really for some of you you you

may know that corporate speech Solutions one of the signature programs is working with accent reduction for non-native English speakers and every three rounds of this Workshop I do accent reduction when I started it it was accent reduction for non-native English speakers and then from the very first time I had some New Yorkers call up two that worked together and they said can I come to Accent reduction and I said I quickly kind of went through my head and I said actually you can when I planned the program I planned it for non-native English speakers but

I went through four out of the five exercises that we do in that program and New Yorkers and native English speakers all have the same issues a I say that for all the non-native English speakers because it's so much fun when you come to that workshop and there are New Yorkers CU you realize they're they have some of the same issues that you have and again it all just goes to confidence what I've learned is people that are clear and articulate and speak English as a second language just don't necessarily have the confidence but you

might be as clear and articulate as some of the native New Yorkers who just speak too fast Mumble and are unclear so again we're going to give you techniques today that whether you're born here or not will increase the clarity of your speech if you practice practice it one very common error or problem that is shared by many is we tend to swallow the ends of our words and there are so many words in English that differ just in that last sound so if you're swallowing the end of your words The Listener has to then

think which word fits into that sentence and while they're playing back what you just said to figure out what word fits in what happens to the communication what am I still doing while you're playing back what I just said I'm still speaking so now you've missed what I just said and this happens every single day so here's just a few examples of words in English that we use all the time that differ just in the last sound bad bat rise rice can cab sad sat wig Wick mad mat that's how you want to make sure

you finish all your words but we so often don't so one of the best ways to practice is by numbers simple Elementary numbers how many of you receive voicemail messages and someone leaves their voice their number and you can't call back because you have no idea what the number is my message says leave your number two times I can't tell you how many times the first time I hear the number I say I have no idea what the number is and then the second time they say it clear and I say thank goodness I can

call back or I get an email inquiry so I have the email and they call and I go to call back and I have no idea what the number is and then I have to refer to the email and I say you know I'm so sorry I didn't get the number so as Elementary as this sounds it is so important here's an example in the New York metropolitan area 646 is a common exchange how often do we hear S4 SI 917 becomes 917 and maybe you you you don't identify that but every single day nine

becomes nine seven becomes seven people just swallow it all they're in a rush how about those in finance we have so many clients in the financial industry but then again aren't we all in the financial industry because whatever we're doing we have to collect money we have to pay bills and what about the difference between 30 and 13 50 and 15 you don't think about it but this is where so many errors occur so I underlined some of the sounds that are so often swallowed and again I just I'm going to model it and then

we'll continue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 seems so simple next we talked about finishing the ends of words here's another area that so many people are guilty about a lot of people see what we call multi-lab words let's say stabilization and what do we do we see this word we're tired we don't feel like saying it so we say stay Bel me we just take the end of the word and we swallow it a perfect example is how many syllables are in the word Governor three perfect yet how often do

we hear the word governor governor it's become a way of life Governor what did we do we just chopped out a syllable what about probably how many syllables three three how often do we hear probably all the time telephone how many syllables three telephone or phone I give you those examples because if I say telone if I say prob if I say Governor you know exactly what I'm speaking about but everyone has industry specific terminology that the listener doesn't always know clients prospects Associates and if we swallow an entire syllable what's going to happen to

the communication so it's what I want you to think about and practice take out the newspaper tomorrow if you have a a hard copy because especially the New York Times there's so many multi-c words and just practice saying all the syllables it's not going to be natural sounding nothing about what I'm saying will be natural sounding in the beginning it takes practice until it's natural one of my favorite examples is Dancing with the Stars Does anyone here not have any idea what Dancing with the Stars is okay there's always one Dancing with the Stars is

One of These reality shows on TV where they take a professional dancer and they pair that dancer with a star I always like to use the example of a football player so you've got this professional dancer and a football player who knows nothing about dancing and over the course of eight weeks they're going to spend morning noon and night together and then they're going to go on national TV and dance the most gorgeous Samba or salsa or Rumba that you've ever seen now how do they get there because they do tedious drills and we get

to kind of see that in the back room so they might spend hours just doing left right left right and then when they've mastered left right they could do left right left now all of us or many of us might have taken dancing especially if you get married you always go for dance lessons you know right before and then you never take them again and remember when we sit there and we go one two one two we're all counting in our heads but once you practice it enough you never have to do that again and

it just becomes natural that's what I want you to think about when you are doing these tedious drills I own it they're tedious they're not exciting but they're the building blocks to get to the salsa they're the building blocks to get to strong confident communication now we're going to go into one of my favorite areas and I like to demonstrate because I think that that's the best way that we learn so I'm going going to say one of my favorite favorite quotes and I'm going to say it two ways first I'm going to say it

the way many of you may think is familiar sounding and then I'm going to add some magic and I want you to tell me the difference Winston Churchill once said the three most difficult things a man can do is to climb a building leaning towards him kiss a woman leaning away from him and deliver a public speech Winston Churchill once said the three most difficult things a man can say can do is to climb a building leaning towards him kiss a woman leaning away from him and deliver a public speech there's one other thing I

love this one particular paragraph or quote from Winston Churchill it's so alive and it's so visual so what about the visualization in the first and the second does it come alive a little bit more I say this all the time and I kind of watch the building lean I watch the woman lean makes me smile so think about your message those that are in social media it's such a visual it's something you want to come alive people that are in business you want your message to have an impact what better way than using strategic pausing

again remember about the dance steps we have to practice those dance steps before it gets fluid and natural so the way that we do this is and I'm we're going to practice a little is it's again not very difficult to get the concept it's the practice just like those dance steps so we use just simply one two and three mark ERS one we break up a a a phrase or a sentence where you might have a comma or you might want to list items or have an impact two is a little bit more dramatic and

here's the one that is so difficult for so many people at a period you always want one two three when we're reading a book or a newspaper and we we finish a really complex sentence and there's a period we have the luxury of doing what if it's long and complex reading again exactly who's ever had to read a sentence over again and again and again it's visual you can read it again but when we're speaking again it kind of goes back to how many times are you going to ask someone to repeat what they just

said you can't constantly if you have a long complex sentence someone's not going to say can you repeat that again can you repeat that again so a way to be clear in your delivery is using the pausing and then when you get to the period 1 2 3 It's Magic think again long past after tonight about the way I said the Winston Churchill quote the first time and the second time how do you want to present yourself in whatever you are presenting you want your words to jump out I always say I don't know about

you when I used to study in College Long Long Ago um I used to use highlighters because I needed the words to jump out when we're speaking we can't use a highlighter we can't say this is what I'm saying the way we highlight is with our tone the vocal variety and the pausing and that's how the words jump out we're going to do a few of these for practice but I'm going to pause there for a minute just because this is such great research that again some of you have heard in April 2013 corporate speech

Solutions was featured in The Wall Street Journal which was very exciting the article is on the website of course for anyone who wants to read it and it's a great article so I do encourage you it was about is this the way you really talk or is this the way you really speak and it was really fantastic about how to change the way we speak from everything from if there's an accent New York or otherwise to the person who's monotone the person who asks questions at the end of every statement and what was beautiful about

that article based on research that was done by a company called Quantified Impressions they revealed that how we say something matters twice as much as what we say how we say something matters twice as much as what you say why do I say that we have presentations to do we go out we have to present to a client or or a company and we worry so much about should I use this word or should I use that word how should I phrase this but remember it's how you deliver what you're saying that's going to have

the largest impact obviously you want the content I'm not taking away from the content but it's how you say it in that article I love this part on in the article in print I don't think it was online in print on the sidebar so it wasn't the article that I was featured in it was the sidebar there was research at of Duke University and it actually talked about the tone of a man's voice and what that vocal tone is on in frequency and what it equates to in dollars annual salary this was research in Duke

University so again it goes to power and tone that was for the male CEO I have the article if anyone wants it I can send it to you for women it was not the same it was about vocal variety so that brings us back to how important the Strategic pausing is so that we have good vocal Variety in the delivery of our message once you have someone's attention then if I have to think about what I'm going to say next I already have your attention so it's okay does that make sense so you're in a

meeting and you've got the one two one two three down pat but now you forgot where you were going and you needed a minute to to kind of bring yourself back occasionally do we ever hear someone say um uh and why do we say it because we wanted to just keep talking we don't really know what we're going to say so we just throw an um in there and sometimes the there are a little too many the barometer we use a corporate speech Solutions is two in 2 minutes so what you're going to do tomorrow

thanks for triggering that what you're going to do tomorrow is when you have a conversation you're going to take out your audio recorder and you're going to record a minute or two and then you're going to play it back and listen to um uh like you know so actually any word that's not content rich and is not adding is a filler word and you do not want more than two in two minutes when I first started my business I went to a breakfast meeting a panel discussion and there were three people on the panel and

the third person to speak was probably about 30 in human resources for a company so attractive had a smile that could light up the entire city was clear and articulate and every other word was um and I have no idea what she said and when she finished I turned to the person next to me because it was one of those breakfast meetings so we had all chatted and I said did she use too many filler words or am I just a little nuts she said too many she said I couldn't pay attention to a word

she was saying and that's why that barometer of two and two minutes will never are you wrong I say two in 2 minutes cuz we're human one is going to come out every once in a while you're allowed but it's not going to take away from your message if you keep it to two and two minutes so I want you to record yourself and as Jeremy said it's beautiful the pauses are going to help you control it it's a four-step process I'll just kind of go through it quickly on my website just so you know

we have blogs about every topic related to speech and communication every topic we've been blogging for a long time so if you put in the search bar filler words you'll get the whole four-step process you'll get information but the four steps are one record yourself two notice your pattern and what does the pattern mean you either start every sentence um my favorite is um my name is so and so what do you need an um before you introduce yourself go to your next meeting and listen people always say um my name is and then they

say their name so you're going to notice your pattern notice if it's all ums or if it's what I call the variety pack um uh like you know so basically the third step is the anticipation you're now aware you've played it back now you begin to antici ipate when you're going to use a filler word and then fourth it's the power of the pause just pause instead of inserting the filler word okay that's the magic of eliminating those annoying distracting words there's a phrase I use especially more recently about owning your space and many many

of you have heard me talk about owning your space so right now don't I own this space it's Jeremy's but right now he wouldn't dare come into this I'm owning this space right so yes you're 100% right you're not going to interrupt me but when you're sitting down there are ways to own your space and command the attention of the conference table so I'm going to be at the conference right now and I'm going to do one way and then another way and let's talk about how what we perceive okay so Terry today I want

to talk about what we're going to do for the next fiscal quarter today I think that we should address issues related to the fiscal quarter ahead we talked about the pause the power strategic pausing numbers you want a chunk we talked about that 212 pause 308 pause 7725 everyone practice your number many many times until that's perfected what I don't want you to do is take shortcuts how many people have ever heard someone say my number is 917 841 2965 or my number is 21238 2900 now it's easy on us right it's so easy 2965

but in this world of nonnative we're in a global Marketplace we are never ever going to have a conversation with more than one person that doesn't have people that don't speak English as a first language and I'm passionate about communication skills around the globe so for everyone that speaks English as a second language when you were learning it was it just as easy to hear 29 as 2900 look at Marissa she's like no so respect the listener whoever it is around the globe we're on teleconferences we're on telephone calls 290 so it takes an extra

second no shortcuts when I first started speaking many years ago someone said is it o or zero and stupidly at that time I said it doesn't matter just be consistent but of course it matters zero is the only one that's a number I still hear the O right o is not a number now you take o which if we go around this room is pronounced 10 different ways and you say 2011 now I don't even recognize the O because you're not saying O I mean you happen to yes but many people don't say o the

way my ear would recognize an O so I don't even recognize it but if you say zero we're going to recognize it so 30 87725 go to the website get my 15 other tips but remember the power the clarity the pausing it's all about communicating with Clarity confidence and credibility I promised you tonight that I was going to give you tangible skills to walk away with and practice