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Why You Already Know How To Be A More Effective Communicator
Want a tip that will instantly make you a more effective communicator?
Most people have some anxiety around public speaking. The moment someone asks you to present something, even if it’s off in the future, it’s common for your stomach to feel like it’s doing somersaults, your temples to start dripping sweat, and your negative self-talk to remind you how you hate speaking in front of people and that you’ll probably mess it up.
Not a great place to start, but for many, a realistic one. But if you get in the habit of always looking at it from the audience’s standpoint and thinking about what they need, it can help drop your stress levels down to more manageable ranges quickly.
Here’s how it works.
You spend most of your life in “the audience.” Like most people, you are probably a listener at least as often as you are the one ‘in front of the room.’ Because of that, you already know that sometimes you are engaged by a speaker and, at other times, you are bored and making your grocery list in your head while they talk. You know that sometimes a speaker pulls you in and sometimes they push you away. You know when you are experiencing death by Power Point, and when someone uses a visual aid really well to help keep your attention.