Working With Wonderful Words

Many of us would think that in this high tech, instant-communication, and instant-gratification world of ours, that getting our point across would be a snap. Not true! In fact, our messages have become diluted. Speaking, writing and language skills aren’t what they used to be. With technology, it has hurt the way we relate. Studies show that many of us have tougher time than ever relating to one another with words. The good news is that, if you realize and recognize the situation, adapt to it, and learn those wonderful words and phrases that can push through today’s communication clutter, you set yourself apart from others and have a much easier time getting your message over and win your audience over.

Admittedly, there’s more to effective communication and presentation than simply having a healthy vocabulary or the gift of the gab. It also involves relatively clear-headed attention between you and your audience, proactive listening skills, genuine interest, and open-mindedness. Once you’ve gotten the point where someone is listening to what you are saying or reading what you have written, grabbing your audience with a strong word or phrase helps keep the communication open and hits both your listener and reader with an impact that allows for important and desired follow-up from both sides of the message.

Knowing how to use words well wins your audience over and gets you things while not knowing how to use them keeps things out of your reach.

Some examples we can learn together:

Weak : “With a few simple steps, we can improve our situation.”

Strong : “To improve our situation with a great future, here’s how we can get there.”

Weak : “It’s a good opportunity, filled with lots of possibilities.”

Strong: ” We have discovered a fantastic path to a new world of marvels.”

Weak : “Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to complain…”

Strong: “Dear Mr. Chief Executive Officer, I am shocked, frustrated and outraged over my recent visit at your…”

Weak : “We have an important decision to make.”

Strong : “We have reached a historic crossroads.”

Weak : “Here are my goals.”

Strong : “Here is a vision for our future.”

Weak : “What will people think?”

Strong : “How will history judge us?”

Weak : “Let’s concentrate on results.”

Strong : “Let’s focus on the dream.”

Weak : “I’m the best person for this job.”

Strong : “I’m here specifically to make things happen for you and your company.”

Weak : “You’re making mistakes.”

Strong : “You have got what it takes to make this right.”

Weak : “You’re in charge. Now get it done.”

Strong : “Everyone has entrusted you with this responsibility. Don’t let them down.”

Weak : “This plan will improve productivity.”

Strong : “This plan will increase the output of each worker by 50 percent.”

Weak : “Here’s what you did wrong.”

Strong : “Here are the adverse results of your actions.”

Weak : “Those new employees seem very enthusiastic.”

Strong : “That’s what I call highly motivated.”

Weak : “When are you going to turn this bad situation around?”

Strong : “How can I help you make things better?”

Weak : “Not my problem.”

Strong : “How can we go about fixing this?”

Weak : “This will never get better.”

Strong : “This is just the downhill part of the rollercoaster.”

Weak : “Please do not hesitate to call.”

Strong : “Thanks so much for all your good faith. I will check up on you in a week or so.”

In this world of poor social skills, insecurity, high-paced, short attention, and high-volume transmission of irrelevancies, the gift of understanding words and using them well and correctly puts you ahead. If you engage in the craft of utilizing wonderful words and phrases, you make yourself more superior, more important and more influential. Using words well helps you gets what you want in life.

Whether you are presenting, writing a speech, an email, or an article for the local paper, you will have a tough time convincing your audience and readers if you can’t get past the first sentence. The problem these days is that people are flooded with stimuli – much of it designed to garner the attention of the audience and readers to sell them things. A great hooking sentence – a clever opening line catches your audience’s interest – at the beginning of any written message will help you push through all that stimuli and increase the chance that audience will delve into what you have said.

Creating Great Leaders

Many would say that leaders are born but today, leaders can be created.

Skills of great leaders can be learnt and it must be learnt from the right leaders. Do give careful thoughts on what you have learnt before using and building it as part of your skills.

Recently, I attended a convention and I see and learn more as I enjoy the whole proceedings. It was fun and funny although there was fire from the audience.

The convention meeting started with fire on a member being unlawful dismissed. The chairperson is a jovial and submissive man to the organisation. Let us name him as “Leader A”. While sitting beside him, there was a crude and unreasonable person who thinks that he is a great leader. Maybe for his own kind. Let us name him “Leader B”.

Proposal to put the privilege motions as the priority to the meeting but Leader B suddenly wanted to take control as he was afraid that fire will broke out and it will not show their capabilities as leaders, especially with the presence of the Executive Director from World Headquarter.

The audience brought up 8 motions to be discussed but somehow, they were only taken as 1 and later 2 motions. Leader B kept wanting to prevent the audience from bringing up the additional motions while Leader A sat there was opened to listen what grievances the audience has.

With Leader B trying to prevent the 8 additional motions to carry on, it wasted more than an hour and the meeting had to end abruptly with lots of dissatisfaction. There were no solutions and conclusions to the whole meeting.

During the questioning from the audience, Leader B kept snatching the microphone from Leader A without even asking a simple “Mr. Chairman, can I answer to that question?” and it was not just once or twice that Leader B was snatching. I was surprised with the kind of leadership skills which I personally witness with the hundreds of people at the meeting.

Leader A was cool and neutral but doesn’t know how to control the situation when fire started and questions were like arrows shooting at the board of executive committee.

Leader B clearly shown us how a man can turn into a chameleon instantly. With face turning green when felt scared, turning red when furious, black when angry, blue when threaten and white when he was in great fear. Yet, the snobbish and arrogant leader made a fool of himself by trying to show how great a leader he is. (He still thinks he is the greatest leader today.)

The Executive Director needed to help them to put out the fire by standing up, asked the chairperson for permission to speak, getting the audience to allow him to speak with no disturbance and addressed the audience and put out the fire. A diplomatic person with no direct answer or power yet proved his leadership skills with style.

Crooked stick produce crooked shadow and therefore we must learn with great concentration, understanding and thought.

Leader A and B have their strengths and weaknesses which we can learn to become a better leader. Know what you should and should not do while learning. It would be dangerous to learn blindly without serious thinking of what you learn.

There are two side on everything including laws. What you read and thought may not be what the lawyers interpret. Therefore, it would be great to ask if you are not sure and learn the truths and the rights in whatever we are learning everyday.

How a person does anything is how he does everything.

Looking at Leader A when in the meeting. He is jovial, a happy-go-lucky person and never take most of the things happening around him seriously enough. A person who just enjoy his life and whatever comes to him.

While Leader B thinks he knows everything and always want to be in control. Thinking he is the best, he has no respect for anyone around him until he is threaten with authority. The child in him wants to showcase his leadership skills with the wrong skills he had learnt all these years.

All these show us that we are only human and we make mistakes as we learn everyday. The most important is to be able to correct the mistakes correctly to become a better person, a better leader.

Leaders lead by examples and the right examples are important. How a leader project his leadership skills and abilities is how he is going to nurture his followers in becoming great leaders. Therefore, one needs to understand the truths and facts of being great leaders.

The eight skills leaders must learn is the Right Concentration, Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, and Right Mindfulness. Master these skills and you will become a great leader to follow and learn from.

There are plenty for us to learn and once you have these skills, you will be able to change your life and the life of others. Touching and blessing the life of others and make a difference.

Writing and Presenting Great Speeches

A spark can create into a great idea for a fantastic speech. Sometimes, we are so confident that we can deliver our speech with ease as it is something that we already know. Yet, after our presentation, we always feel that the speech can be better crafted and presented.

Time after time as we present, we know that our speech can be better and we just don’t understand where have we gone wrong. How can we write great speeches and presenting powerful speeches?

The fact is a great speech is like a lady wearing a mini skirt. Yes, the speech needs to be like the mini skirt. Short enough to arouse the interest of the audience and yet, long enough to cover all the vital points.

When we have an idea for a speech, we would definitely have the opening and conclusion for the speech in mind. Therefore, to give your audience powerful facts that support your speech, we need to build a great body for the speech.

For example, if we are meeting some friends and we reached the venue early and we have to wait for them. As we looked around, we spotted some people and by the look of the body structure, we know if they are the friends we are waiting for. Then, we will double confirm by looking at the faces before we concluded that they are friends.

In another view, a speech as I have said that it is like a lady wearing a mini skirt. The lady in mini skirt will capture attention specially from the men. Imagine, if the lady take of her jacket and pop off a button at a time in front of the audience. Their eyes will pop and their jaw will drop. Each button popped the audience will get much more interested to see and want to know what’s next.

Having the idea on how to write your speech, it is now about practice, practice and practice your delivery. Rehearse and make that speech again and again to make that speech part of you. Every time you need to present that speech again, rehearse it over and over again so that it can only be better.

The art of writing a great speech and presenting a fantastic presentation is not about what you wants to deliver but what your audience wants to hear as well as how you can add additional values to empower your speech and presentation.

Hence, if you are planning to write you next speech, do take some of my sharing into consideration. Having some careful thought, understanding and concentration in the preparation, orgainisation, and ultimately your way of presentation is important.

“Thinking without doing is dreaming. Doing without thinking is dangerous.” – William Lim T.C.

Right Focus creates Right Future

How you think is how you feel and so, your body languages show what is in your mind.

Remember that how you do anything is how you do everything.

If you want a great future, then you need to start focusing on the right things now. What you have done in the past has created the current you and if you want to change for the better, then start thinking and doing the right things from today.

I was at a food centre some years ago having dinner when I noticed a fly kept flying around me and my dinner. It was irritating as I saw it stopped on the leftover food and dishes left by the last patron. The fly kept coming closer and closer as my eyes kept following the trial it was flying. Thinking of how I can kill that irritating flying creature.

Then I suddenly started to use the pair of chopsticks in my hand to wave around so as to warn the fly to go away but it kept coming back. It was disturbing and I started waving my hands more aggressively with the hope that I would hit the fly so that it will not be back again.

Suddenly, I hit on something and I heard a loud crash. I looked down and found that I had swept my dinner on the ground together with some other plates and bowls that were on the table. I was embarrassed as the crowd in the food centre looked at me thinking that I may be crazy.

Lesson learnt in a worst moment. If I focused on my dinner and finished it faster instead of focusing on the distraction from the fly, I would have filled my stomach and walked off happier. But sad to say that I had focus on the wrong thing.

I was so focused on the fly that I forgotten about my food which was just in front of me and I had forgotten that the people at the food centre was looking at everything I did. I was distracted, embarrassed, hungry and feeling shameful as I walked away.

A little fly can put a giant like me in shame by distracting my attention and mess up my life. It’s a lesson needed some attention to learn and change for the better.

Nowadays, I usually put my mind in a clear state. By first to concentrate and understand, then give some thoughts before I speak or act. My livelihood, efforts and mindfulness need to put into consideration because anything I do will determine how I do everything.

If you want a great future, focus on the things you need to do on your “To Do List” and not be distracted with the things that suddenly popped up. Do get agitated with what doesn’t concern you. Focus and concentrate on what will change your life for the better.

Some of us may have lots of unsolved problem, may it be family, career, money, or etc. If you focus on the problem, it will only gets BIGGER and it will also demoralise you to move forward. Hence, you are unable to move forward with your dreams to achieve a better life.

Don’t listen and get distracted by the fly that fly around you and giving you all the negative remarks.

Follow your heart and think careful with the right concentration to understand and take the right actions to achieve your dreams. Everyone is given a purpose to come to earth. We are here to serve and make it a better place for you and me to live in. Therefore, the right focus and action will give the right results we are looking for and hence, create a great future.

The Mirror of Life.

We have seen and heard many speakers and sometimes we try to model them. But are you learning the right skills from the right masters.

There are many great speakers in the world and as we listen to their speeches, we are impressed with the way they put their words across. We are persuaded, inspired and aspire to be like them.

Since the birth of radio many decades ago, we have been listening and learning thru hearing. Until today, some people still learning thru listening to the MP3, MP4, radio, CDs and etc. Hence, we build in our mind that language is the most important in any presentation. We need to perfect our language before we can use it. But is there perfection in this world?

The late Dr. Albert Mehrabian did a study to find out the differences and effectiveness of Verbal, Vocal and Visual in presentation and found out that the Visual (Body Language) take up 55% while Vocal 38% and Verbal has only 7%. It was a great surprise to everyone when announced to the public. But time after time, when a simple test has been done, the audience get to understand instantly how true the findings are.

But some people still thinks that language is the most important in presentation and because they focus so much on the language usage, they neglected the importance of vocal variety and body languages.

Therefore, when we attend any seminar, we can easily judge the speaker with their performance on stage, the kind of skills they possesses and how effective can they be. It mirror their life.

I always say that how you do anything is how you do everything. How you do anything on stage is how you do everything in your life.

If the speaker focus on the language so much, they are only focusing on the smallest part in the whole presentation. It is just like when a mosquito bite you and you kept scratching the small little part of your body that was bitten. There are plenty of things you can do and with other part of the body but you insisted on scratching the part that was bitten. Aren’t you wasting time and efforts on things that are minor in life and forgotten that there are plenty of things should have been done if you would have not concentrate on the wrong part at the wrong time?

The usage of vocal variety is not just about the ability to pronounce the words properly but it is all about creating excitement, feeling and authority at any moment of time during presentation. It is how you make the audience feel when you get that message across to them and winning their heart.

Many speakers aren’t able to trigger the emotion of the audience because they focus too much on the right usage of the language that they forgotten even to use the right word at the right time with the right vocal variety and the right body language during presentation.

If you focus only the small things, these small things will be the biggest thing in your life. If you focus of the bigger things, the bigger things will create the world in your life. Because I focus on the bigger things in life and they creates the world for me and I am invited to many parts of the world to share my experiences and knowledge. If one only focus on the smaller things, than they will only be invited among the smaller circle of certain group.

The mirror of life is powerful as it reflects you to life, your efforts to what you will achieve in life and your understand to what others can see you as a master in life.

So, if you are looking forward to become a greater speaker and a greater leader, learn from the right speakers and the right leaders. Change your image and adopt the right understanding and you will change your life. The reflection of your life will be changed so long as you change yourself now.

The 3Vs in Presentation

Albert Mehrabian (born in 1939 to an Armenian family in Iran, currently
the Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA) has become known best for his publications on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages. His findings on inconsistent messages of feelings and attitudes have been quoted throughout communication seminars worldwide, and have also become known as the 7%-38%-55% rule.

In his studies, Mehrabian came to two conclusions. First, there are basically three elements in any face-to-face communication:

  • Words/Language (e.g. English, Mandarin, Malay)
  • Tone of voice (e.g. pitch, rate, quality)
  • Non-verbal behaviour (e.g. facial expression, gesture)

Secondly, the non-verbal elements are particularly important for communicating feelings and attitude, especially when they are incongruent. This means if words disagree with the tone of voice and nonverbal behaviour, people tend to believe the tonality and nonverbal behaviour.

Please note emphatically it is not the case that non-verbal elements in all senses convey the bulk of the message, even though this is how his conclusions are frequently misinterpreted. For instance, when delivering a lecture or presentation, the textual content of the lecture is delivered entirely verbally, but the non-verbal cues are very
important in conveying the speakers’ attitude towards what they are saying,
notably their belief or conviction.

Attitudes and Congruence

According to Mehrabian, these three elements account differently for our liking for the person who puts forward a message concerning their feelings. Words account for 7%, tone of voice accounts for 38%, and body language accounts for 55% of the liking. They
are often abbreviated as the “3 Vs” for Verbal, Vocal & Visual.

For effective and meaningful communication about emotions, these three parts used in expressing the message need to support each other – they have to be “congruent”. In case of any incongruence, the receiver of the message might be irritated by ‘two
messages’ coming from two different channels, giving cues in two different directions.

The following example should help illustrate incongruence in verbal and non-verbal communication.

  • Verbal: “I do not have a problem with you!”
  • Non-verbal: person avoids any eye-contact, looks anxious, has
    a closed body language, etc.

It is more likely that the receiver will trust the predominant form of communication, which according to Mehrabian’s findings is non-verbal (38% + 55%), rather than the literal meaning of the words (7%). This is known as “the 7%-38%-55% rule”.

It is important to say that in the respective study, Mehrabian conducted experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike) and that the above, disproportionate influence exerted by the tone of voice and body language
becomes effective only when the situation is ambiguous. Such ambiguity appears
mostly when the words spoken are inconsistent with the tone of voice or body
language of the speaker (sender).

Non-verbal communication is usually understood as the process of communicating through sending and receiving wordless (mostly visual) messages – i.e. spoken language is not the only source of communication. There are other means too. Messages can be communicated through gestures and touches (Haptic
communication), by body language or posture, by facial expression and eye contact. Meaning can also be conveyed through object or artifacts (such as clothings, hairstyles or architectural designs).
Speech contains non-verbal elements known as paralanguage, such as voice quality, rate, pitch, volume, and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress. Dance is also regarded as a form of non-verbal communication.

Non-verbal communication is the most important skill that a presenter needs to develop to enhance his speech quality and make it to be easily understood. The results of Prof. Albert Mehrabian’s study shows:

Visual

55%

Vocal

38%

Verbal

7%

During a presentation, a vast amount of information is visually conveyed by your appearance, manner and physical behaviour as you deliver your verbal message. Your body lanuguage is an effective tool for adding emphasis and clarity to your speech. It is the most powerful instrument for convincing an audience of your earnestness, sincerity
and enthusiasm.

However, if your physical actions are distracting or they contradict your verbal message, your body language can rule over your words. Whether your objective is to inform, persuade, entertain, motivate, or inspire, your body language and the personality you project, must be appropriate to what you want to say.

If you want to be a better speaker, you must understand how your body can speak. You must learn how to manage and control your body language.

For more information on how you can be a better communicator or presenter, click and get you copy of Instant Guide for Instant Speakernow.

Speaking from the Heart.

If you lie, you will need to lie till you die.

Being earnest and sincere in the sharing is the most important thing any speaker must have. It is most important because if it is from your heart, you will understand the feeling and will be able to relate and deliver with passion as well as making your audience feels with you.

The audience can feel your sincerity and your believe level in your delivery. Thru your presentation, the audience can detect if you are lying or speaking the truth.

We can learn from the experience of others but we need to understand and digest what we have learnt before we use any of the ideas and knowledge.

There was once a speaker who was invited to deliver a keynote address. He was too confident about himself and didn’t go thru the materials the company wanted him to touch on although he received them a month ago.

On the day of the presentation, the speaker rush thru the scripts while flying to present at the Dinner and Dance at night. As he was reading the script, he noticed that there were some of the statements which he don’t believe in and some not sure. There was no one to whom he can talk to and he needs to be at the venue for the presentation once he arrive at the airport.

There were lots of things in his mind by the time he reached the venue for his keynote address. The person in-charge of the script wasn’t there to welcome him and he had no one to discuss the script with.

Shortly on his arrival at the venue, he was escorted to the waiting area to get ready for his presentation. After the Master of Ceremony announced his name and invited him up to the lectern, he felt that he wasn’t ready to deliver what he don’t believe and can’t even open his mouth to say his first word. Staring at the audience, he felt totally lost and don’t know what to do.

Minutes later, he tried to deliver the speech but there was no passion and sense of believes in whatever he delivered. It was the worst scenario any speaker would want to be in. He failed due to over-confident and being too proud.

A great speaker must be able to talk his way out of any situation with his wisdom. Therefore, we need to be prepared at all times.

Read lots of magazines, books and newspapers. Understand what you have read and think of what you have read and connect what you have learnt with your own experience. Recall the lessons learnt and how to improve on them.

Even from movies, drama, radio, you will have lots to learn from. Keep learning but you need to understand what you learnt to be able to relate yourself with all the learning.

Once you learn, understand and relate yourself with the learning, you will be able to create your own views. If you don’t understand or believe on what you have read or heard, you will need to ask till you understand it.

It’s thru the understand and the ability to relate that gives you the abilities to present with the passion, sincerity, earnestness and with power.

Learn to speak from the heart to connect with the heart of your audience so that you can win the heart of your audience.

Moving Toward Professionalism

It is commonly said that “To start, you don’t need to be good but to be good, you need to start.”

The world is lack of people who are willing to share and train those around.

Many have ideas, concepts, and experiences to share but  or too shy to share.

Speakers and trainers fail or not progressing because they think that they know too much. There is no room for improvement so long as they think that they are the best. These people are in the world of themselves, just like the toad in the well.

I have seen highly qualified and competent speakers unable to make a living as full-time professional speakers. Their programs were well put together, contained worthwhile information, and their presentations were highly suited to a successful career in the speaking and seminar business.

On the other hand, I have seen speakers who had mediocre material and a poor presentation make big money as professional speakers. On the surface this seems unfair, until you are aware of the key factor that determines the greatest success or failure in the speaking and seminar business.

In essence, you will experience the best life has to offer. In order to do that, you have to learn the rules and tools.

I train speakers from practitioners to professionals and I am willing to show you the way toward financial freedom thru speaking. Do get in touch with our sales team at sales@williamlimtc.com for further information on the next course.