Helping Create Success
Clutter in the Convo.
Spring lends itself perfectly to sloughing off layers of life that we no longer need. Blankets, hats, excess pounds, and unused “stuff” —it’s safe to shed what you won’t be needing.
This includes your style of speaking!
How you come across in front of others makes all the difference in where you might want to go with your career. If you want to go far and wide, you’ll need to be ready to speak up spontaneously. Shakespeare was right- “all the world’s a stage.” Let’s make sure we’re ready to go on:
1) Are you padding your sentences with extra words and industry phrases when you talk to colleagues?
On a recent bus ride through the Lincoln Tunnel, I was reluctantly privy to one side of a typical work conversation. My young woman was liberally using industry-speak on her phone call. Those are the filler words, buzz-words, phrases, and things that everyone else says but no one gives much thought to.
I’d say it took up about 2/3 of her sentences, leaving her caller (and myself) with the remaining 1/3 to try to glean her meaning. Because she was asking a lot of questions, this back and forth went on for way too long. If she had just cut out the flabby words and phrases she was larding her sentences with, she could have finished her call in 1/3 the time and I could get back to my book!
This is an easy but deadly trap to fall into, because all of those industry words can add up. If you’re not getting mileage out your speaking, but are saying the same words that everyone else does, I encourage you to find a different approach. Words without significant meaning to the speaker are verbal clutter. They will eat into your listeners attention spans, without advancing your ideas.
2) Make sure you can be heard. Audio crispness- in phones, cameras, etc. has been in steady decline for years, and clear sound is never a given.
Can We Stop With the #@! kick-a–Nonsense?
There’s a trend in coaching and other types of entrepreneurial endeavors to title workshops, seminars, classes etc. using mild profanity. I suspect this is meant to convey a saucy dis-regard for convention. Instead of calling my workshop “Signature Talks to Grow Your Business” why not flash my sass and call it “Kick-Ass Keynotes to Bring Them to Their @#$ Knees?”
I’ll tell you why not-first, it sounds juvenile- as if I’m 13 years old and trying out the naughty words to see what kind of effect it has on the grown ups. It’s playing at mild shock value. As my close friends can attest, I love to swear on occasion, using curses far more blue than “kick-ass.” It’s fun to mix it up. But it’s organic and appropriate to the moment, not contrived to be clever in business.
Second, anytime I spot a trend in communicating that everyone is employing, that’s reason enough for me not to do it. Our speech should express our genuine thinking, not copy the vanilla choices that everyone is making.
Which is why the naughty girl talk looks all the sillier-it’s not even original. That’s the real problem right there. If you’re a coach, or business owner, you’d better be able to think and speak for yourself. Until you can, give careful thought to the bandwagon you’re climbing on. It might not be headed where you want to go.