This is my favorite chapter for this book 《Everyone Communicates》, because it shows us why the humour is important for ourselves, and how humour does influence our communication.
In our daily life, how many good communicator do you remember? How do we describe those good communicators who have connected with us and attract our attention? We may say, Entertaining, Energetic, Humorous and so on, because they might tell us something meaningful, memorable, and positive.
And do you remember when you are talking with partner or talk with a group of people, even deliver a speech in front of people, there was someone who sat under the stage and felt sleepy? In that time, we might feel so bad! We could say something inside. What the fuck audience!? What hell you doing!?
However, when we are listening a speech or talking with friends, the object people are bad at connecting with us, they cannot capture our attention, then how do we describe them?
I guess the word must be Boring! And because of boring communication so that we made a cemetery communiation.
CEMETERY COMMUNICATION: LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE OUT THERE, BUT NOBODY IS LISTENING!
So be an interesting people is quite important. If we were an interesting person, our partners could enjoy living with us, our co-workers could enjoy working with us, our customers could enjoy talking with us, our audiences could enjoy listening to us.
Then we can back to this chapter《Connectors create and experience everyone enjoys》. The first key word is INTERESTING. ATTENTION! Being an interesting person can be learned!
This chapter gives us seven things we'd better do.
1. Take Responsibility For Your Listeners.
There are no bad audiences, only bad speakers. So we don't need to blame the audiences, they did nothing wrong. If the audience is asleep, the only person who needs to be wake up is the speaker ownself. We have the best chance for success when we know that audiences' attention is our responsibility.
Before we start deliver a speech, or talk with people, we could think about thouse questions.
How can I capture their attention?
What is necessary to make this speech memorable?
How can I caputre their attention and keep them with me to the very end?
Remember! That is our job to creat interest in listeners, activate the audience, enjoy the experience, and add value to others!
2. Communicate In The World.
People don't remember what we think is importnt, they remember what they think is important.
After I started learning English, I know that because different countries say different languages, so different civilizations must think differently. Even both chinese, we may say different dialects. So how can we think different, but connect with others? Think as what our partners think. If we want to get our message across, we have to learn how to communicate in someone else's world.
Everyone has the same situation: Talk at me and you'll talk alone. Talk to me and I'll listen. Talk about me and I'll listen for hours.
To connect with others in their world, we can not just live in our own world. We must link what we want to say to what others' needs are.
3. Capture People's Attention From The Start.
People have remote controls in their heads toay. If you don't catch their interest, they just click you off.
Actually, we don't have much time beore people either turn in or turn of. If they turn of, we must work very hard to win their attention back. And recently, we both know the attention is the most precious resource. So give them a very good first impression and start well are very useful!
First, we can smile, then introduce ourselves, and ask other's name. In other hand, to be an ice breaker. Warm up the automospher. Second, relax ourselves, even we may feel a little nervous if we don't have much communication experience. Third, let us begin with humour, humour is a very important lesson for us to learn if we want to be a good communicator, when we speak with humours, our partner feel happy immidiately, then connect together. Finally, creat a sense of anticipation, in other hand, help them learn something they are interested in.
4. Activate Your Audience.
That's quite easy to communicate with people who are hightly energetic and active like Sunday or any Toastmasters' fellows. However, we live more in the sociaty, not as pure as Paradise. So we should not just move forward and hope for the best as sweet as a dream, if we want to connect with them, we must activate them and get them involved.
We can ask question, before the communication prepared few more questions and topics is a great idea! We can't wait for people to get involved, we need to do things that invite them into the process. Get people moving, because the movement gives everybody a quick break from the routine include daily work, we can do exercise together, play some games or streach our body. Ask people to interact, give other people chance to communicate with each other with a topic or without also doesn't matter, let them introduce themselves and share their ideas, remember! Their voice matters!
Then the main point is still about the speaker, would better bring the energy to the audiences and to activate them.
5. Say It So It Sticks.
All great communicator did one thing in common, which is the speaker said something that people remember long time after the talk was completed. We can try to say things or share experience in ways that people will remember, I know that is quite diffcult!
If we want people to remember what we say, we would better say the right thing at the right moment in the right way!
So we need learning:
link what we say with what people need, nothing makes a speech more memorable than need. Find a way to be original, the more predictable listeners think we are, the lower the impact we make on them, if we lower our predictability, we increase our impact. Don't let audiences know what will happen, give them suprise, let them willing to know more about our story as a magic trick. Use humor and a shocking statement or statistic. If we have information on our topic that will grab prople's attention, then please use it! We know we can say things with humours, and we say things in an interesting way. After that we must learn to pause, anytime we engage in non stop speaking without pausing, people's minds will disengage. However, if we pause, even for a moment, the audiences get chance to consider what we have just said, and we may have a chance to get their around applause! Especially, I did many mistakes, when others were applausing to me, I still spoke to them, them they stoped applause. How stupid I did, from now on, let us learn together! To pause! To get comfortable with silence! To let it become an exclamation point for things we say.
People pay attention when something that is said connects with something they greatly desire.
6. Be Visual.
In my speech learning menual, there is a specific project, VISUAL AID. What people see has become increasingly important, we need to find a way to appeal visually to our listeners in some way. For example: PowerPoint, films, pictures and so on! Actually, it also include, movement, facial expressions, body language, some little tools, even eye contact. Actually when we bring something specially and show it in a special way can give people amazing! Anything we bring which can help people visually helps them to connect with us.
7. Tell stories.
Perhaps the most effective way to capture prople's interest and make the experience enjoyable when you talk is to include stories! If we put our thought in a story, or even make up a suitable story can give people more impression.
When we speak, we share interesting sotries with them. We take people on a journey with us.
All great communicators use stories, because people remember more in a store than in only methods. And our brains are programmed much more for sotries than for abstract idesas or anything else, storytelling improves the experience. We use stories to make sense of our experience, we share them to help people understand more and more.
Acutally, for this point, I may write down more in the future. For this time, let me finish it as soon as possible.
Be The Communicator We Want To Hear!
Be The Person With Whom We Want To Connect!
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