Mastering Clear and Confident Communication

I'm Alex Lyon and you're about to start a seven-part mini course in concise, clear, and confident communication. I put this course together because I believe it's really the best first step for you in your professional development and laying that foundation to develop strong communication skills moving forward. I encourage you to watch all seven lessons. There's a little practice involved in each one so you can actually hear and then try the ideas out. So let's jump right into the first lesson. In lesson one, we're going after long-windedness. I encourage you to watch this and go through it as many times as you need to to make this material a habit. Tip one, long-windedness is a key enemy of good communication. I'm always surprised that really talkative people assume that they're good communicators, but more talking does not equal good communication. In fact, a lot of times if these words, Gabby, chatty, verbose, and talkative, accurately describe you, it's probably forming a bad impression, especially in professional settings. Alison Green said it like this, You might think, well, some people are long-winded, but it doesn't mean he wouldn't do a good job. The problem is that at minimum it signals that you're not good at picking up on conversational cues, and it raises doubts about your ability to organize your thoughts and convey needed information quickly. So strategy one, Resolve why you sometimes talk too much. When do you find yourself multiplying words, being overly talkative? Is it just at work or is it in social situations? And what are your in-the-moment thought processes that trigger it? Are you insecure about something? What's going on in your mind that's driving that over-talkative habit? Because all the tips in the world will not undo an unspoken belief that drives that long-windedness. So excessive talkativeness is rooted in our unspoken beliefs. Let's say you're a physician and you're thinking to yourself, maybe you don't even realize it, but you're thinking, I want people to know I'm smart. You will most certainly talk too much to prove that. And because we live in a polite society, people just play along. But inside, they're having an entirely different thought process about this conversation. They will almost never tell you directly that you're long-winded. However, they will form... unfavorable impressions of you anyway. And so it's very important to realize the impact that long-winded communication can have on your professional relationships and the people around you. So people long-winded for various reasons. What's your reason? Maybe there's more than one. Is it insecurity? Maybe some self-centeredness? Do you want to show everything you know, like you're that physician? Do you like the airtime and the attention? In other words, does it feel good when people are listening to you and you love? when everyone's watching you in action? Do you mistake talking for adding value? Do you mistake more talking for good communication? Are there some control issues going on in your heart, in your mind? In other words, do you like to steer a conversation and be the one talking so you dictate the pace and the flow of things? Any one of these reasons, and there are many others, could be driving that long-windedness. So it's really important that you take some time and get to the bottom of it. Strategy two is to gauge your long-windedness. Rate yourself on a scale of one to 10. If you're really concise, give yourself a one. If you're somewhere in the middle, depending on situation, five. If you're really long-winded, a 10. And of course, you can give yourself other scores, but I would recommend setting a goal to move at least below a five. Let's say you wanna be from a one to four range, depending upon the situation. Constraint strategy number three is to commit to conciseness. As FDR said, be sincere, be brief, and be seated. Now he's talking about presentations, it sounds like. But I think this demonstrates his commitment to conciseness because conciseness really sets the stage for that clarity and that confidence that we're all after. And so commitment in this sense means practicing the tips in this video and in the next six lessons. And while you're doing it, remember why you want to be concise, clear, and confident. Here are some reasons. People will pay attention to what you say when you communicate this way. People remember what you say. You'll have more impact, and you can lead more effectively. So there are lots of good reasons to do so. So long-windedness is a key enemy. to good communication, some takeaway strategies, resolve why you sometimes talk too much, and then gauge your long-windedness to help you set that goal, and then commit to practicing the tips in this lesson and the remaining six lessons. So your first step is get to the bottom of your unspoken reasons for long-windedness. That will really catapult you through this course and help you apply these tips with much more effectiveness. Looking forward, we'll work on how to form a concise overall message, concise sentences, we'll work on organizing your thoughts, effective pauses, avoiding fillers, and confident non-verbals. If you haven't yet subscribed to this channel, Communication Coach, I encourage you to do so and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. Welcome back to part two, your second lesson of these seven lessons. If you haven't yet subscribed, to this channel, Communication Coach, I encourage you to do so at some point in the process because in addition to this free course, there's lots of other material on the channel and I keep adding more material every week. So let's jump into lesson number two. In our first lesson, we looked at long-windedness and in this one, we're going to get after how to form a concise overall message. So concise tip number two is keep the overall message tight. Mark Twain once joked, I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. And the point he's making there in a humorous way is that it takes time to whittle down your message to the essence. It's much easier to just be long-winded. But everybody appreciates a concise message, whether it's a presentation, a meeting, a talking turn in a conversation, or your elevator pitch, people want you to finish on time and they want you to wrap it up. I put elevator pitch in quotations because first of all I don't like that phrase but also it signals that it's a message that you have to finish in about the time you have in an elevator ride so you have to express what you do or what your organization does and how they add value in a very short amount of time. Strategy number one is skip to the heart of the message. That's the best way to compress your overall message. Skip the preamble, the qualifications, the backstory. Don't think out loud. Just bottom line it. That's a picture there of a golden retriever. I have a little golden retriever puppy right now, which reminded me of her. So what's the heart of this message? So I was driving around the other day doing, you know, errands and whatnot. I saw a car go by that looked just like yours. At least it looked like your car to me. Do you drive a Toyota? Anyway, I saw this car and it made me think of you. You know what? It may have been a Honda, not a Toyota. Their SUVs look so similar. Long story short, it made me think of you, and that's why I called. It's been too long. We'd love to get together. We were wondering if you'd like to bring your family over next weekend. It might have been a Subaru. So if you had to whittle this down to the very core part of this, the part that you absolutely want the other person to hear out of this message, what would it be? If it were me, I would say, it's been too long. We'd love to get together. We were wondering if you'd like to bring your family over next weekend. If you got off the phone and didn't say these three sentences, I think that you probably would have said, oh, I never really said what I wanted to say. If you take away the rest of it, you have the heart of the message. The opposite is not true. If you took away these three sentences and you were just left with the rambling about the car, the message would make very little sense. And so you want to make sure you focus on what the person needs to know. And we do that by using need to know versus nice to know thinking to get to the heart of the message. What is the person absolutely need to know and what's just nice to know, little details that you could leave out and still communicate your message effectively. And if the person is, let's say they're stressed for time or your reception's not good on the phone, what would you focus on? That's generally when you're going to get down to the heart of the message. Strategy number two is to make your point and then zip it. So you state the heart of the message, end your talking turn by literally closing your mouth and give the other person a chance to talk. Look for those Head nods and other nonverbal cues that shows that that person is reading you and you stop talking after just a few sentences. So let's say you're having a Q&A with somebody and they ask you, have you contacted the meeting planner yet? What would you cut out of the answer to get to the heart of the message and then zip it, then close your mouth? Here's the answer. No, not yet. I still have to figure out what we need from her. I've got a call scheduled with the children's ministry leader, but I have to see if that call is actually going to happen. I'm also waiting to hear back from the musicians. If our first choice for music is available, then it'll shape the rest of the program. There are lots of balls in the air right now, but we'll get there. I just didn't anticipate so many loose strings, you know, that would still be loose at this point. So remember, this is a very direct question. Have you contacted the meeting planner yet? This is a yes or no. If it were me, I would cut almost all of this to make sure I express my main point and then zip it. No, not yet. I still have to figure out what we need from her. And this leaves room for the conversation to continue. So now it's their turn to talk. And hopefully you're noticing these nonverbal cues that signal you to stop. A lot of times people misread this. The person says, okay, all right, and they're nodding. And we might think, oh, they really like what I'm saying. I'll keep talking. but it means just the opposite. This is your signal to stop. Strategy number three, finish just under time. In many situations, like a meeting, you'll be given a certain amount of time for that work, and you want to wrap it up under the time limit. So if you have an hour, wrap that meeting up in 55 minutes. Nobody's going to complain. If you have a 30-minute presentation, finish it in 28 minutes. If you ask somebody for five minutes of their time, only use four. Develop a habit of time. getting under time instead of going over time. And a lot of people go over time, especially in meetings and presentations and conversations like this. In fact, you might take a great speaker that you think is amazing and she's just crushing it at the 25 minute mark. And she's supposed to finish at 30 minutes and she doesn't. And now she's 35 or 40, 45. And now a speaker that was amazing a few minutes ago is now 10 or 15 minutes over time and they're boring everybody to death. You do not want to be that kind of communicator. You want to finish just under time, respect people's time, and they will start to think of you as a concise communicator. So keep your overall messages tight. To do that, you want to skip to the heart of the message. I think most conversational messages can be delivered in about two or three sentences only. Once you make your point, zip it and give the other person a chance to talk. That'll develop into a conversation. And when you have some kind of time limit that you're shooting for, finish just under time. Time. Your first task is to apply this in conversations, stories, and any kinds of meetings that you have coming up in the near future. Up next we're going to work on concise and clear sentences and I look forward to seeing you in that lesson. Welcome back I'm Alex Lyon this is lesson three of seven in the course. In this lesson I want to give you a little warning, a little heads up. A lot of people give pushback on this particular strategy that you're going to see where I talk about using plain English, plain language to express yourself. It's one of the most valuable ways to make your messages more clear, more concise, and more confident. And yet some people resist. They want to keep in the sophisticated, complicated language. So if you feel that you're in that crowd, if you're one of those people that doesn't want to do that, then check your self-talk. Figure out what it is that's going on in your mind and address it. Because again, all the tips in the world are not going to change the way you ultimately communicate. you unless you figure out what's happening internally that's driving your communication. So let's jump right in. In our last lesson, we looked at how to form a concise overall message. In lesson three, we'll look at concise sentences. Concise tip number three is use short sentences. Oliver Wendell Holmes, a well-known judge from about 100 years ago, said, Speak clearly. If you speak at all, carve every word before you let it fall. It's a very poetic way to say you want to work on short sentences and express yourself concisely. Short sentences pop. They sound much more confident, more concrete, and much more memorable than long-winded sentences. They sound like news headlines, topic sentences of paragraphs, items in a bulleted list, and one-line jokes. A lot of times people will develop a nice, clean, crisp way of communicating, and it sounds much more confident than long-winded. demanding sentences. So you want to use as few words as possible. Strategy number one, shave words. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld talks about how longer jokes are very hard to make funny and it's they're much funnier when you shorten the jokes and make them pop. He was talking about the length of jokes and he said if it's too long, just a split second too long, you will shave letters off of words. You count syllables to get it just right. It's more like songwriting. When he says songwriting he's referring to how Songwriters have to fit their words into a certain beat, and they will have to come up with creative ways to express themselves in very few words. So Seinfeld has a joke about pop-tarts where he really practices what he preaches. He says about pop-tarts, they can't go stale because they were never fresh, which is hilarious, but it's amazing how he can communicate that in so few words. And there's not a single extra letter in this punchline. They can't go stale because they were never fresh. He doesn't say They will never go stale or they can never go stale. That would be too many words. You can't. Go stale. Cause instead of because. They were never fresh. There's not, I can't think of anything that I would shave off of this, and it's much funnier because of it. The lesson here is you want to get rid of the clutter so your sentences sound more concise and more confident. So which sentence sticks with you? We'll look at two samples about voting. If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched establishments of the two major parties who, please rest assured, are not dumb and who are keenly aware that is in their interest to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. That's a very long sentence. It's going to be difficult to remember what the message is here. Here's B. If you don't vote, you don't matter, which was said by Sean Penn in a movie about a politician from the South. If you're asking me which line sticks, if you don't vote, you don't matter, stuck with me for years after I saw that movie One time. Now I don't know if the politician he was playing actually said that or if the people who wrote the movie just crafted it, but it's a well-crafted sentence. And again, there's not a single extra letter or word in that sentence. That's why it sounds so confident. Whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment, it sounds confident and it really pops. So let's shave the clutter to make this sound like a headline. A few things came up, complications I guess you could call them, that are going to cause some unforeseen delays. I'm not sure if we can get it all done by Wednesday. Now we might. I'm just saying that we're going to have to see what happens and play it by ear. How could we shave this clutter to make it sound much more like a news headline? If it were me, I would do it this way. I'm not sure if we can get it all done by Wednesday. Now we might. You could even reword it slightly. I'm not sure if we can get it all done by Wednesday because of delays. Is there anything else we could shave from this sentence? Shave a few more words like Seinfeld. What would he do? I think probably he would take the extra few words out that he could. And that would make it sound even more concise and confident. Let's try another one, let's shave the clutter. What do you recommend we do when we visit Rhode Island? Well, let's see. I'd say probably the most amazing place, I mean, it's really amazing as long as the weather is good, is the beach in Rhode Island, because that's what we're known for and it's not called the ocean state for no reason. So this is a pretty long answer for a very short question, what do you recommend we do? And if it were me, I would shorten this all the way down and get rid of almost everything. And I would say, the most amazing place is the beach. Can we shave this even further? Well, we might be able to, but you don't want to overcorrect and shave it down to single words. I think if you ask someone this question and they answered the beach, that might sound a little too clipped and a little dismissive. So you make sure you form full thoughts, full sentences, and you're going to be on safe ground. Strategy number two, use plain English. A lot of people, perhaps to sound smart, perhaps because they love language, will dress up what they say in unnecessarily complicated vocabulary. So you want to avoid those kinds of bigger words because they don't necessarily add a lot of value. Utilize, if you look it up, it just means use. Problematical just means problem. Academia is another way to say college. You want to use plain language whenever you can, because every once in a while there'll be a thought you can't possibly express. plainly and you want to leave room in your sentences for that more sophisticated idea and To do so you want to simplify everything else that you can into very plain English I actually have heard a lot of people coming up through grad school use the word Problematical and I just never understood why they would use such a demanding word So don't use flowery language when simple language will do say it in plain English contemplate. How would you say this word contemplate? How would you translate that I would say think commence is another fancy way to say start and terminate is a fancy way to say end. Now you don't have to do this in every single case but in general to be concise and to make to make nice concise sentences you want to use plain English. Let's say this one in plain English. I was reflecting on my position I've altered my perspective on the matter. What's the person really saying? I think they're saying I changed my mind and that's how you want to express yourself. There's no way to misunderstand. a nice plainly worded sentence. So use short sentences with as few words as possible. Your takeaway strategies are to shave the clutter, like Seinfeld and other people who really work on compressing those sentences, and use plain English whenever you can. Your takeaway task here is to apply this in conversations, in Q&A, in the next few days, and make a habit out of answering with short, concise sentences. In our next lesson, we're going to look at how to organize your thoughts clearly. I look forward to seeing you then. You're about to start lesson 4 in the mini course. Again, I'm Alex Lyon and if you haven't yet subscribed, I encourage you to do so and check the rest of the videos on the channel out. On this particular video, like the last one, some people don't like a couple of the tips because if you fall in this category, you might feel like, well, that's a lot of structure and I don't normally communicate that way. Well, that's true. Not everybody communicates in a structured, orderly way. but it is one of the best ways to sound more concise, clear, and confident. So give it a try. Check your self-talk and motivation. Why is it that you don't want to communicate this way? Because if you can get to the bottom of your inner thoughts, then you're much more likely to succeed and communicate in a clear fashion. So let's jump right in. In our last lesson, we looked at concise statements, and in lesson four, we're going to look at organized thoughts. Concise tip number four, organize your thoughts into clear points. This is, of course, one way to remain concise, but it also adds an incredible amount of clarity and confidence to your message. Messages without a clear structure are very hard to follow for your listeners, and long lists dilute. each item's value. You've probably sat through presentations where somebody had 20 items or on a list and there's really no impact there when you have that many items. Much better to create fewer clear points. A clear organization shows clear, confident thinking. Here we have a messy desk and a joke I pulled from a comic. If you think this is bad, you should see the inside of my head. This actually looks a little bit like my desk and I'm all for creativity. However, once we're sharing our thoughts with somebody else, once we're communicating, we really have to stay more structured so that they can follow along with what we're saying in a clear and understandable way. Richard Feynman said it like this, if you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it. And the idea here is that if you really understand something, you can explain it in a very clear and structured way. for your listeners. They talk about being able to give a freshman lecture on a concept, and if you can't give a freshman level lecture, then you don't yourself understand it. So this structure will help us clarify our own thoughts and help it land for other people. Structure provides a schema or a mental framework that helps keep thoughts clear for you, helps your listeners follow your point. It gives your message cohesion or an overarching arc. and it helps everybody remember. Strategy one is to break messages into two to three chunks. For example, let's say you're having a conversation about getting healthy, and you wanna share this information with somebody else. Instead of just rambling, you wanna break it down into clear points. For example, you could talk about diet, exercise, and the importance of working out with a friend. And underneath each of those themes, or some people call them buckets, you would give your details. So if you're talking about diet, you might talk about counting calories or weight watchers, etc. Under exercise, the different options, and under working out with a friend, how you would hold each other a little accountable for staying on track. I was talking to a friend of mine, and this is a real life example, and I talked about his retirement plan. He's retired and he said, 401k, I have some rental income and a little bit of social security. Instead of giving a long-winded, disorganized, rambling answer, he was able to give me clear themes. And then we continued the discussion about each of these three items, and he provided some nice detail. I was watching a movie about a disabled man from Ghana many years ago, and he had one good leg and one disabled leg, and he finally got a meeting with a community leader, and the leader said, what are your priorities? And he said, I want to help provide independence, mobility, and space. sports for the disabled people in Ghana. He had just a moment to break the ice with an extremely clear message. And to this day, I remember this documentary film that he communicated in that clear and confident way. And I instantly thought, wow, this guy really knows what he's talking about. When we do this, we want to organize our chunks, our main points into some logical pattern. A nice logical pattern is going to help people remember, and it's going to clarify our thoughts for ourselves. Before, after, problem, solution, benefit, cause and effect, steps in a sequence, or in other words, chronological, etc. Lots of different options here. You're not limited to this list, but it's nice to have a list handy. For example, let's practice with this stream of thought example about somebody's day. I got up, got ready, ate breakfast, and worked out. I did some shopping on the way home from the gym. I bumped into Katie at the store. She wants to get together tonight. I actually got some work done during the day, shot some videos, did some editing, and organized the tools in the garage. I was hoping to get together with Katie and John tonight, but I also have some people to get back to, some calls to make, or at least a couple of texts to stay on top of some things. So this sounds a little bit like rambling, but you can basically follow it. It's much more clear, however, if we structure this into main points. For example, chronologically, morning, afternoon, and evening. And each of those items has a few details underneath it. Those themes provide a really great way to clarify your message, make it much more concise, and it'll sound very confident compared to a rambling, disorganized message. It's handy to have a list like this around when you're preparing for meetings, important conversations, and certainly presentations, because you don't have to create this from scratch. You can invent new ways, but there are lots of great schemas already available for structuring your ideas. Strategy number two is to then state your roadmap. So you have your structure, and now you want to forecast those points aloud with key words only. So a physician might say to you, let's talk about symptoms and then treatments. Now you have a roadmap. or how that conversation is going to go. And I recommend also calling out your points along the way. So let's say you start with symptoms, you talk about that for a few minutes, and if you're the physician, then you might say, now let's turn to your treatment options. And that'll be a really clear signal that you're shifting gears, and it again reminds people of that schema, reminds them of your buckets, and it helps your message stay clear. So structure provides freedom. Even though it seems like it boxes people in, we go back to mindset that we talked about in the early lesson on long-windedness. Why are we long-winded? Sometimes people resist applying structure because it feels too restrictive. It feels like it's robbing them of something. But there are a lot of benefits and there are freedoms that you can experience within a good structure. First of all, it eliminates tangents, which is good for your thinking and it's good for listeners. They don't want to hear tangents any more than you want to get off on them. But it also provides a place for more detail. So if you have clear main points, then you can find some nice details and sort them into the relevant place, and then they'll make sense. And it gives even long stories a sense of cohesion. So let's say you tell a five-minute story that's disorganized. It's gonna feel like it lasts forever. If you tell a five-minute story with clear beginning, middle, and end, then everybody will be able to follow it and it won't feel long at all. So structure is a tool to help you sort need-to-know information versus nice-to-know information. We talked about this in an earlier lesson. If it doesn't fit into your structure, either you have the wrong structure, the wrong main point, or it's just not need-to-know information. It might be just something that's nice to know, which is why it doesn't fit in. And that way, when you communicate with listeners, you're giving them high-value information with every sentence. So we want to organize our thoughts into clear points. Our takeaway strategies are to break ideas into two to three chunks and then state your roadmap really clearly before you share your message and then remind people of your points as you move through them. So our task is to apply this in conversations, meetings, and presentations that you have coming up in the coming days. And I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson on effective pauses. Hello again friends, you're about to do lesson five in the course, so let's just jump right in. In our last lesson, we looked at organizing your thoughts clearly. In lesson five, we'll look at effective pauses. Concise tip number five is pause to add emphasis. And this really is a conciseness tip, however, it's going to make you sound much more clear and certainly much more confident. Pauses in the wrong places can make you sound long-winded. Pauses in the right place make you sound clear and concise. And good pauses emphasize your points and add a confident cadence. It gives your speech a rhythm or a tempo that those professional speakers and those leaders have. Pauses are really like a secret weapon in communication. Ralph Richardson, a well-known actor on the stage and screen from years ago, said the most precious thing in speech are pauses. and I could not agree more. Strategy number one, pause at the end of sentences. That's where your pauses belong. It makes you sound more confident. It lets listeners accept and remember your message. During that pause, they get to process it for just a moment, and it gives you a natural stopping place to end your talking turn. That's one of the goals of being a concise and clear and confident communicator is you make your point, and as we said in an earlier lesson, then you zip it. and it allows you to have a back and forth or a dialogue with other people because the pause gives them a place to jump in. So let's listen to where the pauses are here. We have a few items to cover today. We'll look at our social media campaign. We'll look at our overall growth and Aaron will take suggestions about changes to the website. Now these pauses are in the right place. They're where the punctuation is, at the end of the nice, concise sentences. These are good examples of concise sentences from an earlier lesson. And if we were to visualize this, it looks a little bit more like bullets in a list, where the pause comes right at the end of that bulleted item, and then you go on to the next item. These are like headlines that we talked about in an earlier lesson, or even, they're not funny, but the length of a punchline for a joke. And that's where the pauses belong. Pauses at the end literally punctuate your statements for listeners. It helps them separate the ideas because you have, with the sound of your voice, separated your ideas. You should only pause for about one second, just long enough to say the word pause in your head. Sometimes people pause for two or three or more sentences to add that dramatic feel. I don't think that's necessary in most cases. Just long enough to say the word pause or period in your head. Strategy number two, avoid mid-thought. pauses. Pauses in the middle of your statements really make it drag and it'll sound labored and long-winded even if you're not using a lot of words. So let's listen to what it sounds like when the pauses are in the wrong place. We have a few items to cover today. We'll look at our social media campaign. We'll look at our overall growth and Aaron will take suggestions about changes to the website. So it doesn't sound right. It sounds like We're hanging, we're waiting for that next moment that just, oh, finish your thought. And you may have listened to people in conversation where they pause in the middle. And it can take an ordinary sentence and make it really sound extra long. So we want to pause in the right places. Strategy three is to pause to separate key ideas. When we're, for example, giving a roadmap to set up a meeting or a presentation, we want to pause between items in that meeting or presentation. And anytime you're listing. items, two or three or four items, you want to pause where the commas are. So here's a sentence. 80s rock is the best because it has loud drums, crunchy guitars, and soaring vocals. So we're pausing where we see the punctuation would naturally be and it gives it that nice confident sound where the ideas are separated. Some people, by the way, would say screeching vocals instead of soaring vocals, but I was trying to be kind because I'm a big fan of 80s rock. So pause in the right place for clarity and emphasis. Our takeaway strategies are to pause at the end of sentences, avoid mid-thought pauses that give it that draggy sound, and to pause to separate ideas in a list, especially things like a preview statement in a presentation or when you're setting up a meeting. Your task is to practice pausing and all your communication to add that clarity in the next few days. It's also going to sound... make it sound much more confident, much more concise for your listeners. Up next we are going to work on avoiding fillers and I look forward to seeing you in that lesson. Hello again friends I'm Alex Lyon. You're about to do lesson six of seven in this mini course. You're almost finished. I'm really happy for you. If you haven't yet subscribed to the channel, now's the time to do so. Make sure you visit the home page for the channel, click on the subscribe button and you'll start getting notifications. for the course. So let's jump right in. In our last lesson, we looked at pauses. In this lesson six, we'll look at avoiding fillers. Concise tip number six is to avoid fillers. Call it a concise tip because certainly avoiding fillers is going to make you more concise. It'll also add a lot to your clarity and to your confident sound. Fillers drag out and muddle messages for listeners. and fillers make you sound very unsure of what you're saying. Here's some common fillers. Write sort of, kind of, something like that, as well as um, uh, you know, so, and. I know some people that count ums and uhs during presentations, but it's not just annoying. It also really goes to your credibility. There's some research on powerless versus powerful speech, and when listeners in research situations were showed Videos of speakers who use lots of fillers, they thought they were very unconfident or powerless in their speech. They give the same speakers a clean script so they would not use any fillers. And the listeners in the research situation thought, wow, they really know what they're talking about. They're very confident. So you can sound confident just by getting rid of your fillers. It's a really important issue to get after. Strategy one is to identify your filler habits. These are habits. Most people have specific fillers that they use over and over again. I use... Kind of, I used to use that. And I also use so, and I'm working on that one, but I still use it from time to time. You want to listen to yourself and pinpoint your specific habits. Listen to a recorded presentation, for example, or you might even ask a trusted friend, hey, do I use any fillers? Do I say you know, or anything like that. And even if they don't have an answer for you on the spot, they'll be able to listen to you as you move forward. Strategy two is to replace fillers with pauses. We talked about this in an earlier lesson, how awesome pauses can sound in the right place. Some people call fillers vocalized pauses. In other words, we should be pausing, but we're filling it in with an utterance that doesn't need to be there. Pauses give you time to think, but they also make you sound more confident. Here we have an earlier example with fillers put in there where pauses should be, and you'll notice how tentative and how unsure it sounds. So we have a few items to cover today, and we'll look at our social media campaign, and we'll look at our overall growth, and Aaron will take, you know, suggestions about changes to the website. If I were to come to your meeting and speak like this, you would notice instantly that I had lots of fillers. And I have seen people who are supposed to be in leadership positions doing this, and listeners, in fact, did mention, wow, they said um and ah a lot. This matters to people. But what we want to do is add pauses in those places where we normally use fillers. And we would say the word pause or period in our head, like we mentioned in a previous lesson. Pauses restore that clear, confident sound that we're going for. And you'll notice that there are some pauses in the middle here, but they still sound better than the fillers. So if we were to look at this example, ultimately our goal would be to get rid of the fillers that are in the middle of the sentences and only use... the pauses that punctuate our communication in a desired fashion. We want to avoid fillers. Our takeaway strategies are to identify your specific filler habits. You don't do them all, you just do some. And if you isolate your specific habits, you're going to have a much easier time solving that problem. And then replace those fillers with actual pauses. Step one is to practice saying pause in your head. instead of using fillers. Up next we're going to work on confident nonverbals. That'll be our last lesson and it'll superimpose and thread through all the other things we've talked about in a really nice way. Congratulations you have made it! You're about to start the seventh class of seven in concise, clear, and confident communication. If for some reason you found this last video first then you can go back and do the whole course. Otherwise, if you've been going all the way through, I'm really happy for you. I encourage you to watch these videos as many times as you need to, to really make these tips and strategies habit, because that's where it's going to start to make a difference in your life. So let's wrap things up. In our previous lesson, we looked at how to get rid of fillers. In lesson seven, we're going to hit on confident non-verbals. So tip seven is confident non-verbals enhance. your message. All the previous six lessons are mostly to do with words and how you sound verbally, but these non-verbal messages can enhance or detract from what you're saying. So people form impressions about how you come across through non-verbal communication. Distracting non-verbals will diminish or take away from your communication, your message, and confident non-verbals will add to it. To say something with confidence means that you sound and look confident, not just that you're saying confident words. Strategy number one, use direct eye contact. Most people drastically underestimate the power of direct eye contact. Make direct eye contact when speaking and listening. Both are very important. Strive for 80% of the time in your conversations and 99% of the time during presentations. Most of us underestimate the need that others have for us to be looking directly at them. when we speak, and so those numbers will give you a good gauge. Adrian Furnham, a PhD researcher that's spent a lot of time working on eye contact, said the confident, the bright, and the socially dominant look more with direct eye contact, while it is the opposite for the socially anxious. In this society, we generally interpret direct eye contact as confident, and the lack of direct eye contact as signaling some kind of issue, oftentimes social anxiety, or even just a lack of confidence in general. Direct means who you are. right into their eyes, not like these two people who are looking elsewhere, sometimes above people's heads, sometimes over their shoulders. You do not want to be in this kind of situation. When you're looking directly at somebody, it says, hey, I see you. And they look back and it's, hey, I see you too. There's a connection there. So what does that look like in practice? Like you're looking directly into the lens of the camera. Someone says, hey, look right here. We're going to take a picture. You want to. Look right into their eyes. And again, in a conversation, it's 80% of the time. You don't want to stare, but you want to look at them the vast majority of the time to show them that you're communicating, you're locked into what you're saying, and you're locked into listening to what they say. Strategy two is to avoid uptalk. This is a nonverbal tendency. Uptalk describes the upward inflection used to make a statement sound like a question, sometimes called upspeak. And it sounds like this. I wanted to meet to discuss the plans. I was hoping to have that nailed down today. Many of the new hires need this training badly. Now clearly these are not questions, but you've probably heard up speak or up talk from people. Maybe you do it. It's becoming much more common among the younger generation and it's become a real issue in professional settings. But instead of this, you want your sentences to go down at the end. So if there's a period, you want them to go down like the period signals. I wanted to meet to discuss the plants. I was hoping to have that nailed down today. Many of the new hires need this training badly. That's a statement, and that's what it should sound like. You may not realize, however, that you're up-talking. A lot of people don't even know they're doing it. I recommend asking a trusted friend to listen to you talk to see if you do it. And then commit, if you are doing up-talk, I want you to commit to landing at the end of sentences and... boy, is this a hard habit to break, but it's well worth it because you don't want to sound like the person who's never sure of what they're saying. Strategy three is to smile. Who doesn't like a smile? People often even don't realize that they're scowling or have that stone-faced expression when they're walking around talking to people, but many people just don't smile, and as a result, they don't sound confident, and they don't look confident to other people. Even if their words are confident, they're not going to come across as feeling really comfortable with what they say. Because confident people smile. So you want to practice smiling a little as you talk. I don't think you should plaster on a phony smile. That's just not me. But you want to practice smiling a little. So in other words, instead of a stone face or that scowl, be aware of your facial expression. And if you're happy, then show it with your face. Sarah Silverman, a comedian, was talking to a young friend of hers who had that. scowl on her face even though she claimed she wasn't upset and Sarah Silverman said, I'm going to change your life right now. If that's your default face, put a smile on there. So a lot of us need to warm up our facial expressions so we come across more confident in what we're saying. So use confident non-verbals. Our takeaway strategies from this lesson are to use direct eye contact. That is number one. Avoid up talk. And if you do this, you want to ask a friend to listen and give you that. give you that advice and then come down at the end of your sentences and then practice smiling a little warm that face up and communicate that confidence so practice these tips and strategies as jim rohn said motivation is what gets you started habit is what keeps you going speaking of nice concise statements that's an amazing one and it couldn't be more true so you are learning some things by watching these lessons once i recommend you watch them as many times as you need to to Put these tips into practice and make them a habit. It's been a pleasure learning with you through this mini course on concise, clear, and confident communication. I encourage you to put them into practice and I look forward to learning with you in the future.

So let's jump right into the first lesson. In lesson one, we're going after long-windedness. I encourage you to watch this and go through it as many times as you need to to make this material a habit. Tip one, long-windedness is a key enemy of good communication. I'm always surprised that really talkative people assume that they're good communicators, but more talking does not equal good communication.

In fact, a lot of times if these words, Gabby, chatty, verbose, and talkative, accurately describe you, it's probably forming a bad impression, especially in professional settings. Alison Green said it like this, You might think, well, some people are long-winded, but it doesn't mean he wouldn't do a good job. The problem is that at minimum it signals that you're not good at picking up on conversational cues, and it raises doubts about your ability to organize your thoughts and convey needed information quickly.

So strategy one, Resolve why you sometimes talk too much. When do you find yourself multiplying words, being overly talkative? Is it just at work or is it in social situations?

And what are your in-the-moment thought processes that trigger it? Are you insecure about something? What's going on in your mind that's driving that over-talkative habit?

Because all the tips in the world will not undo an unspoken belief that drives that long-windedness. So excessive talkativeness is rooted in our unspoken beliefs. Let's say you're a physician and you're thinking to yourself, maybe you don't even realize it, but you're thinking, I want people to know I'm smart. You will most certainly talk too much to prove that. And because we live in a polite society, people just play along.

But inside, they're having an entirely different thought process about this conversation. They will almost never tell you directly that you're long-winded. However, they will form... unfavorable impressions of you anyway. And so it's very important to realize the impact that long-winded communication can have on your professional relationships and the people around you.

So people long-winded for various reasons. What's your reason? Maybe there's more than one.

Is it insecurity? Maybe some self-centeredness? Do you want to show everything you know, like you're that physician? Do you like the airtime and the attention? In other words, does it feel good when people are listening to you and you love?

when everyone's watching you in action? Do you mistake talking for adding value? Do you mistake more talking for good communication? Are there some control issues going on in your heart, in your mind?

In other words, do you like to steer a conversation and be the one talking so you dictate the pace and the flow of things? Any one of these reasons, and there are many others, could be driving that long-windedness. So it's really important that you take some time and get to the bottom of it. Strategy two is to gauge your long-windedness.

Rate yourself on a scale of one to 10. If you're really concise, give yourself a one. If you're somewhere in the middle, depending on situation, five. If you're really long-winded, a 10. And of course, you can give yourself other scores, but I would recommend setting a goal to move at least below a five.

Let's say you wanna be from a one to four range, depending upon the situation. Constraint strategy number three is to commit to conciseness. As FDR said, be sincere, be brief, and be seated. Now he's talking about presentations, it sounds like. But I think this demonstrates his commitment to conciseness because conciseness really sets the stage for that clarity and that confidence that we're all after.

And so commitment in this sense means practicing the tips in this video and in the next six lessons. And while you're doing it, remember why you want to be concise, clear, and confident. Here are some reasons. People will pay attention to what you say when you communicate this way. People remember what you say.

You'll have more impact, and you can lead more effectively. So there are lots of good reasons to do so. So long-windedness is a key enemy.

to good communication, some takeaway strategies, resolve why you sometimes talk too much, and then gauge your long-windedness to help you set that goal, and then commit to practicing the tips in this lesson and the remaining six lessons. So your first step is get to the bottom of your unspoken reasons for long-windedness. That will really catapult you through this course and help you apply these tips with much more effectiveness.

Looking forward, we'll work on how to form a concise overall message, concise sentences, we'll work on organizing your thoughts, effective pauses, avoiding fillers, and confident non-verbals. If you haven't yet subscribed to this channel, Communication Coach, I encourage you to do so and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. Welcome back to part two, your second lesson of these seven lessons.

If you haven't yet subscribed, to this channel, Communication Coach, I encourage you to do so at some point in the process because in addition to this free course, there's lots of other material on the channel and I keep adding more material every week. So let's jump into lesson number two. In our first lesson, we looked at long-windedness and in this one, we're going to get after how to form a concise overall message. So concise tip number two is keep the overall message tight.

Mark Twain once joked, I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. And the point he's making there in a humorous way is that it takes time to whittle down your message to the essence. It's much easier to just be long-winded.

But everybody appreciates a concise message, whether it's a presentation, a meeting, a talking turn in a conversation, or your elevator pitch, people want you to finish on time and they want you to wrap it up. I put elevator pitch in quotations because first of all I don't like that phrase but also it signals that it's a message that you have to finish in about the time you have in an elevator ride so you have to express what you do or what your organization does and how they add value in a very short amount of time. Strategy number one is skip to the heart of the message. That's the best way to compress your overall message. Skip the preamble, the qualifications, the backstory.

Don't think out loud. Just bottom line it. That's a picture there of a golden retriever.

I have a little golden retriever puppy right now, which reminded me of her. So what's the heart of this message? So I was driving around the other day doing, you know, errands and whatnot.

I saw a car go by that looked just like yours. At least it looked like your car to me. Do you drive a Toyota? Anyway, I saw this car and it made me think of you. You know what?

It may have been a Honda, not a Toyota. Their SUVs look so similar. Long story short, it made me think of you, and that's why I called. It's been too long.

We'd love to get together. We were wondering if you'd like to bring your family over next weekend. It might have been a Subaru.

So if you had to whittle this down to the very core part of this, the part that you absolutely want the other person to hear out of this message, what would it be? If it were me, I would say, it's been too long. We'd love to get together. We were wondering if you'd like to bring your family over next weekend. If you got off the phone and didn't say these three sentences, I think that you probably would have said, oh, I never really said what I wanted to say.

If you take away the rest of it, you have the heart of the message. The opposite is not true. If you took away these three sentences and you were just left with the rambling about the car, the message would make very little sense. And so you want to make sure you focus on what the person needs to know.

And we do that by using need to know versus nice to know thinking to get to the heart of the message. What is the person absolutely need to know and what's just nice to know, little details that you could leave out and still communicate your message effectively. And if the person is, let's say they're stressed for time or your reception's not good on the phone, what would you focus on? That's generally when you're going to get down to the heart of the message.

Strategy number two is to make your point and then zip it. So you state the heart of the message, end your talking turn by literally closing your mouth and give the other person a chance to talk. Look for those Head nods and other nonverbal cues that shows that that person is reading you and you stop talking after just a few sentences.

So let's say you're having a Q&A with somebody and they ask you, have you contacted the meeting planner yet? What would you cut out of the answer to get to the heart of the message and then zip it, then close your mouth? Here's the answer.

No, not yet. I still have to figure out what we need from her. I've got a call scheduled with the children's ministry leader, but I have to see if that call is actually going to happen.

I'm also waiting to hear back from the musicians. If our first choice for music is available, then it'll shape the rest of the program. There are lots of balls in the air right now, but we'll get there.

I just didn't anticipate so many loose strings, you know, that would still be loose at this point. So remember, this is a very direct question. Have you contacted the meeting planner yet?

This is a yes or no. If it were me, I would cut almost all of this to make sure I express my main point and then zip it. No, not yet.

I still have to figure out what we need from her. And this leaves room for the conversation to continue. So now it's their turn to talk. And hopefully you're noticing these nonverbal cues that signal you to stop. A lot of times people misread this.

The person says, okay, all right, and they're nodding. And we might think, oh, they really like what I'm saying. I'll keep talking.

but it means just the opposite. This is your signal to stop. Strategy number three, finish just under time.

In many situations, like a meeting, you'll be given a certain amount of time for that work, and you want to wrap it up under the time limit. So if you have an hour, wrap that meeting up in 55 minutes. Nobody's going to complain.

If you have a 30-minute presentation, finish it in 28 minutes. If you ask somebody for five minutes of their time, only use four. Develop a habit of time.

getting under time instead of going over time. And a lot of people go over time, especially in meetings and presentations and conversations like this. In fact, you might take a great speaker that you think is amazing and she's just crushing it at the 25 minute mark.

And she's supposed to finish at 30 minutes and she doesn't. And now she's 35 or 40, 45. And now a speaker that was amazing a few minutes ago is now 10 or 15 minutes over time and they're boring everybody to death. You do not want to be that kind of communicator. You want to finish just under time, respect people's time, and they will start to think of you as a concise communicator. So keep your overall messages tight.

To do that, you want to skip to the heart of the message. I think most conversational messages can be delivered in about two or three sentences only. Once you make your point, zip it and give the other person a chance to talk.

That'll develop into a conversation. And when you have some kind of time limit that you're shooting for, finish just under time. Time. Your first task is to apply this in conversations, stories, and any kinds of meetings that you have coming up in the near future.

Up next we're going to work on concise and clear sentences and I look forward to seeing you in that lesson. Welcome back I'm Alex Lyon this is lesson three of seven in the course. In this lesson I want to give you a little warning, a little heads up. A lot of people give pushback on this particular strategy that you're going to see where I talk about using plain English, plain language to express yourself.

It's one of the most valuable ways to make your messages more clear, more concise, and more confident. And yet some people resist. They want to keep in the sophisticated, complicated language. So if you feel that you're in that crowd, if you're one of those people that doesn't want to do that, then check your self-talk.

Figure out what it is that's going on in your mind and address it. Because again, all the tips in the world are not going to change the way you ultimately communicate. you unless you figure out what's happening internally that's driving your communication. So let's jump right in. In our last lesson, we looked at how to form a concise overall message.

In lesson three, we'll look at concise sentences. Concise tip number three is use short sentences. Oliver Wendell Holmes, a well-known judge from about 100 years ago, said, Speak clearly.

If you speak at all, carve every word before you let it fall. It's a very poetic way to say you want to work on short sentences and express yourself concisely. Short sentences pop.

They sound much more confident, more concrete, and much more memorable than long-winded sentences. They sound like news headlines, topic sentences of paragraphs, items in a bulleted list, and one-line jokes. A lot of times people will develop a nice, clean, crisp way of communicating, and it sounds much more confident than long-winded.

demanding sentences. So you want to use as few words as possible. Strategy number one, shave words.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld talks about how longer jokes are very hard to make funny and it's they're much funnier when you shorten the jokes and make them pop. He was talking about the length of jokes and he said if it's too long, just a split second too long, you will shave letters off of words. You count syllables to get it just right.

It's more like songwriting. When he says songwriting he's referring to how Songwriters have to fit their words into a certain beat, and they will have to come up with creative ways to express themselves in very few words. So Seinfeld has a joke about pop-tarts where he really practices what he preaches.

He says about pop-tarts, they can't go stale because they were never fresh, which is hilarious, but it's amazing how he can communicate that in so few words. And there's not a single extra letter in this punchline. They can't go stale because they were never fresh.

He doesn't say They will never go stale or they can never go stale. That would be too many words. You can't. Go stale. Cause instead of because.

They were never fresh. There's not, I can't think of anything that I would shave off of this, and it's much funnier because of it. The lesson here is you want to get rid of the clutter so your sentences sound more concise and more confident. So which sentence sticks with you? We'll look at two samples about voting.

If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched establishments of the two major parties who, please rest assured, are not dumb and who are keenly aware that is in their interest to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. That's a very long sentence. It's going to be difficult to remember what the message is here.

Here's B. If you don't vote, you don't matter, which was said by Sean Penn in a movie about a politician from the South. If you're asking me which line sticks, if you don't vote, you don't matter, stuck with me for years after I saw that movie One time. Now I don't know if the politician he was playing actually said that or if the people who wrote the movie just crafted it, but it's a well-crafted sentence.

And again, there's not a single extra letter or word in that sentence. That's why it sounds so confident. Whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment, it sounds confident and it really pops. So let's shave the clutter to make this sound like a headline. A few things came up, complications I guess you could call them, that are going to cause some unforeseen delays.

I'm not sure if we can get it all done by Wednesday. Now we might. I'm just saying that we're going to have to see what happens and play it by ear. How could we shave this clutter to make it sound much more like a news headline?

If it were me, I would do it this way. I'm not sure if we can get it all done by Wednesday. Now we might.

You could even reword it slightly. I'm not sure if we can get it all done by Wednesday because of delays. Is there anything else we could shave from this sentence?

Shave a few more words like Seinfeld. What would he do? I think probably he would take the extra few words out that he could.

And that would make it sound even more concise and confident. Let's try another one, let's shave the clutter. What do you recommend we do when we visit Rhode Island? Well, let's see.

I'd say probably the most amazing place, I mean, it's really amazing as long as the weather is good, is the beach in Rhode Island, because that's what we're known for and it's not called the ocean state for no reason. So this is a pretty long answer for a very short question, what do you recommend we do? And if it were me, I would shorten this all the way down and get rid of almost everything.

And I would say, the most amazing place is the beach. Can we shave this even further? Well, we might be able to, but you don't want to overcorrect and shave it down to single words.

I think if you ask someone this question and they answered the beach, that might sound a little too clipped and a little dismissive. So you make sure you form full thoughts, full sentences, and you're going to be on safe ground. Strategy number two, use plain English. A lot of people, perhaps to sound smart, perhaps because they love language, will dress up what they say in unnecessarily complicated vocabulary.

So you want to avoid those kinds of bigger words because they don't necessarily add a lot of value. Utilize, if you look it up, it just means use. Problematical just means problem.

Academia is another way to say college. You want to use plain language whenever you can, because every once in a while there'll be a thought you can't possibly express. plainly and you want to leave room in your sentences for that more sophisticated idea and To do so you want to simplify everything else that you can into very plain English I actually have heard a lot of people coming up through grad school use the word Problematical and I just never understood why they would use such a demanding word So don't use flowery language when simple language will do say it in plain English contemplate. How would you say this word contemplate? How would you translate that I would say think commence is another fancy way to say start and terminate is a fancy way to say end.

Now you don't have to do this in every single case but in general to be concise and to make to make nice concise sentences you want to use plain English. Let's say this one in plain English. I was reflecting on my position I've altered my perspective on the matter. What's the person really saying? I think they're saying I changed my mind and that's how you want to express yourself.

There's no way to misunderstand. a nice plainly worded sentence. So use short sentences with as few words as possible. Your takeaway strategies are to shave the clutter, like Seinfeld and other people who really work on compressing those sentences, and use plain English whenever you can. Your takeaway task here is to apply this in conversations, in Q&A, in the next few days, and make a habit out of answering with short, concise sentences.

In our next lesson, we're going to look at how to organize your thoughts clearly. I look forward to seeing you then. You're about to start lesson 4 in the mini course. Again, I'm Alex Lyon and if you haven't yet subscribed, I encourage you to do so and check the rest of the videos on the channel out.

On this particular video, like the last one, some people don't like a couple of the tips because if you fall in this category, you might feel like, well, that's a lot of structure and I don't normally communicate that way. Well, that's true. Not everybody communicates in a structured, orderly way.

but it is one of the best ways to sound more concise, clear, and confident. So give it a try. Check your self-talk and motivation.

Why is it that you don't want to communicate this way? Because if you can get to the bottom of your inner thoughts, then you're much more likely to succeed and communicate in a clear fashion. So let's jump right in. In our last lesson, we looked at concise statements, and in lesson four, we're going to look at organized thoughts.

Concise tip number four, organize your thoughts into clear points. This is, of course, one way to remain concise, but it also adds an incredible amount of clarity and confidence to your message. Messages without a clear structure are very hard to follow for your listeners, and long lists dilute. each item's value.

You've probably sat through presentations where somebody had 20 items or on a list and there's really no impact there when you have that many items. Much better to create fewer clear points. A clear organization shows clear, confident thinking.

Here we have a messy desk and a joke I pulled from a comic. If you think this is bad, you should see the inside of my head. This actually looks a little bit like my desk and I'm all for creativity. However, once we're sharing our thoughts with somebody else, once we're communicating, we really have to stay more structured so that they can follow along with what we're saying in a clear and understandable way.

Richard Feynman said it like this, if you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it. And the idea here is that if you really understand something, you can explain it in a very clear and structured way. for your listeners.

They talk about being able to give a freshman lecture on a concept, and if you can't give a freshman level lecture, then you don't yourself understand it. So this structure will help us clarify our own thoughts and help it land for other people. Structure provides a schema or a mental framework that helps keep thoughts clear for you, helps your listeners follow your point.

It gives your message cohesion or an overarching arc. and it helps everybody remember. Strategy one is to break messages into two to three chunks. For example, let's say you're having a conversation about getting healthy, and you wanna share this information with somebody else. Instead of just rambling, you wanna break it down into clear points.

For example, you could talk about diet, exercise, and the importance of working out with a friend. And underneath each of those themes, or some people call them buckets, you would give your details. So if you're talking about diet, you might talk about counting calories or weight watchers, etc. Under exercise, the different options, and under working out with a friend, how you would hold each other a little accountable for staying on track. I was talking to a friend of mine, and this is a real life example, and I talked about his retirement plan.

He's retired and he said, 401k, I have some rental income and a little bit of social security. Instead of giving a long-winded, disorganized, rambling answer, he was able to give me clear themes. And then we continued the discussion about each of these three items, and he provided some nice detail. I was watching a movie about a disabled man from Ghana many years ago, and he had one good leg and one disabled leg, and he finally got a meeting with a community leader, and the leader said, what are your priorities? And he said, I want to help provide independence, mobility, and space.

sports for the disabled people in Ghana. He had just a moment to break the ice with an extremely clear message. And to this day, I remember this documentary film that he communicated in that clear and confident way. And I instantly thought, wow, this guy really knows what he's talking about.

When we do this, we want to organize our chunks, our main points into some logical pattern. A nice logical pattern is going to help people remember, and it's going to clarify our thoughts for ourselves. Before, after, problem, solution, benefit, cause and effect, steps in a sequence, or in other words, chronological, etc.

Lots of different options here. You're not limited to this list, but it's nice to have a list handy. For example, let's practice with this stream of thought example about somebody's day.

I got up, got ready, ate breakfast, and worked out. I did some shopping on the way home from the gym. I bumped into Katie at the store.

She wants to get together tonight. I actually got some work done during the day, shot some videos, did some editing, and organized the tools in the garage. I was hoping to get together with Katie and John tonight, but I also have some people to get back to, some calls to make, or at least a couple of texts to stay on top of some things. So this sounds a little bit like rambling, but you can basically follow it. It's much more clear, however, if we structure this into main points.

For example, chronologically, morning, afternoon, and evening. And each of those items has a few details underneath it. Those themes provide a really great way to clarify your message, make it much more concise, and it'll sound very confident compared to a rambling, disorganized message.

It's handy to have a list like this around when you're preparing for meetings, important conversations, and certainly presentations, because you don't have to create this from scratch. You can invent new ways, but there are lots of great schemas already available for structuring your ideas. Strategy number two is to then state your roadmap. So you have your structure, and now you want to forecast those points aloud with key words only.

So a physician might say to you, let's talk about symptoms and then treatments. Now you have a roadmap. or how that conversation is going to go.

And I recommend also calling out your points along the way. So let's say you start with symptoms, you talk about that for a few minutes, and if you're the physician, then you might say, now let's turn to your treatment options. And that'll be a really clear signal that you're shifting gears, and it again reminds people of that schema, reminds them of your buckets, and it helps your message stay clear.

So structure provides freedom. Even though it seems like it boxes people in, we go back to mindset that we talked about in the early lesson on long-windedness. Why are we long-winded?

Sometimes people resist applying structure because it feels too restrictive. It feels like it's robbing them of something. But there are a lot of benefits and there are freedoms that you can experience within a good structure. First of all, it eliminates tangents, which is good for your thinking and it's good for listeners.

They don't want to hear tangents any more than you want to get off on them. But it also provides a place for more detail. So if you have clear main points, then you can find some nice details and sort them into the relevant place, and then they'll make sense. And it gives even long stories a sense of cohesion.

So let's say you tell a five-minute story that's disorganized. It's gonna feel like it lasts forever. If you tell a five-minute story with clear beginning, middle, and end, then everybody will be able to follow it and it won't feel long at all. So structure is a tool to help you sort need-to-know information versus nice-to-know information.

We talked about this in an earlier lesson. If it doesn't fit into your structure, either you have the wrong structure, the wrong main point, or it's just not need-to-know information. It might be just something that's nice to know, which is why it doesn't fit in.

And that way, when you communicate with listeners, you're giving them high-value information with every sentence. So we want to organize our thoughts into clear points. Our takeaway strategies are to break ideas into two to three chunks and then state your roadmap really clearly before you share your message and then remind people of your points as you move through them.

So our task is to apply this in conversations, meetings, and presentations that you have coming up in the coming days. And I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson on effective pauses. Hello again friends, you're about to do lesson five in the course, so let's just jump right in.

In our last lesson, we looked at organizing your thoughts clearly. In lesson five, we'll look at effective pauses. Concise tip number five is pause to add emphasis.

And this really is a conciseness tip, however, it's going to make you sound much more clear and certainly much more confident. Pauses in the wrong places can make you sound long-winded. Pauses in the right place make you sound clear and concise.

And good pauses emphasize your points and add a confident cadence. It gives your speech a rhythm or a tempo that those professional speakers and those leaders have. Pauses are really like a secret weapon in communication.

Ralph Richardson, a well-known actor on the stage and screen from years ago, said the most precious thing in speech are pauses. and I could not agree more. Strategy number one, pause at the end of sentences.

That's where your pauses belong. It makes you sound more confident. It lets listeners accept and remember your message. During that pause, they get to process it for just a moment, and it gives you a natural stopping place to end your talking turn.

That's one of the goals of being a concise and clear and confident communicator is you make your point, and as we said in an earlier lesson, then you zip it. and it allows you to have a back and forth or a dialogue with other people because the pause gives them a place to jump in. So let's listen to where the pauses are here. We have a few items to cover today. We'll look at our social media campaign.

We'll look at our overall growth and Aaron will take suggestions about changes to the website. Now these pauses are in the right place. They're where the punctuation is, at the end of the nice, concise sentences.

These are good examples of concise sentences from an earlier lesson. And if we were to visualize this, it looks a little bit more like bullets in a list, where the pause comes right at the end of that bulleted item, and then you go on to the next item. These are like headlines that we talked about in an earlier lesson, or even, they're not funny, but the length of a punchline for a joke. And that's where the pauses belong. Pauses at the end literally punctuate your statements for listeners.

It helps them separate the ideas because you have, with the sound of your voice, separated your ideas. You should only pause for about one second, just long enough to say the word pause in your head. Sometimes people pause for two or three or more sentences to add that dramatic feel. I don't think that's necessary in most cases.

Just long enough to say the word pause or period in your head. Strategy number two, avoid mid-thought. pauses. Pauses in the middle of your statements really make it drag and it'll sound labored and long-winded even if you're not using a lot of words.

So let's listen to what it sounds like when the pauses are in the wrong place. We have a few items to cover today. We'll look at our social media campaign.

We'll look at our overall growth and Aaron will take suggestions about changes to the website. So it doesn't sound right. It sounds like We're hanging, we're waiting for that next moment that just, oh, finish your thought.

And you may have listened to people in conversation where they pause in the middle. And it can take an ordinary sentence and make it really sound extra long. So we want to pause in the right places. Strategy three is to pause to separate key ideas. When we're, for example, giving a roadmap to set up a meeting or a presentation, we want to pause between items in that meeting or presentation.

And anytime you're listing. items, two or three or four items, you want to pause where the commas are. So here's a sentence. 80s rock is the best because it has loud drums, crunchy guitars, and soaring vocals.

So we're pausing where we see the punctuation would naturally be and it gives it that nice confident sound where the ideas are separated. Some people, by the way, would say screeching vocals instead of soaring vocals, but I was trying to be kind because I'm a big fan of 80s rock. So pause in the right place for clarity and emphasis. Our takeaway strategies are to pause at the end of sentences, avoid mid-thought pauses that give it that draggy sound, and to pause to separate ideas in a list, especially things like a preview statement in a presentation or when you're setting up a meeting.

Your task is to practice pausing and all your communication to add that clarity in the next few days. It's also going to sound... make it sound much more confident, much more concise for your listeners. Up next we are going to work on avoiding fillers and I look forward to seeing you in that lesson. Hello again friends I'm Alex Lyon.

You're about to do lesson six of seven in this mini course. You're almost finished. I'm really happy for you.

If you haven't yet subscribed to the channel, now's the time to do so. Make sure you visit the home page for the channel, click on the subscribe button and you'll start getting notifications. for the course.

So let's jump right in. In our last lesson, we looked at pauses. In this lesson six, we'll look at avoiding fillers.

Concise tip number six is to avoid fillers. Call it a concise tip because certainly avoiding fillers is going to make you more concise. It'll also add a lot to your clarity and to your confident sound.

Fillers drag out and muddle messages for listeners. and fillers make you sound very unsure of what you're saying. Here's some common fillers.

Write sort of, kind of, something like that, as well as um, uh, you know, so, and. I know some people that count ums and uhs during presentations, but it's not just annoying. It also really goes to your credibility.

There's some research on powerless versus powerful speech, and when listeners in research situations were showed Videos of speakers who use lots of fillers, they thought they were very unconfident or powerless in their speech. They give the same speakers a clean script so they would not use any fillers. And the listeners in the research situation thought, wow, they really know what they're talking about. They're very confident. So you can sound confident just by getting rid of your fillers.

It's a really important issue to get after. Strategy one is to identify your filler habits. These are habits.

Most people have specific fillers that they use over and over again. I use... Kind of, I used to use that. And I also use so, and I'm working on that one, but I still use it from time to time. You want to listen to yourself and pinpoint your specific habits.

Listen to a recorded presentation, for example, or you might even ask a trusted friend, hey, do I use any fillers? Do I say you know, or anything like that. And even if they don't have an answer for you on the spot, they'll be able to listen to you as you move forward. Strategy two is to replace fillers with pauses. We talked about this in an earlier lesson, how awesome pauses can sound in the right place.

Some people call fillers vocalized pauses. In other words, we should be pausing, but we're filling it in with an utterance that doesn't need to be there. Pauses give you time to think, but they also make you sound more confident.

Here we have an earlier example with fillers put in there where pauses should be, and you'll notice how tentative and how unsure it sounds. So we have a few items to cover today, and we'll look at our social media campaign, and we'll look at our overall growth, and Aaron will take, you know, suggestions about changes to the website. If I were to come to your meeting and speak like this, you would notice instantly that I had lots of fillers.

And I have seen people who are supposed to be in leadership positions doing this, and listeners, in fact, did mention, wow, they said um and ah a lot. This matters to people. But what we want to do is add pauses in those places where we normally use fillers. And we would say the word pause or period in our head, like we mentioned in a previous lesson. Pauses restore that clear, confident sound that we're going for.

And you'll notice that there are some pauses in the middle here, but they still sound better than the fillers. So if we were to look at this example, ultimately our goal would be to get rid of the fillers that are in the middle of the sentences and only use... the pauses that punctuate our communication in a desired fashion.

We want to avoid fillers. Our takeaway strategies are to identify your specific filler habits. You don't do them all, you just do some. And if you isolate your specific habits, you're going to have a much easier time solving that problem. And then replace those fillers with actual pauses.

Step one is to practice saying pause in your head. instead of using fillers. Up next we're going to work on confident nonverbals. That'll be our last lesson and it'll superimpose and thread through all the other things we've talked about in a really nice way.

Congratulations you have made it! You're about to start the seventh class of seven in concise, clear, and confident communication. If for some reason you found this last video first then you can go back and do the whole course.

Otherwise, if you've been going all the way through, I'm really happy for you. I encourage you to watch these videos as many times as you need to, to really make these tips and strategies habit, because that's where it's going to start to make a difference in your life. So let's wrap things up. In our previous lesson, we looked at how to get rid of fillers. In lesson seven, we're going to hit on confident non-verbals.

So tip seven is confident non-verbals enhance. your message. All the previous six lessons are mostly to do with words and how you sound verbally, but these non-verbal messages can enhance or detract from what you're saying. So people form impressions about how you come across through non-verbal communication.

Distracting non-verbals will diminish or take away from your communication, your message, and confident non-verbals will add to it. To say something with confidence means that you sound and look confident, not just that you're saying confident words. Strategy number one, use direct eye contact. Most people drastically underestimate the power of direct eye contact. Make direct eye contact when speaking and listening.

Both are very important. Strive for 80% of the time in your conversations and 99% of the time during presentations. Most of us underestimate the need that others have for us to be looking directly at them.

when we speak, and so those numbers will give you a good gauge. Adrian Furnham, a PhD researcher that's spent a lot of time working on eye contact, said the confident, the bright, and the socially dominant look more with direct eye contact, while it is the opposite for the socially anxious. In this society, we generally interpret direct eye contact as confident, and the lack of direct eye contact as signaling some kind of issue, oftentimes social anxiety, or even just a lack of confidence in general.

Direct means who you are. right into their eyes, not like these two people who are looking elsewhere, sometimes above people's heads, sometimes over their shoulders. You do not want to be in this kind of situation.

When you're looking directly at somebody, it says, hey, I see you. And they look back and it's, hey, I see you too. There's a connection there. So what does that look like in practice? Like you're looking directly into the lens of the camera.

Someone says, hey, look right here. We're going to take a picture. You want to.

Look right into their eyes. And again, in a conversation, it's 80% of the time. You don't want to stare, but you want to look at them the vast majority of the time to show them that you're communicating, you're locked into what you're saying, and you're locked into listening to what they say.

Strategy two is to avoid uptalk. This is a nonverbal tendency. Uptalk describes the upward inflection used to make a statement sound like a question, sometimes called upspeak.

And it sounds like this. I wanted to meet to discuss the plans. I was hoping to have that nailed down today. Many of the new hires need this training badly. Now clearly these are not questions, but you've probably heard up speak or up talk from people.

Maybe you do it. It's becoming much more common among the younger generation and it's become a real issue in professional settings. But instead of this, you want your sentences to go down at the end.

So if there's a period, you want them to go down like the period signals. I wanted to meet to discuss the plants. I was hoping to have that nailed down today.

Many of the new hires need this training badly. That's a statement, and that's what it should sound like. You may not realize, however, that you're up-talking.

A lot of people don't even know they're doing it. I recommend asking a trusted friend to listen to you talk to see if you do it. And then commit, if you are doing up-talk, I want you to commit to landing at the end of sentences and...

boy, is this a hard habit to break, but it's well worth it because you don't want to sound like the person who's never sure of what they're saying. Strategy three is to smile. Who doesn't like a smile? People often even don't realize that they're scowling or have that stone-faced expression when they're walking around talking to people, but many people just don't smile, and as a result, they don't sound confident, and they don't look confident to other people. Even if their words are confident, they're not going to come across as feeling really comfortable with what they say.

Because confident people smile. So you want to practice smiling a little as you talk. I don't think you should plaster on a phony smile.

That's just not me. But you want to practice smiling a little. So in other words, instead of a stone face or that scowl, be aware of your facial expression.

And if you're happy, then show it with your face. Sarah Silverman, a comedian, was talking to a young friend of hers who had that. scowl on her face even though she claimed she wasn't upset and Sarah Silverman said, I'm going to change your life right now.

If that's your default face, put a smile on there. So a lot of us need to warm up our facial expressions so we come across more confident in what we're saying. So use confident non-verbals.

Our takeaway strategies from this lesson are to use direct eye contact. That is number one. Avoid up talk.

And if you do this, you want to ask a friend to listen and give you that. give you that advice and then come down at the end of your sentences and then practice smiling a little warm that face up and communicate that confidence so practice these tips and strategies as jim rohn said motivation is what gets you started habit is what keeps you going speaking of nice concise statements that's an amazing one and it couldn't be more true so you are learning some things by watching these lessons once i recommend you watch them as many times as you need to to Put these tips into practice and make them a habit. It's been a pleasure learning with you through this mini course on concise, clear, and confident communication. I encourage you to put them into practice and I look forward to learning with you in the future.

Transcript for:Mastering Clear and Confident Communication

Transcript for:
Mastering Clear and Confident Communication