Fear and excitement when communicating
You don’t have to look far to find some clear examples of people who try to be spontaneous only to fall flat on their face. So, let’s deal with any fears you might have about improvising.
Looking at the performance of those eager candidates in either Dragons Den or The Apprentice, you will be quite aware of the process.
Regularly caught off guard by what appears to be very reasonable questions, many of these would-be entrepreneurs simply fail to cope when asked to be authentic and say what they really think. And as viewers we watch wide eyed as these young hopefuls veer wildly off track and start providing far too much detail or simply lose their heads. Predictably they then get booted off the shows.
Now it may, of course, be mildly entertaining to see the howlers that people make when under pressure but what should they have done? The answer is this – they should have learned how to improvise whilst still knowing exactly where they were heading. Let me explain.
Your ability to speak persuasively and spontaneously needs to be underpinned by a better understanding of how your brain works. The relevant information here is that there are two sides to your brain – the logical left side and the intuitive right side. As someone who wants to be able to improvise, all you need to do is to learn how to use both sides together, in harmony. You can compare this skill to that of being a pilot. What you need is a computerised flight path which will get you flying in the right direction. That’s the left side of your brain. Meanwhile, at any time, you can override the computer, make mid-course corrections and even go and talk to the passengers. And that’s the skill of the right hand side of your brain. Translate this into the area of communication and you have disciplined eloquence or even, perhaps, reliable excitement!
Of course some people are concerned that any structure will limit their spontaneity. But this isn’t true. The mind processes information extremely quickly and presenters, in giving themselves structure to improvise, are actually helping themselves and their listeners in two extremely important ways. Firstly, structure provides a clear focus for an audience. It imposes order on the mass of information that communicators have at their fingertips. Secondly, structure is liberating. Much like driving a car, when you know where you are going you can then make decisions about whether to listen to the radio, make conversation or engage in some creative thinking whilst knowing all the time that you are travelling on the right road.
There is one other point to note here and that is to remember that the most powerful communicators are always less interested in what they are saying and more interested in what their listeners are receiving. Communication is the response you get and anyone who is in the business of communicating, and who ignores this reality, will have a painfully hard path ahead of them. People who want to introduce spontaneity into their speaking must be especially aware of this. It may be exciting for you to talk from your expertise or your enthusiasm but in order to get your message across you will still need to be precise, unambiguous and clear.
This article was taken from the Illumine Think On Your Feet® guide. Take a look at and download your own copy of the guide here…
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Tags: Business Communication, Mind Mapping uses, Oct 2009 - Thinking (and speaking) On Your Feet, Professional Presentations (Training), Think On Your Feet® (Training), Verbal Communication
