The Lost Art of Active Listening

Time is precious, so it pays to hook the audience with the main idea and give them a strong reason to continue listening. Your colleagues may be already overwhelmed with deadlines and demands made by others and will appreciate your clarity and brevity.

Delivering a new ide...

When we use words and phrases like:

• ‘I Think..’
• ‘This is just a suggestion/idea, but..’
• ‘Like, you know..’...

... we end up downplaying our own ideas. We need to be more assertive and speak with conviction.

Your volume is not as important as you think and even speaking in a relatively quiet voice has a hypnotic effect on the listener.

People also have to stop talking to be able to listen to your quiet voice, and it is a proven fact that a whisper gets more ears than a shout....

Before pitching an idea, practice in front of a mirror or record your voice to help you iron out any problems beforehand.

Take the help of a colleague and anticipate what kind of reactions and questions the listeners may have.

Be attentive of how you sit or stand, and avoid slouching, crossing your arms or looking here and there.

Use hand gestures and project a confident, positive image. You can also try to mirror the body language of the person you are talking to, to build trust.

By speaking clearly and maintaining eye contact, we can use words to hypnotize the audience.

Even our pauses in between our words can be used to gather our thoughts and make the listeners reflect on what you have just said.

In the corporate world, employees need to communicate effectively for pitching ideas, and even to get one’s point across in meetings.

This is an art in which one has to be intentional and pay a good amount of attention to one’s communication. One cannot be a rambler or ove...

People can recognize confidence in the voice of others, as they can infer nervousness. One can practice breathing exercises and come into the right frame of mind, while making it quieter and more focused.

Believe in yourself and it will show in your speech.