Effective Spoken Communication

Developing effective communication skills, particularly in professional settings, can broaden your impact and increase performance significantly. Smart People Podcast - a place to hear great conversations with leading professionals in various industries - interviews communications expert Christine Clapp in Episode 96 and 165. Clapp is the co-author of Presenting at Work: A Guide to Public Speaking in Professional Contexts, an excellent resource loaded with actionable advice, real-world examples, and a suite of useful tools to develop communication skills for presentations, interviews, and meetings. The interview covers crucial topics from the book, like the most powerful ways to persuade others through communication and common mistakes amateur speakers/presenters make. The weekly podcast, The Public Speaker by Quick and Dirty Tips, focuses on short, practical tips for improving your communication and public speaking skills. Episodes range from “6 Tips to Calm Your Nerves Before Speaking” to “How to Add Humour To Talks” to “The Elevator Pitch - Presenting Ideas Quickly.”

In HBR’s article Effective Communication Begins with a First Impression, JD Schramm (a communications professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business), shares how to capture attention from the get-go, whether it’s writing a powerful subject line in an email or giving a formal presentation to hundreds of strangers. For more from Harvard Business Review, their collection 10 Must-Reads on Effective Communication selects the most important and well-received articles from their archive. Included is the The Power Of Talk by Deborah Tannen, who discusses the importance of understanding different linguistic styles of individuals in the workplace and responding flexibly to various styles of interaction. Nick Morgan’s How To Become An Authentic Speaker explains why even sincere speeches often come across as contrived, and provides a four-step process to help you tap into the four basic impulses underlying your speech and change unnatural body language.

Finally, to address the widespread fears and anxieties surrounding public speaking: 5 Tips for Reducing Public Speaking Nervousness from Psychology Today blog Communication Success, and Lifehacker’s How to Calm Your Nerves Before Making a Terrifying Speech, which sums up techniques from several public speaking experts.