The Increasing Importance of Public Speaking for Your Career and Business
It has always been important for people who want to establish their authority and build their presence to speak well in public. These days it is also important for your career as you seek to develop a personal brand that you can take with you into a competitive marketplace.
The challenges of speaking one-to-many to a varied audience, whether you are speaking from a stage, in a group presentation or board meeting, via webinar, podcast, or other media are quite different from those encountered when speaking or selling one-to-one with a single person. As a business-owner or employee when you master this art you can leap-frog over your competitors and peers and stand out from the crowd because of your ability to communicate effectively and influence your audience.
The ability to speak effectively in public is probably the most important skill you can develop, and it is one of the primary indicators of success in any field. That is why delivering presentations is part of most high school and university courses, but it is interesting to observe the lengths to which many people will go to avoid developing this skill. Many graduates of the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) courses can trace the growth of their income and prestige directly to the skills they learn during their studies even if they have already participated in Toast Masters® or other public speaking programs.
Using NLP to Develop Your Personal Brand
As we move out of the industrial age of large corporations and faceless institutions, we move into an environment where your personal brand is just as important as your qualifications and work experience. The ability to speak and communicate in a one-to-many context is a critical part of establishing this brand.
Many people who are excellent at establishing rapport and building their authority in small group and one-to-one live meetings struggle to establish the same sense of connection and presence when they speak to large groups or when they are presenting remotely via podcast or webinar. This dangerously erodes their influence and opportunities for advancement.
Yes, your appearance and voice have something to do with your ability to hold the attention of a group, but the essential difference between an average speaker or salesman in a group situation and an excellent one is their ability to engage people from different walks of life, each possessing different modes of thinking, and different learning and representational styles and connect with them quickly and easily. The exciting thing is that these skills can be learned!
Are You Missing Out on 75% of Your Audience’s Attention?
Imagine if someone walked up to you and started speaking in a foreign language. You would probably become nervous and anxious and find it difficult to understand them even if they switched quickly into English. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) teaches that we all have a primary representational system in which it is easiest to hear and connect with others. As we become aware of these representational systems and skilled at using them, we are able to
connect far more quickly and easily with people with different communication preferences and styles even in a group setting.
We all have our own primary representational system which could be:
- Visual (based on the sense of sight);
- Auditory (based on the sense of hearing);
- Kinaesthetic (based on the sense of feeling and sensation); or
- Auditory-digital (based on self-talk);
and we all respond most easily when people address us in our own preferred pattern. You can see how this presents a challenge when you are speaking to a large audience. Your message may resonate with a small portion of your audience yet leave the majority unmoved even though your solution is actually perfect for them and they are your ideal target market.
Effortlessly Connecting One-to-Many by Using NLP Representational Systems
If you consider that in any presentation you deliver you may only be communicating with one-quarter of your audience, leaving the other three-quarters free to tune out (if they are attending a live presentation) or to close the window (if they are to attending via webinar or podcast) then you can easily realisz how much difference it would make if you were able to attract and hold the attention of that other 75% as well.
Understanding the nuances of the language, tonality, and rhythm of each of the primary NLP Representational Systems helps you to appeal to your entire audience equally whether they are seated in an auditorium or attending remotely. This means that you can expect any of them who fall into your target market to respond positively to your message and take the action you would like them to take.
Easy to Learn, Hard to Master
Like most things in life, it’s not hard to learn the basics of the NLP Representational Systems and start using them to accelerate your business or career trajectory. You are already unconsciously using at least one of these four primary representational systems in your presentations so why not start on the route to greater mastery and success, but learning how to use the other three primary representational systems more effectively and attract the other 75% of your audiences as well?
Whether you are trying to present a business message, sell more of your products or services, develop influence, or present an idea or message which you are passionate about, NLP will teach you how to do this more effectively.
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