Many of my school friends would remember me as a shy boy who was troubled with occasional stammering yet spoke very fast that they struggled to comprehend. They were greatly empathetic to me and did their best to breakdown my dialogues from the non-stop bombardment of words by decoding some familiar sounds they knew.
People who were not primed to understand me often asked me to pardon when I ended my talking. Sometimes it was after I narrated a story and all I heard back was a “eehhh.. ?”, clearly hinting me that everything I said has had vanished into thin air. This sometimes juiced me of the last trace of self-confidence I had in communication. Bach then, I had no friends outside my school and talked only at my school where I believed my tribe was.
It was my English teacher, Mrs. Leeza who gave me the first spark on what it took to be an effective communicator. It was after an extempore speech competition when I was in my 6th standard at school where I was pushed into it by my seniors for some participation points for our club. Till that day, I had always tactfully avoided any such talking on a stage but did not knew that coming. I still clearly remember the topic I was given “Monsoon is a time for joy and not diseases”.
Five minutes of preparation time went in a flash, and I was on the stage. Before fear completely took me over, I remember saying something on the diseases spread by mosquitoes and how we must protect ourselves from them. After I concluded, my teacher came to me and said, “the topic had very less to do with mosquitos and throwing of empty plastic bottles, just think”.
And I did and it took me days to realize that communication in any form- writing or speaking has a ‘purpose’ before anything else. That is, it is for someone and is on something. Even if what I said was for me to listen or what I wrote was for me to read, I clearly had someone at the receiver end.
Also, communication is not unloading all our baggage of words and emotions. Instead, it is an idea rocketed to a particular point to ensure devastation (the desired impact) at that place. The intended impact is the whole point – it could be anything from a simple “hi” to a call for a war. Without intent and the receiver, communication is a pointless arrow.
After this realization, my writing showed some progress. Mrs. Leeza encouraged me to write better and I aced in some essay writing competitions after that. Just two things and I was well off- keeping the reader and the desired intend in mind while writing.
Though I narrowed some of my major gaps in my written communication in the next few years, I kept my doors open for more. I experimented different writing styles to bring in tone and emotions into writing and ways to carve deeper into the reader’s heart.
MY REALISATION.
Many years passed and it was in my college days that a major epiphany struck me. I was getting better at speaking. I often took presentations and was no longer afraid to hit the stage.
My communications had a proper beginning that aroused curiosity, lightened the cognitive loads on listeners to comprehend and all speeches had a soft landing but after taking down the target. My spoken words did the job for me just like my written ones did.
People connected with me better and my relationships strengthened. People began to like me just as much as I liked them. Some even rooted for me even they were in the opposite end when we started. I was astonished by the power of words, and it was a delight to watch.
” I BECAME A GOOD SPEAKER JUST BY BEING A GOOD WRITER.”
HOW ANYONE COULD BE A BETTER AND EFFECTIVE SPEAKER IF THEY BEGIN BY WRITING?
First, we must first understand how ” ‘Speaking’ is a luxury in one snap”.
We have a lot of ways to be creative and effective when we are speaking but we are constrained by time. When we speak with someone, by the time they have ended their words, we are expected to bring up with a reply relevant to what we have just heard.
To make our reply to be effective, we have too many bottles to juggle with – the intend, fresh ideas, preferred tone, choice of words and more important- where to start and when to end.
Also, to propel our point further, we may have to come up with more sentences and hence, need to frame and shoot the next sentence by the time we finish the current one. Else, the listener could interrupt us by talking, and our idea might remain underdeveloped forever and so would never be taken seriously (lost the intend).
Basically, we have got too much to reflect in the background during dialogue deliveries when we engage in any meaningful oral communications.
WRITING IS A PRIVILEGE AND A GATEWAY TO THE BEST SPEAKER IN US.
Writing is a privileged way to communicate and could be leveraged to speak better. We could learn to juggle each bottle (the requisites of effective communications – the relevant ideas, their development, preferred tone, choice of words, aiding emotions, and the intended impact) … all one by one.
Throw the first and catch it… Throw the first and second together and catch them both, until we master to throw all bottles (requisites) and lit our show.
We have seen that the good writers are often great speakers. They have learnt each of the communication requisites one by one. If they could create and make readers feel the darkness, tension, helplessness or the warmth, or love in mere words, what could possibly stop them to express themselves to the full?
WRITING IS A LOW STAKE GAME AND HAS ROOM FOR CORRECTIONS.
The additional leverage writing offers is the opportunity to correct and comply with no time bounds.
Imagine something wrong slipped out of my mouth and that in the next dialogue, I apologized that I didn’t mean that at all. The thing is that we can’t erase the first dialogue without leaving the traces behind because we have already shipped it.
‘Shipping or sharing’ is shooting our communication to the receiver end (to the reader or the listener)’.
In speaking, shipping starts when the first sound breaks free from our mouth. But in writing, shipping/sharing comes only after the end of our writing. The moment we put down our pen.
That is, we have grip over the communication till the last movement to modify, correct, restructure, or even start again… and the reader will never know (You never know how many drafts I made before I published this).
The whole point is that, by this, we train out brain to assimilate all the requisites in both our written and oral communications one by one. With time, we get better and faster to a point where ‘effectiveness’ becomes our natural style.