Soooo lately, I’ve been watching a lot of Videos of David JP Phillips about public speaking and I can just recommend you do the same. I am not a public speaker in common sense, but also isn’t everybody a public speaker?
My goal with this is to raise awareness about this topic and kinda an hommage to David because he is such an inspiring person.
Public speaking in your daily life
The cool thing about public speaking and the skills that go along with it can be used in your daily life! They just make you more authentic and instead of calling it public speaking, the essence of those skills is communication. Communication is one of the most important things as a human being. Without communication humanity wouldn’t have come this far and if you think about it a lot of problems can be avoided by great communication.
Now let’s think of some examples how great communication skills can help you in your daily life. First let’s think of the work environment: No matter what job you have (even if it is “just” sitting in front of the PC)… You will have to communicate somehow. Let’s say you are a waiter: Who do you think will get more tips? A waiter who is okay in communication or who is great in communication? Let’s say you are a programmer: you might think no communication is needed there. Wrong: maybe you have to explain complex ideas to other programmer friends or you want to convince your boss off a better technical solution. No matter how good you are in programming, communication is the skill that will affect you more in these situations. Even when you are looking for a new job, communication is where it’s at! You can be the smartest person on earth, but if you are not able to communicate your thoughts and ideas you won’t get far.
Also if you think about your personal life: when do you start fighting with friends are people close to you? When there is not enough communication and misunderstandings are created. Communicating emotions isn’t easy, but it’s important.
To me communication is very important in general, I don’t differentiate between work or personal life.
Other forms of communication
If I say “communication” most think of talking / speaking. But there are lot’s of other forms of communication! Like writing an e-mail, having a phone call, presenting something with PowerPoint. Each one of those examples is a different way of communicating and has different aspects you can influence.
At my job I do a lot of presentations internally and externally for customers and I watched the following video of David JP Phillips which has a lot of GREAT inputs! If you have to make presentations for school, university or work I highly suggest you watch the video 🙂
How to improve communication
Well, first of all, you have to start being aware of yourself the way you communicate and you have to want to improve. But you might want to know what are some specific skills I can work on? David did a study and defined 110 specific communication skills and how and when to use them. It’s subtle things like not talking too fast, talking with a certain volume, maybe lower your voice… Then, of course, you also communicate with your posture with your hands and much more.
If you are really interested in improving watch some videos of David where he analyses other people and tries to learn from that!
He also has an online course (which is quite expensive), but if you are a professional I can tell you it is worth it!
Storytelling is also a skill for public speaking
Before I go into story telling: Communication is not a talent it can be improved! You can work on it. Sure for other people it’s easier to communicate, but because they worked on it.
About story telling: I want to share one last video of David that I found very interesting. We are humans right? Why do we like movies so much? We know it’s “fake”, we know it’s not real… but we are fascinated by the stories. Story telling is very important in this world, because without a story we are boring 😉
Communication is essential and I am doing my best to get better at it. Sometimes I can communicate great and other times I do a bad job at it. For some reason, it’s harder for me to communicate with my wife or family than to communicate at work. I’m trying to be better at it and also be more empathic and understand my wife better. I need to understand when I should offer solutions (I always try to do this) and when I should just listen to what she says and be there for her.
If we would get better at communicating so many of our troubles would just vanish away.
I like that you are being open about it! For me, it is also easier in the work environment. And I believe the big difference is, that there are maybe fewer emotions attached to it. And when emotions are attached, sometimes communication can become difficult. But listening is definitely one of the most important skills to have. And I am sure that if you care about someone, you will try to listen and try to understand the person. Understanding doesn’t mean you agree, but just the effort of willing to understand is a very important piece. And also the solution-driven thing can relate to that too. And that’s the thing, in personal relationships but also business-wise… sometimes it’s not about solving something, but just having someone that listens and understands you.
I like that you pointed out that you need to be aware of your communication style before you can learn and improve. I think a lot of people don’t realize the way they are coming across with their body language and tone. Thanks for the video recs – he sounds like an inspiring person, and I agree that storytelling is essential in public speaking.
Exactly, and that’s generally in life… Before you can actively change something, you have to be aware of it! David is such an inspiring person to me, I would definitely recommend to follow him 🙂 He can be found on YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn.