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If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone and they couldn’t understand you, you know what it feels like to not speak articulately. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re always speaking inarticulately, but we all mumble and fumble our words from time.
I get a lot of questions from people about articulation and how to speak more articulately. It’s actually a lot easier than you think to speak more clearly so that others can better understand you. Here are some of tips about improving your articulation that I teach in my classes.
Speak slowly
read full story of "Three Quick Ways to Improve Your Speech Articulation"
Over the past fifteen or so years, I’ve interviewed probably hundreds of job applicants. Some have been in person while others have been phone screens to weed out potential duds. I’ve even volunteered to help friends by mocking interviewing them. If there’s one thing that truly astounded me in each of these job interview situations, it was how many of these people barely did any preparation (and some did none at all).
read full story of "Five Things You Must Do to Prepare for a Job Interview"
There is no faster way to scare the living daylights out of someone then telling them that they have to give a speech. For extra points, you can tell them that they’ll be speaking to a large audience – which depending on the person could mean more than 50 or more than 1000 attendees. Why do people associate fear to speaking? What’s the big difference between a speech and a conversation?
If there’s one thing we can learn from our politicians, it’s that you should always be on your best behavior because someone is always watching – especially now since most people carry cell phones that capable of taking still pictures and many can even capture high definition video. To spin that around and look on the bright side, that also means that you have a lot more opportunities than you often realize.
I figured this would be a great topic to kick off Super Bowl week. I once heard about a company that had multiple openings for similar positions and brought all of their candidates in for a day of interviewing at the same time. They had games and activities that the candidates worked on together – one such activity was creating a new cheer for the company. What was interesting is that some of the candidates figured that coming up with the best cheer, or at a least a cheer better than everyone else’s, would land them the job. Turns out it didn’t.
Interviews where all of the candidates are brought in together can be tricky – more so than even the dreaded “team interview“. On one hand, you at least know who you’re up against for the opening. But on the other, the way you present yourself and act around the other candidates says more about you than you realize. I once went on one such interview and found it to be weird. First, seven of us were all brought in to take a standardized test. It felt like I was taking the SATs all over again. A week later, we were all invited back to have lunch with the IT management team –all together.
Have you ever let an opportunity pass you by because the timing was never right? Is there something that you wish you could do but it just never seems like the right time? Hesitation is one of those things can either prevent us from making a decision that wasn’t well thought out or allow us to procrastinate our dreams away.
There’s a sales tactic related to timing that many people use to pressure potential buyers into purchase something they’re hesitant on. They say things such as:
A while back, I read “How to Sell Anything to Anybody