Making the Connection: Strategies to Build Effective Personal Relationships (Collection) (36 page)

What
Am I Saying?

Speaking with credibility also involves the ability to make a point with clarity. When we organize our thoughts slightly in advance, we can gain the attention of the listener quickly, and hold their attention longer. Organization is actually pretty simple. When we begin speaking, it’s more effective when we

1. Begin with our main or key point.

2. Next, offer supporting points.

3. Finally, summarize our message in closing.

When we organize the content of our message in this simple way, we speak with greater credibility. If we know the main point we are making, and we know the points that offer support for that main point, we are less likely to ramble in our communications. Our listeners can immediately sense that we have a plan, and they will typically retain interest in hearing us out. When we are interrupted in the conversation, we can always return to our main point, and then pick up again on making supporting points about that.

After we have made our main point, then offered our supporting points, it is often effective to offer a quick summary of what we said. When a conversation has been interrupted and dialogue has occurred, this can be extremely critical to creating credible interactions. Through summarization, we leave the listener with a clear understanding of our message, and lay the groundwork for moving forward. We have spoken in a way that communicates intentional thought, organization, and helps the listener remember our message.

How
Do I Say It Effectively?

In reality, we can consider our listener or audience, provide a message that is concise and logical in content, and still blow it on the credibility scale. This occurs because of issues or problems with our manner of delivering the message. Delivery includes our tone of voice, body language, and other signals that either create or destroy credibility from the listener’s perspective. We are naturally more credible when others see us as being confident and comfortable when we speak. Attention to a few details can often remove barriers to credibility. Consider the following checklist in evaluating your own effectiveness on delivering messages.

Complete the following checklist, rating yourself with the following scale:

1 = Always

2 = Sometimes

3 = Rarely

4 = Never

Body Language:

_____ My posture is confident. My shoulders are back, and my head is up.

_____ I maintain a positive, relaxed facial expression.

_____ I use gestures to emphasize what I say.

_____ I avoid overuse of gestures or allowing my hands to become distracting when I speak.

_____ If nervous, I place my shaky or jittery hands where neither others nor I can see them. I keep them there until the jitters pass.

_____ I move around in an intentional manner if needed. I avoid pacing around or moving randomly.

Eye Contact:

_____ I maintain eye contact with the person I am speaking with.

_____ When speaking to groups, I move my eyes around the group, making eye contact with everyone who is involved. I make sure I have made an eye connection with someone before moving my eyes to the next person.

_____I speak to people when I read information aloud, not to the paper or document I’m reading from. I vary my eye contact from the document to the listeners.

Voice/Vocal Tone:

_____ I pace the words I speak intentionally. I work at speaking neither too quickly nor too slowly.

_____ I intentionally slow down my pace of speech when I am feeling nervous.

_____ I modify my vocal tone to accentuate the points I make. I emphasize excitement or other emotions in my voice so that the listener can quickly identify and relate to what I say.

_____ I am sensitive to the volume of my voice. I clarify that others can hear me and then adjust my volume of speaking accordingly.

The following is an example of how making some slight adjustments to her style of delivery impacted one young woman’s credibility factor.

“Lynn” works for a local university. She meets and speaks regularly with incoming college freshman through one-on-one conversations, as well as makes frequent presentations about the university’s services and programs during freshman orientation. Lynn is smart and very articulate. Even though she is in her mid-thirties, she looks much younger and could easily pass for a teenager. Most of us would consider youthful appearance a good thing, but it was actually working against Lynn. She had a difficult time gaining the attention of her student listeners. She knew intuitively that she was not perceived by these students with the degree of respect that was needed for her role with the university. Lynn decided to do something about it.

First, Lynn invited a friend whom she trusted to sit in on some of her student interviews and presentations. She asked her friend to give her feedback and ideas on how she might adjust her delivery style so that she could gain more attention and respect from the students. As a result of her friend’s insights as well as her own analysis, Lynn made a few adjustments, including the following:

•
Slower paced speech patterns—
Lynn deliberately slowed down. Most younger students were accustomed to speaking very rapidly. Lynn simply moved in the opposite direction with her pacing, which quickly set her aside as being “different.”

•
Controlled body language—
Lynn noticed that many students tend to move a lot, use hand movements frequently, shift in their seats, and generally demonstrate some degree of uncontrolled energy. Lynn adjusted her body movements. She moved more deliberately, and consciously used more erect posture. Lynn noticed a change in response from students almost instantly. They seemed to be more calm and attentive.

•
Sustained eye contact—
Lynn realized that she needed to capture the interest of students who were easily distracted and often looking everywhere but at her. She did this with unrelenting eye contact. In doing this, she quickly commanded the attention of both individuals and groups.

•
Image adjustment—
Although not directly connected with our verbal ability of presenting thoughts and ideas, our personal image is a part of what we communicate about ourselves. Lynn needed to shift her personal image just enough to have students perceive her as being more mature. She made some slight wardrobe adjustments, and chose clothing for work that sent a more serious message. She chose to dress like an adult instead of dressing as a young college student. That, along with these other adjustments, allowed Lynn to remove unwanted barriers to her personal credibility.

Lynn needed to gain more respect when she spoke. She needed to be perceived as a more mature adult to gain the respect from her student audience. Other situations might require that we lighten up just a bit and go the other direction to relate more effectively with our audience. If we first consider
who
we are speaking with, we can then make the decisions about what we say and how we say it more effectively.

Now, don’t panic! It is not a requirement that you be a polished, professional speaker to gain and increase your personal credibility factor. However, if you can take just a few seconds to think first about your listener, then the key point of your message, and focus on an effective delivery of that message, you can increase your own speaking skills while positively impacting your credibility factor at the same time. When you speak, others will want to listen!

Part III: Face the Truth and Begin Anew

•
Chapter 11
The Truth Shall Set You Free—When You Avoid Truth Traps!

•
Chapter 12
Credibility: I’ve Lost It—Can I Rebuild It?

•
Chapter 13
Rebuilding: One Step at a Time

Chapter Eleven. The Truth Shall Set You Free—When You Avoid Truth Traps!

We know inherently
that we lose trust in others when they are not truthful with us. We can also easily understand that others lose trust in us when we are less than truthful. Yet, if we are
honest,
we can agree that we all get caught up in some truth “traps” from time to time. Some might have a more devastating impact on our personal credibility factor than we are aware. If we can learn to identify those common truth traps and learn proactive strategies for avoiding them, we can protect our personal credibility factor to a greater degree.

Trap #1: The Little White Lie

Most people are familiar with this trap. It seems so innocent, actually. It happens when we tell someone something that we believe will be less likely to hurt their feelings, while at the same time trying to protect ourselves from being judged by that person. You might identify with some of the following examples:

• You are invited to dinner at the home of an acquaintance. Your last experience with dinner at this person’s house was a disaster. Suffice it to say that culinary arts are not a blessing at this household! Additionally, you find the spouse of this person very obnoxious. You don’t want to go, but you obviously must explain why without hurting feelings, right? So, you just invent another engagement for the evening, explaining that you already have dinner plans with your sister. You forget about it. Then, at the last minute, you decide to eat out with some friends at a local restaurant. Guess who you run into at that restaurant? You guessed it—your less-than-culinary-gifted acquaintance!
Trapped!

• A neighbor has decided to host a gathering to say good-bye to other neighbors who are moving out of town. You are exhausted because of your recent busy schedule. Although you had indicated that you would attend, you just can’t muster up the energy when the day comes. So, you cancel, telling the hostess that you have been feeling sick all day and, unfortunately, can’t attend. All’s well, right? Well, yes, except that when other neighbors attend, one friend shares several funny stories from your afternoon golf outing that same day. When the hostess says, “I’m so sorry Nick couldn’t
make it tonight, he said he’d been sick all day!” Your golfing buddy says, “Well, he seemed fine today on the golf course!”
Trapped!

• Your son and daughter-in-law give you a gift for your birthday. You already have the exact item, but don’t want to hurt their feelings and not show appreciation. So, you graciously say thanks and later inquire about where they purchased the gift, stating that you would like to possibly purchase another item that would match it. The next week, you take the gift back to the store to return it. While waiting in the return line holding the gift, your daughter-in-law walks in and walks up to see you! She notices you holding the gift she had given you and looks at you with a questioning expression.
Trapped!

Trap #2: The Need to Be “In the Know”

Another truth trap occurs when we are interacting with someone and they assume we know more about a topic than we actually do. When this happens, we sometimes find ourselves innocently right in the middle of some juicy gossip or information that we have not previously had access to. We can become trapped in this situation as a result of our failing to stop the conversation and clarify that this is new information and we have no prior knowledge.

Consider this example: The senior management group of your organization has been discussing various alternatives for decreasing expenses for the upcoming year. As part of the discussion, some departmental review of possible layoffs has occurred. You report to a member of senior management, but have had no access to this situation or information about anything being planned. Then, one of your boss’s peers approaches you to discuss “more details about planned cuts” in your department. You allow the conversation to continue, listening and responding in a way that suggests that you are already “in the know.” You certainly don’t want to appear dumb or uninformed. And, finding this out now could help you personally. Later, this same member of senior management reveals to your boss that you and he had a discussion about departmental cuts—and your boss quickly says, “He doesn’t know anything about these discussions about possible layoffs. We are only in the brainstorming mode at this point. How could he have known? And, he certainly never discussed what he knew with me, and I’m his boss!”
Trapped!