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Peter Sorgenfrei shares three ways to improve how you communicate: write down what you plan to say beforehand, use pauses to break up your speech, and ask people to repeat back what they heard to make sure you're understood.
Peter Sorgenfrei shares three ways to improve how you communicate: write down what you plan to say beforehand, use pauses to break up your speech, and ask people to repeat back what they heard to make sure you're understood.
A lot of us struggle with communications from time to time, how we communicate in our business, how we communicate in our personal life. And there's a few simple things you can do to strengthen your communication. The first thing you can do is if you have to communicate something which is kind of difficult to formulate, if it's, if it's not clear in your mind, it certainly won't be clear when it comes out of your mouth. So the first thing you can do is to actually write it down for yourself. Sit down, pen and paper, or on a computer, or whatever you want to do, your phone, and type it out, write it out. What is it that you're going to say? Where is it you're going to put emphasis? And what is it that you hope the listener will get out of it? The second thing you can do is to break up your speech with pauses. It sounds funny, but if I start talking, and take a break once in a while, the people who I talk to will pay more attention to what I say. And it's actually easier for me and for my brain to keep up with what's coming out of my mouth. So that's the second thing you can do in order to be more effective with your communication. And the last thing you can do is an old trick, which is you can ask people after you told them something to play it back to you. So Susan, what did I just tell you? Can you please read it back to me so we are both aligned on what it was that I was communicating and how it was understood? And it may seem a little bit tedious, but you can tee it up or you can talk to people about it by saying, I'm practicing how I communicate verbally and I'd like you to help me become more effective by doing this exercise with me. Those were 3 short tips on how you can be more effective in your communications. I hope they help. If you have other topics you want me to talk about, leave a comment here where you're watching this video, reply to an email if that's how you got it, and I'd be happy to elaborate on any topic that you find interesting.
