How to Speak More Clearly
Let's figure out how to speak concisely in this week’s episode of MasterTalk. Follow me on Instagram: @masteryourtalk
1. Find a space to gather your thoughts everyday (1:00).
The first step to clarity; especially if you’re getting started, is to find something that you care deeply about that you want everyone else to understand for personal reasons. So, for me, I’d like you to understand what I’m actually saying in these YouTube videos, so I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can best communicate my ideas in a way a 6 year old or a 60 year old can understand me and that comes with time, of course, but the idea here is the following. This is how to speak more clearly.
When you find that topic you’re the most excited about, because of the impact you can make by explaining it better, the next thing you want to do is store your thoughts on that topic in a way that makes sense to you. This could be in written form since all my videos are typed up on a document or having an online notepad to store your thoughts or maybe even a voice recorder if you prefer speaking them out, it all works, just always store it somewhere so you can always reference back to it because without that, it’s much harder to add or remove thoughts if you always need to keep remembering them word for word and you won’t make as much progress either.
2. Ask meaningful questions to the people that you think would care about your ideas. (2:32)
If you’re trying to bake cupcakes for people, the last person you want to talk to is someone who only wants to eat healthy food, even if you were the clearest person in the world, they just don’t want to hear from you, so refocus your attention on the 3 people you think would care and explain your thoughts on the paper or the voice recording to them and pay close attention to what they think. This is how to speak more clearly.
If they go eh, I don’t really understand what you mean. Instead of being discouraged by that, and that happens to me all the time, follow up with a question like what part of this did you understand and what parts didn’t you and why?
Now, you’re getting a lot closer to the truth on what’s working in your communication and what’s not working. If they respond by saying, well actually I understood this part about the company mission, but not this one, it’s super unclear, you know exactly what to focus on. This is how to speak more clearly.
3. Treat your ability to speak clearly like a garden. (5:09)
If you don’t water the plants in your garden consistently, they won’t grow in the same way that if you don’t constantly challenge yourself to explain your thoughts better and better overtime, you’ll eventually lose that awesome feeling of communicating something in a way that gets people excited in the same way that when you pick fruits or vegetables from a garden you’ve been working on for many months, it feels so much better. This is how to speak more clearly.
This analogy applies for everything, if you have an accent, ask the people that care about your ideas about the words they don’t understand and ask them to help you pronounce them, they’ll gladly help you because they care about what you have to say and just practice those words until it’s perfect because you’re not doing it so that you can speak clearly, you’re doing it so that they can take action on what you’re saying.
As always, if you enjoyed this week’s episode of MasterTalk, be sure to SMASH that LIKE button and SUBSCRIBE to the YouTube channel to see more videos like this and if you know one person that’s having trouble speaking more clearly, send them this video so that they’ll be one step closer to being as transparent as glass. This is how to speak more clearly.
For business or one-on-one public speaking coaching inquiries, you can reach me at [email protected].
Special thanks to Maison Leporem for letting me use the space.
https://maisonleporem.com/