Face-To-Face Communication

 August 17, 2009

Interview with Stacey Hanke, author of Yes You Can!: Everything You Need From A to Z to Influence Others to Take Action

www.staceyhanke.com
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Mike Carruthers:
To be really persuasive or effective nothing beats face-to-face communication. But there are some important elements to good face-to-face communication. For example, eye contact or eye connection.

Stacey Hanke:
And to me eye connection is really connecting with your listeners. Only speak when you are connected with a pair of eyes.

Stacey Hanke, author of the book Yes You Can!…

And it sounds so elementary but I'll tell you I have not met anyone yet (when I first meet with them to work with them) who look directly at me constantly. Instead they're looking away. One of the typical examples is how many times that you see a presenter speaking to their power point slide?

You really dilute your message when you speak in long run-on sentences and use non-words like "umm" and "ah", so Stacey's advice?

Get to the point; speak in short, concise sentences. Pause; replace the non-words with pauses to give yourself a chance as the speaker to think on your feet.

There is no doubt that it's difficult to monitor yourself and catch yourself doing these things. For example…

We tend to fidget. We fidget with the pen, the paper, our fingers or we have our hands in our pockets (that's the classic). And what's so amazing (my training involves video taping)... and until this individual gets to see themselves on tape they don't realize they're doing it.

To hear the complete edited interview, click here.