*SIMPLE way to improve your communication skills

There is one very simple way to improve your speaking skills right away.   Although I must admit with my last few clients, I realize, and so do they, that practice is essentional and awareness too. 

I’ve received feed back that it feels “phony” at first.

And I remember that being the case with me also.   But now it’s just second nature.

WHAT IS IT?

SMILE!

A smile invites people in and as a speaker you want them to come on your journey.  A smile says you are not to be feared.  A smile says I like you, I’m hear for  you.

I admit that as a young person I was constantly told to smile and really resented it and felt it phony if I did it on purpose.  I later saw the effect it had on people when speaking and how it opened me up to them too.  So I gave myself the instruction to smile more often because inside I was saying “come join me, I have something interesting to offer you” and that the only real way to communicate this was to SMILE. 

It took some work but now it is part of who I am.  I enjoy myself.  I enjoy others.  I enjoy what I do.  I like my life and know I have something worthwhile to offer.  Did all that come first and the smile followed or did the smile come first and help to have all the rest come about?

POST SCRIPT — I’m adding this the day after I submitted this blog.  I want to say I just went on line and saw a speaker smile too much.  By that I mean it wasn’t sincere. 

The lesson is that you need a sentence, a mantra going on in your head that makes you smile not the other way around.   So I say to myself – “This is so exciting.  I know I can be of help to this client, these people, this situation.” when  speaking OR  “Wow, they don’t know how good they are.” OR and especially if it’s to the camera – “this is great, this is fun”.  But always something that makes you smile. 

In acting you LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU.  YOU DON’T MAKE IT HAPPEN.  It’s about reaction.