OUR ITEMS

Public speaking is not a weightlifting competition.

For years I have been trying to understand what makes someone charismatic, what makes a speech impactful, what makes a speaker that we want to follow.

Most of the people I interview or who come to see us want to “know how to convey a message”, “be more impactful”, “strengthen their charisma”, a thousand and one ways of expressing this almost universal desire to stand out, to stand out from the crowd and allow his words, his ideas, to be heard.

The desire is very well expressed most of the time by everyone. Who hasn't felt the frustration of not being able to say what we wanted or declining a given opportunity to speak?

For our communication experts the road map seems clear and yet isn't this individual desire to do better guiding us down the wrong path?

The analogies would be numerous and easy to find in sport which invite us to take care of our backhand to win more matches in tennis, or to gain muscle mass to lift more weight.

Unfortunately public speaking is not a weightlifting contest where strength and well-mastered technique determine who wins.

It is not the clearest speaker in his speech who conveys the most emotion, it is not the most regular speaker in his delivery who gains support, nor the most structured communication which pushes to action.

Technique is important but it cannot be the origin of the approach, technique is not sufficient in itself, it will always prevent us from becoming authentic and memorable communicators.

The issue seems elsewhere to us, perhaps it is our relationship with the world that we need to know how to evolve in order to work on our impact?

No longer wanting to impose our mark on the world through a well-mastered technique (with the vanity that we know of such a project), but rather to bring about a revolution in our approach.

Put the other at the center of our communication, the other as the reason for our communication, as the purpose.

The other is the key, it must become the starting point from which the doors of charisma, impact and commitment will open.

Finally, to become a better communicator, and it's a paradox, you have to know how to forget yourself a little, forget for a while the message you want to convey and start from the other.

In practice there are several paths that we develop in our coaching to make this “revolution”.

For example, you can start each day like me, by looking at your calendar of meetings and appointments and asking yourself, who will be there, what is at stake, what is the real need of my interlocutors?

This approach that I have been developing in several forms for years has the immense advantage of allowing you to be ready, to have anticipated things and to be able to adapt your speech and your words to the situation and not to try to bend the situation to your will.

Very often this will give you the entry point for your intervention or your communication, and basically you will show empathy by responding to an essential need for the other.