Mastering Communication Skills - Speak like a superstar

It breaks my heart when I see so many people unable to reach their potential and be successful because they are unable to communicate both it in social settings or in professional settings. It takes a toll on their confidence, self-image and self-belief making the compromise to living a lesser life. Most of us confuse communication with the right accent, fluency with the language and the charisma of your personality. You are either born with it or not. However, I see it differently. I see it as a set of skills which can be easily learned. For me communication is about your story, script and delivery.

So, let's look at each component of the technique

Story

• If you are meeting someone for the first time be it socially or professionally what are the stories you want to tell others
• Build a repository of stories which would generate interest in you from others
• You need to have a list of stories which you need to be ready with
• Meeting someone for the first time and introducing yourself in a professional or social setting
• About you as a person
• About your schooling and education
• About your work
• A successful project you have delivered at work 
• About your family
• About your interests outside of work  
• The kind of food, music, sport, entertainment you like 
• Few jokes
• Build your own list of stories

Script

• Script out each of your stories by writing them out
• Edit your stories till they are crisp, interesting and convey exactly what you want to convey when you read it
• You could have multiple scripts for each story
• The long version vs the short version of the script
• The colorful version vs the formal version
• The script for each of the stories should be written out like a movie dialog

Delivery

• Now that the stories have been scripted you have to communicate them
• Take a video yourself delivering your script
• Deliver the script both standing and sitting
• Check for the following
• Do you sound confident
• Do you look confident
• Do your stories sound sharp or does it seem that you are rambling
• Deliver at least 100 takes of each story in a closed room
• After the 100th take practice with a friend you rely on
• Take feedback from your friend
• Change what is not working

 How does it work

A great working or social relationship is supported by the communication which takes place between the two parties. When you have bank of perfectly scripted stories which you can deliver with confidence it puts you on a stronger footing internally and helps you make a better (not perfect) impression on the other person. This is the start, repeat the process over a period of time and keep repeating your script and stories again and again your reliance on scripts will reduce and you will be able to confidently handle communications.

Please note I have not once talked about accent, fluency and charisma. You can improve your communication skills by breaking it up into small, simple, easy learn-able tasks.

This is what stars do in movies. They have story writers writing exciting stores. The stories are communicated via impressive dialogs written by the dialog writer. They then deliver it in front of the camera under the supervision of a director after giving hundreds of takes. After this kind of practice they become good at it. We only see that the they are good at it. We don't see how they become good at at it and what were they at the start of their careers.