Writers and others
sometimes have to pitch or present their ideas, so what’s the secret of
doing that effectively? Dr Nick Morgan has written a book called “Trust Me,” in
which he reveals his four-step communication process. In an interview on the Personal Branding blog, he summarized the process:
“You first have to get your body language to be open. You do this by focusing on your emotions, and imagining a scenario where you would be open — say, talking to your spouse, your partner, or a close friend — and then recapturing that body language for your speech. That’s step one. Step two is to connect to the audience. Once again, you do this by forming the intent to connect. You might imagine, for example, that your spouse is distracted and not hearing you. What would you do to get his or her attention? You might move closer, raise your voice, establish eye contact, even touch the other person on the arm. All of those gestures and actions, used appropriately, will help you connect. Third, you focus on the emotional attitude you have toward the content. And fourth, you focus on the audience — how it is receiving your material.”
As with everything, practice is important, and he suggests three different ways to practice:
“
What I tell clients is to practice your speech at
least 3 times, the first time focusing on being open,
the second time on being connected, and the third time on your emotional
connection to the material. Then, when you’re ready to deliver it, you should
have both the content and the body language down well enough to be able to pay
attention with, say, 10 % of your brain, to the audience. Having a speaker that
is capable of truly paying attention to the audience is very charismatic for
that audience.”
(Presenting your ideas is a topic I cover more fully in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available online and in book shops.)
