Improve Your Communication Skills

If the thought of speaking in front of an audience sends you into a cold sweat, then this Inc.com guide is for you. Communication experts and CEOs share their strategies for smooth communications with employees, making winning presentations to investors, writing and delivering speeches that get standing ovations, and much more.

Better Communication with Employees and Peers

A Crash Course in Communication: Need a quick refresher on effective interpersonal interaction? Two communication experts offer 12 steps to smoother conversations.

Lost in Translation: Thanks to e-mail, BlackBerrys, and text messaging, the face-to-face encounter is becoming a dying art. Here's why you should revive it.

The Power of Listening: How does an old-line manufacturer in a stagnant industry manage to grow 25% a year for 10 years? By taking its employees seriously.

Do as I Say: Quick Tips for Masterful Communication: Tired of doing all the talking and not having your message get through to your staff? Try these suggestions to improve your leadership communication skills.

Just Listen to Yourself: Tape yourself to better understand your communications style.

Powerful Questions Can Have a Powerful Effect: Questions can be one of the most effective communication tools available to us. Do you use questions enough in your day-to-day interactions?

When Do You Lie? Strategies For More Authentic, Respectful Communication: Lies come in all shapes, sizes and colors. (Ever heard of flat-out, teensy or white lies?) This article focuses on when it's appropriate, if at all, to lie.

10 Tips for Communicating Change: Transition is inevitable, but exactly what you say and how you say it can make a major impact on how change is handled in your company.

The 4-1-1 On Constructive Criticism: Being critical is easy, and offering criticism seems easier still. Yet constructive criticism - - the more refined and effective brand of critical feedback - - is like an art.

Lost in the Translation: Tips on communicating with employees who don't speak English.

Talk Targets: Becoming a Magnet: In this excerpt from How to Work a Room: The Ultimate Guide to Savvy Socializing in Person and Online learn tips for becoming a talk target -- someone with whom it is easy to make conversation.

Presentations and Pitches

Powerful Presentations: Small-business columnist Rhonda Abrams shares nine strategies for giving powerful presentations.

Reinventing the PowerPoint: New tech tools to liven your tired old PowerPoint presentations--and give your online marketing efforts a boost.

Perfecting Your Pitch: Check out these tips from entrepreneurs and business experts on creating pitches that can help you raise capital.

More Power Than Point: PowerPoint (or "presentation software") has become the lingua franca of American business. It's also become the problem with American business.

Best of the Net: Power Brokers: When it comes to presentation software, most users agree there's one clear standard. We've found some Web-based resources to help you make your point.

Captivate Audiences with Powerful Presentations: Do you want your speeches to pack a punch? Professional speaker and speech consultant Patricia Fripp offers ideas on humor, movement, and vocal techniques.

Short and Sweet: Mastering Quick Presentations: Called on to make a brief speech? Professional speaker and speech coach Patricia Fripp offers tips for saying what you want, short and sweet.

Present Before You Propose: Improve your presentation by saving handouts until the end.

Finding the Perfect Pitch: Watch three rookies gear up for the investor presentation of a lifetime.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Presenters: Entrepreneurs learn pretty quickly that making a verbal pitch to investors is very different from submitting a written business plan. Here are seven good practices gleaned from a venture-capital boot camp.

Elements of a Winning Pitch: A presentation to potential investors in your business -- to family, friends, or angels -- should include most of these elements.

Meetings

Escape From Meeting Hell: It's time for another soul-sapping, oxygen-depriving, time-wasting, mind-numbing company meeting. Or is it? We offer 15 clever solutions to the problems with most meetings.

Meetings Go Virtual: Web conferencing and other collaboration technologies -- tools that help people work with one another through their computers -- have become more available and affordable. This is a boon for smaller companies whose only previous collaboration option was to gather workers in a room with coffee, donuts and a whiteboard.

Meetings 101: Was That a Good Meeting, or a Bad One?: Five simple factors that help ensure every meeting is a good meeting.

Tools for Boosting Communication Effectiveness: Tips on how to boost the effectiveness of communication in meetings, during change initiatives, and in interviews.

How can we make our meetings more effective and educational?: Keith Lamb shares some advice on getting the most out of your meetings.

Cure the Sick-Meeting Ills: Ineffective meetings may be wasting time and lowering morale. Two communication experts offer seven strategies for dramatically improving your meetings.

We've Got to Start Meeting Like This: A look at companies that hold unique meetings for developing products, building camaraderie, generating ideas, and reviewing employees' needs and achievements.

Speech Writing and Delivery

Writing and Organizing a Winning Speech: Public speaker and speech consultant Patricia Fripp suggests following one of two basic outlines for your speech. She also offers speechwriting tips.

Polishing and Rehearsing for a Perfect Presentation: You've written a speech, but there's still work to do before delivering it. Patricia Fripp gives six suggestions for making sure your speech hits home along with several ideas on effective rehearsing.

Deliver a Stellar Speech: Powerful presentations happen when you check out the room in advance and work to connect with the audience when talking. Patricia Fripp offers ideas for ensuring that what you say is a smashing success.

No More Pre-Speech Jitters: From virtual reality therapy to positive visualization, we've got relaxation techniques to help offset your fears of public speaking.

Free Speech: Preparing for a big speech? Resources on the Web can help.

The Written Word

Work through Writer's Block: Need help working through some written projects? Two communication experts offer eight tips for clear and effective writing.

Writing Well on the Web: Hardly anybody really likes reading online. No surprise there, since so many websites are so poorly written. Here are easy ways to make your Web words more reader-friendly.

Polish Your Prose: Poor grammar and punctuation in proposals and reports could cost you business.

Troubleshooting

Are You Assertive or Aggressive?: Assertiveness is the skill that tops the list for success or failure in any workplace situation. Learn how to be more assertive -- not aggressive -- and apply it to your interactions.

Get Your Point Across without Being Rude: Is your communication style a little rough around the edges? Here are five techniques for saying what you mean without making enemies in the process.

Communicating When People Leave You Speechless: Improved communication is a nice idea, but can it work in the real world? Take a look at these real-life business issues and suggestions for better communication that may lead to better business.

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT SKILLS

Personality development

How to Win Friends and Influence People

( Guidelines from Dale Carnegie's " How to win friends and influence people" )

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

Don't criticize, condemn or complain.
Give honest and sincere appreciation.
Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six ways to make people like you

Become genuinely interested in other people.
Smile.
Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Win people to your way of thinking

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."
If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
Begin in a friendly way.
Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately.
Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
Appeal to the nobler motives.
Dramatize your ideas.
Throw down a challenge.

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

A leader's job often includes changing your people's attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Let the other person save face.
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise."
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

( Courtesy: http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/win-friends.html )

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

( Guidelines from Dale Carnegie's "How to stop worrying and start living" )

Fundamental facts you should know about worry

If you want to avoid worry, do what Sir William Osler did: Live in "day-tight compartments." Don't stew about the futures. Just live each day u ntil bedtime.
The next time Trouble--with a Capital T--backs you up in a corner, try the magic formula of Willis H. Carrier:
1. Ask yourself, "What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can't solve my problem?
2. Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst--if necessary.
3. Then calmly try to improve upon the worst--which you have already mentally agreed to accept.
Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health. "Those who do not know how to fight worry die young."

Basic techniques in analyzing worry

Get the facts. Remember that Dean Hawkes of Columbia University said that "half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision."
After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision.
Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision--and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.
When you, or any of your associates, are tempted to worry about a problem, write out and answer the following questions:
1. What is the problem?
2. What is the cause of the problem?
3. What are all possible solutions?
4. What is the best solution?

How to break the worry habit before it breaks you

Crowd worry out of your mind by keeping busy. Plenty of action is one of the best therapies ever devised for curing "wibber gibbers."
Don't fuss about trifles. Don't permit little things--the mere termites of life--to ruin your happines.
Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries. Ask yourself: "What are the odds against this thing's happening at all?"
Co-operate with the inevitable. If you know a circumstance is beyond your power to change or revise, say to yourself: "It is so; it cannot be otherwise."
Put a "stop-less" order on your worries. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth--and refuse to give it anymore.
Let the past bury its dead. Don't saw sawdust.

Seven ways to cultivate a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness

Let's fill our minds with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope, for "our life is what our thoughts make it."
Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.
1. Instead of worrying about ingratitude, let's expect it. Let's remember that Jesus healed ten lepers in one day--and only one thanked Him. Why should we expect more gratitude than Jesus got?
2. Let's remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude--but to give for the joy of giving.
3. Let's remember that gratitude is a "cultivated" trait; so if we want our children to be grateful, we must train them to be grateful.
Count your blessings--not your troubles!
Let's not imitate others. Let's find ourselves and be ourselves, for "envy is ignorance" and "imitation is suicide."
When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade.
Let's forget our own unhappiness--by trying to create a little happiness for others. "When you are good to others, you are best to yourself."

The perfect way to conquer worry

Prayer

How to keep from worrying about criticism

Unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. It often means that you have aroused jealousy and envy. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.
Do the very best you can; and then put up your old umbrella and keep the rain of criticism from running down the back of your neck.
Let's keep a record of the fool things we have done and criticize ourselves. Since we can't hope to be perfect, let's do what E.H. Little did: let's ask for unbiased, helpful, constructive criticism.

Six ways to prevent fatigue and worry and keep your energy and spirits high

Rest before you get tired.
Learn to relax at your work.
Learn to relax at home.
Apply these four good workings habits:
1. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand.
2. Do things in the order of their importance.
3. When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts to make a decision.
4. Learn to organize, deputize, and supervise.
To prevent worry and fatigue, put enthusiasm into your work.
Remember, no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. It is worrying about insomnia that does the damage--not the insomnia.

( Courtesy: http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/stop-worry.html )

The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking

( Guidelines from Dorothy Carnegie's book based on Dale Carnegie's "Public speaking and influencing men in business" )

Fundamentals of Effective Speaking

1. Acquiring the Basic Skills

Take heart from the experience of others
Keep your goal before you
Predetermine your mind to success
Seize every opportunity to practice

2. Developing Confidence

Get the facts about fear of speaking in public
Prepare in the proper way
Predetermine your mind to success
Act confident

3. Speaking Effectively the Quick and Easy Way

Speaking about something you have earned the right to talk about through experience or study
Be sure you are excited about your subject
Be eager to share your talk with your listeners

Speech, Speaker, and Audience

4. Earning the Right to Talk

Limit your subject
Develop reserve power
Fill your talk with illustrations and examples
Use concrete, familiar words that create pictures

5. Vitalizing the Talk

Choose subjects you are earnest about
Relive the Feelings you have about your topic
Act in earnest

6. Sharing the Talk with the Audience

Talk in terms of your listeners' interests
Give honest, sincere appreciation
Identify yourself with the audience
Make your audience a partner in your talk
Play yourself down

The Purpose of Prepared and Impromptu Talks

7. Making the Short Talk to Get Action

Give your example, an incident from your life
State your point, what you want the audience to do
Give the reason or benefit the audience may expect

8. Making the Talk to Inform

Restrict your subject to fit the time at your disposal
Arrange your ideas in sequence
Enumerate your points as you make them
Compare the strange with the familiar
Use visual aids

9. Making the Talk to Convince

Win confidence by deserving it
Get a Yes-response
Speakin with contagious enthusiasm
Show respect and affection for your audience
Begin in a friendly way

10. Making Impromptu Talks

Practice impromptu speaking
Be mentally ready to speak impromptu
Get into an example immediately
Speak with animation and force
Use the principle of the Here and the Now
Don't talk impromptu--Give an impromptu talk

The Art of Communicating

11. Delivering the Talk

Crash through your shell of self-consciousness
Don't try to imitate others--Be yourself
Converse with your audience
Put your heart into your speaking
Practice making your voice strong and flexible

The Challenge of Effective Speaking

12. Introducing Speakers, Presenting and Accepting Awards

Thoroughly prepare what you are going to say
Follow the T-I-S Formula
Be enthusiastic
Thoroughly prepare the talk of presentation
Express your sincere feelings in the talk of acceptance

13. Organizing the Longer Talk

Get attention immediately
Avoid getting unfavorable attention
Support your main ideas
Appeal for action

14. Applying What You Have Learned

Use specific detail in everyday conversation
Use effective speaking techniques in your job
Seek Opportunities to speak in public
You must persist
Keep the certainty of reward before you

( Courtesy: http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/easy-speaking.html )

Don't Grow Old - Grow Up!

( Guidelines from Dorothy Carnegie's book )

The first step toward maturity - Responsibility

Don't kick the Chair. Be willing to account for yourself; don't blame others.
Damn the Handicaps! - Full Speed Ahead. Don't make a handicap an excuse for failure.
Five Ways to Ditch Disaster:
1. Accept the inevitable; give time a chance.
2. Take action against trouble.
3. Concentrate on helping others.
4. Use all of life while you have it.
5. Count your blessings.<

Action is for adults

Belief is the Basis for Action. Know what you believe and act accordingly.
Analyze Before You Act.
Two Wonderful Words that Changed a Life. When the time for action arrives, don't hesitate.

Three great rules for mental health: Know yourself, Like yourself, Be yourself

There's Only One Like You Learn to know yourself by:
1. Cultivating moments of solitude.
2. Breaking through the habit barrier.
3. Developing excitement and enthusiasm.
Conformity: Refuge of the Frightened. Be yourself by developing your own convictions and standards; then have the courage to live with them.
Why is a Bore? Develop inner resources to avoid boring yourself and others.
The Maturing Mind: Adventure in Adult Living. Develop your mind through intellectual activity.

Marriage is for grownups

How to Get Along with Women. Here are seven ways:
1. Give her appreciation.
2. Be generous and considerate.
3. Keep yourself attractive.
4. Understand a woman's work.
5. Be dependable.
6. Share her interests.
7. Love her.
Father Come Home. Children need fathers too.
How to Get Along with Men. Here are seven ways:
1. Be good-natured.
2. Be a good companion.
3. Be a good listener.
4. Be adaptable.
5. Be efficient, not officious.
6. Be yourself.
7. Be glad you're a woman.
The Rediscovery of Love. We must develop a more mature concept of love.

Maturity and making friends

Loneliness: The Great American Disease.
People are Wonderful. Learn to appreciate them.
Why Should People Like You? They will like you if you like them and develop qualities of warmth that attract others.

How old are you?

If You're Afraid of Growing Old, Read This. Learn some of the facts about aging.
How to Live to be 100 and Like it. To live longer, develop attitudes that promote health of mind.
Don't Let the Rocking Chair Get You. Work as long as you can.

Maturity of spirit

The Court of Last Appeal. When all else fails, try God.
The Food of the Spirit. Our spirit is nourished through prayer.

( Courtesy: http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/grow-up.html )

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