Oral Communication Skills

Do you wish to be the rock-star of the boardroom and floor your colleagues, customers, investors and employees? If the answer to that question is an emphatic yes, then before your pitch your ideas on PowerPoint presentations next time, just brush up your oral communication skills and get your audience hooked. If you have ever orchestrated a boardroom meeting or made a presentation before, you probably know how communication can notch up or botch up your chances. It doesn’t really matter if you are speaking to a professional audience or a layman, unless you know to articulate your feelings, opinions, ideas and thoughts with a bang, your effort are quite futile. Here comes in the need for having polished oral communication skills. To speak articulately as well as to enunciate correctly is a quality that is sadly overlooked by many when communicating orally. Understand that having a heavy accent and using all the verbose and hi-tech jargons won’t get you anywhere unless your audience gets a grip of every word you say. Here are a few cues on how to make the best impression with right oral communication skills. Read them for a positive, long lasting impression.

Verbal Communication Skills

Whether you are attending an interviewing for a job or leading a PowerPoint presentation for your corporate clients, it is important to have your audience’s attention hooked at all times. You cannot really afford to bungle up with your audience’s interest when you just have 30-90 seconds on your hand to have your say. The cue is to be original and dynamic in your staging. Rather than mouthing everything from a draft copy, it would do you good if you could just add a few impromptu lines to add some fresh spunk to your presentation.
Want to wow your bosses? All you need is an excellent presentation coupled with flawless oratory skills to make a cinch. After all, you cannot really afford to botch up your career with the wrong inflection or accent. When addressing the audience, make sure your oratory is lucid and crisp and is easy for all to understand and appreciate. Also, refrain from using fillers like ‘um’, ‘ah’ etc in between your sentences unless you wish to irritate your listeners.
When communicating orally, always choose words that are appealing to the ears and not to the eyes. Remember, what might look good on papers may not be impressive on the ears. The cue is to use words that can be easily comprehended in the passing. It is important to keep your vocabulary simple and direct. Nevertheless, beware of falling into colloquial traps or using slang. Plus, avoid technical, biblical or even historical jargons, unless you want to baffle and bore your audience to tears.
If you thought that oral communication was all about talking and not listening, you couldn’t be more wrong than this. Listening is an indispensable aspect of all successful communication and oral communication is no exception. So be patient and lend your ears to your audience if you wish to establish successful communication. Also, never interrupt when someone is talking. Always allow others to finish their speech before adding your comments.
Whether you are addressing an auditorium or doling out a motivational speech to your team, always remember to temper your tempo, volume and intonation to suit the verve of the occasion and your speech. For instance, when talking to your friends, you can use loud, high-pitch, faster tempo to express your enthusiasm. However, using a fast, high pitch and loud voice may be inappropriate when conducting an interview. The cue is to maneuver the tempo and inflection of your speech as per the occasion.

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