Blog.

Communication in business is important because it engages you with your audience and the benefits are plenty; from building better relationships and empathy to opening up new business opportunities.

Lets look at the importance of blending your key ingredients of delivery when presenting.

What do I mean by blend? You may not know it, but when you set out to present, you communicate with your audience by using three methods. First is Non Verbal Communication (often referred to as body language), your Voice (the volume which you speak at and the pace of your speed) and your Content (the words you choose). The combination of these three elements creates your own personal blend and therefore the impact you will have.

Your audience, NVC, Voice and Content

Interestingly, these three methods are not all equal in presenting: NVC dominates because this is how you are immediately perceived and received by the audience, who will instinctively judge you on two counts. First, they will ascertain if you look like or appear to know what you are talking about and second your Voice, do you sound as if you know what you’re talking about. Once you’ve passed this subtle but essential test, your audience will be open to listening to your Content in the right frame of mind.

Presenting: creating the blend

The starting point for creating your blend is to answer one key question ‘For this presentation what impact do I want to have?’ Typical impacts you might consider are: confident, professional, expert, authoritative, interested, enthusiastic and understanding.

Once you’ve chosen this point, it’s time to put the impact through the filter of each communication method. For the purpose of this blog post, we are going to ‘expert’ as the impact example and here are the three things to contemplate:

1. What does expert look like – how will I carry myself, what gestures will I use?
2. What does expert sound like – what volume and pace will I speak at?
3. What is expert content like – experts communicate complicated information and concepts in a way the audience understands and can relate to.

By taking these on board, you should find yourself delivering your message with impact. If you are looking for inspiring talks and presentations, we often find ourselves looking at the TED Talks web site.