4 TIPS FOR EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATING YOUR MESSAGES

I started giving communication courses almost twenty years ago. Before that, I
myself spent many years studying and attending courses, contests and public
speaking and communication clubs. In these courses I learned many things, I
made many friends and, above all, I had the opportunity to face the audience and
the microphone a thousand times. This - as a well-known card commercial says -
simply has no price.

When I went from studying to teaching, very soon I realized a fundamental

character in the clubs I had attended. In all of them they made excessive emphasis
on the forms: posture, gestures, movements, hands, feet and the color of the tie.
The exams and competitions followed the same logic: they were qualified above all
technical and formal aspects (time, volume, diction.) and the slightest deviation
from the rules or forms could disqualify the best of the speakers.

As a learning system it can happen, but when jumping into real life; to the
classroom first and to business later, it was very evident to me that the pure forms;
Speaking beautifully or speaking "as a speaker" had very little to do with the
effective impact on my audience. Apparently my students cared very little if my tie
was blue, or if my feet were placed exactly the same distance as my shoulders.
They responded to other kinds of things.

I made a mental note: Speaking well is great (and necessary). But no, it's not
enough.

Surely there was something else.

1. To convince, to speak nice is not the first thing.

I hardly realized this truth, when I decided that my students would not only learn
techniques of speaking, writing and communication, but that it would help them to
take the next step while trying to discover it myself.

At that time I started my degree in Law. The first two semesters caused a deep
impact on me, and opened the door to a fascinating world of logic, reason and
structure. I learned that, before the judges and magistrates, the histrionic resources
are not worth much: what counts is the argument, the law, the reason and the truth.
Eureka! -I thought- this is what I was looking for. The most important thing is not
HOW we say things, but the THINGS we say. The truth has a power of its own,
and the great orators are not those who win competitions, but those who dare to
say it when nobody wants to hear it.

As there was not an oratory manual with these characteristics, I started to develop
a manual for my class that later became a book. For several years I accompanied
my students in competitions and debates in which they obtained great results.

For years I was convinced of having discovered the rhetorical weapon par
excellence: a powerful content.

When I left law school and started to enter other areas, I began to look with
astonishment at some environments where my system seemed not to work at all.
In politics, for example, I observed how the best proposals did not always achieve
the vote of the public. Are not people convinced with the truth, the best plans and
the best proposals? When I started working as a conductor in a newscast, I also
noticed that the most successful notes were not always the most valuable in terms
of content. People were looking for something more.

Three years and hundreds of programs later I was able to formulate a clear idea in
my mind: people do not just want to be informed, they want to be inspired.

2. To convince, to be right is not the first thing.

It is true: human beings seek the truth constantly, but we are not robots that
perform perfect mathematical and logical equations in our mind, but we perceive
reality and process it through the complexity of our environment and our own
nature.

Each person individually has a small world within themselves that is trying to
understand and solve. At a very fundamental level, our primary engine is to avoid
pain and achieve survival. Things like hunger, thirst, instinct; happiness and
sadness, fatigue and pain play an important part in the decisions we make every
day.

Put in other words, human beings do not always opt for the "true" or "correct"
option in absolute terms, but for that which we perceive as the optimum for our own
situation. As a result, our decisions are rarely 100% rational. Actually, almost 90%
of our decisions are approached from an emotional rather than rational point of
view.

Have you noticed how to talk about decisions we use organs and body senses? "I
like it" (the tongue), "I'm beating" (the heart), "it sounds" (the ear). When we fall in
love we feel "butterflies in the stomach". The senses cause sensations, and
sensations, feelings. And these feelings largely determine how we live and make
thousands of second decisions (what to eat, what to wear, what to listen to, where
to go); without following a perfect logical pattern, but a personal path, which adds
the intellect to one's own emotions and passions.

Eureka! -I thought- then the best way to convince someone is through their
emotions. And it was close. But something else was missing.

3. To convince, moving emotions is not the first thing.

But how can you move someone? Experience told me that just saying nice things
was not enough to convince.

It is an experience that we can all connect with. Most people had a crush; At some
point in our lives we were in love with a person that did not belong to us. Maybe in
high school or high school. We suffered from that passion while making futile
attempts to convince this person that we, too, were the love of his life.

We tried everything: flowers, poems, stuffed animals and recorded discs (for young
people under 20 who can read this, the cassettes and recorded discs were the
equivalent of the current Spotify); maybe we played everything and we serenaded.
But we soon learned that all attempts to remove the heart of our crusheran
absolutely useless.

Because yes, moving people's hearts is the best way to convince, but ... how to do
it if they do not even let you in?

And this is, after all, the great question of communication.

4. To convince, you come first.

The answer is in the question itself.

To convince you have to move; and to move you need to open the door. No one
can make you feel, or fall in love, or feel any emotion. The door of emotions only
opens from within. You can not push or force.

Think of your own home, to whom do you open the door?

Answer: to those people you can trust.

Maybe you trust them because you know them (they are family or friends), or
because they represent something you trust (a company, a church, an
association), or because they appear to be trustworthy (because of the way they
dress, they talk and behave).

That is, these people have confidence, reputation or moral authority. These people
- and only these - you open the doors of your house.

So the first thing to convince is not to talk nice, or have a great product. The first
thing is to be a person who can be trusted. The first thing is your reputation, your
image and your moral and technical authority.

People do not look for an expert mechanic, but above all an honest mechanic. The
girls do not go out with the guys who get ten, but with those who make them feel
good about themselves. People do not buy the best products, but they connect
with the best companies. Citizens do not vote for the best proposals, but for the
candidates they perceive as trustworthy.

Again and again, the most powerful weapon in communication and rhetoric is
called authority. In your personal and professional life (and that of your company)
who you are, how you are; your values and the way you conduct yourself represent
your best assets to open doors and grow without limit.