While some accomplished speakers find it sexy to dis Toastmasters, I am finding more and more to love about the group and its doctrines, even when they rub me the wrong way. I think some of the core rules and values are almost beautiful in their mercy and kindness towards the frightened speaking learner/learning speaker. But I digress.

Toastmasters doesn’t just teach speaking. They teach listening too. This is crucial. Give me the most talented speaker in the world, if they cannot listen to my information about who they’ll be addressing they’ll almost surely crash. You just can’t speak well if you refuse to listen well.

Marketing communications, I have always taught, is as much about taking in information as it is putting information out there. In any medium. To be a good speaker, come to understand what the audience will respond to by asking questions and listening for the answers.

This is very active listening, not just taking in what you happen to hear, but making a point of seeking out answers, absorbing them, and taking them seriously enough to be able to speak with impact.

3 Vs Disease, or, poor ol’ Albert Mehrabian

Anyone ever try to tell you what you actually say only supplies 7% of your credibility? Please tell me somewhere inside your skull someone jumped up and yelled “bullsh*t” when you heard that.

Mehrabian broke communications down into what we popularly call “3 Vs”: Verbal, Vocal & Visual. His research assigned 7% importance to the verbal (what you say), 38% to the Vocal (tone, or how you say it) and 55% to the Visual (facial expression, body language).

The research pertains ONLY to communication of emotions (feelings and attitudes) and situations where you are projecting “mixed messages” (face of misery, words of glee). In his words:

Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.

I still talk about the 3Vs, explained properly, for two reasons:

• It’s valuable to break communication into the Verbal, Vocal & Visual to show why communication breaks down when limited to just two (telephone) or less (email) of these 3 contributing factors. Even if the recipient won’t know it, you can use the missing one/s to help a little. Try standing up and smiling on your next important call to see what I mean.
• You often need to use emotional credibility for certain aspects of your presentation to work. If you are blase about the project and you shouldn’t be, you have a problem.

UPDATE: Another good explanation of this.

Over steaks in Philly years ago, Frank Maguire gave me this three-part definition of “communication”. I invoke it in nearly every engagement:

Communication = message sent, message received, message acted upon

We’re all geniuses at “message sent” — advertising, brochures, endless talking — it’s all literally a “broadcast” model of communications. Erect the tower, transmit the signal and send send send. And at the same time, if a tree falls in the woods, and nobody hears it…

You’re confidently hitting “message received” most of the time? Good for you, you’re measuring, paying attention, ensuring that the message reaches its destination. While you speak you also should absorb whether you are getting across. Stop, look, listen, just be sure you create a two-way street with the audience, however subtle or overt.

The true destination, though, is “message acted upon.” Speaking and presenting is a results game. WHY are you speaking? WHAT do you need to achieve? Results, objectives, outcomes, goals are all the provenance of audience response. WHO do you need to affect, and most explicitly HOW do you need them to react?

Do you speak well? Good. Are you consistently heard? Better. Do you accomplish your objectives whenever you speak? Hurrah, email me to become a contributor to this blog

If you think “objective” doesn’t apply to your presentation, you’re wrong. Objectives can be subtle, unexpected and indirect. They can be improvised, ad-hoc and changing on the fly. But ultimately, there’s a REASON why you are up there (even if that reason is appease the audience until the main show can begin). You need to always focus on that reason.

3 Vs Disease, or, poor ol’ Albert Mehrabian

Anyone ever try to tell you what you actually say only supplies 7% of your credibility? Please tell me somewhere inside your skull someone jumped up and yelled “bullsh*t” when you heard that.

Mehrabian broke communications down into what we popularly call “3 Vs”: Verbal, Vocal & Visual. His research assigned 7% importance to the verbal (what you say), 38% to the Vocal (tone, or how you say it) and 55% to the Visual (facial expression, body language).

The research pertains ONLY to communication of emotions (feelings and attitudes) and situations where you are projecting “mixed messages” (face of misery, words of glee). In his words:

Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.

I still talk about the 3Vs, explained properly, for two reasons:

• It’s valuable to break communication into the Verbal, Vocal & Visual to show why communication breaks down when limited to just two (telephone) or less (email) of these 3 contributing factors. Even if the recipient won’t know it, you can use the missing one/s to help a little. Try standing up and smiling on your next important call to see what I mean.
• You often need to use emotional credibility for certain aspects of your presentation to work. If you are blase about the project and you shouldn’t be, you have a problem.