78 Improve your Communication Skills • identifying the core idea; • arranging your ideas logically; • developing an appropriate style in the language you use; • remembering your ideas; • delivering your ideas with words, visual cues and non-verbal behaviour. What’s the big idea? If you want to persuade someone, you must have a message.
What do you want to say? What’s the big idea? You must know
what idea you want to promote. A single governing idea is more
likely to persuade your listener than a group of ideas, simply
because one strong idea is easier to remember.
Begin by gathering ideas. Conduct imaginary conversations
in your head and note down the kind of things you might say.
Capture ideas as they occur to you and store them on a pad or in a
file. Spend as much time as you can on this activity before the
conversation itself.
Having captured and stored some ideas, ask three
fundamental questions:
• ‘ What is my objective? ’ What do I want to achieve? What would I like to see happen? • ‘ Who am I talking to? ’ Why am I talking to this person about this objective? What do they already know? What more do they need to know? What do I want them to do? What kind of ideas will be most likely to convince them? • ‘ What is the most important thing I have to say to them? ’ If I were only allowed a few minutes with them, what would I say to convince them – or, at least, to persuade them to keep listening? Think hard about these three questions. Imagine that you had
only a few
seconds
to get your message across. What would you
say?
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