Guest Post: Jagadish Harihara Subramanian

Jagadish is a Master's student at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students. Here he writes about real-world oral communication.

Being “social” beings, we all want to interact with other beings and the best way to do this is through oral communication. Communication is identified in many forms of human activities, like asking for food when hungry, asking for help when in trouble, warning others in danger, asking questions, answering queries, sharing ideas, cracking jokes, singing songs, etc. All these types of communication are best done with a mix of voices and gestures -we call it “Real-world Oral Communication.”

Technology and globalization have made the modern world a smaller place. The challenge naturally arising from it is the need for effective communication to reach a wider audience. The message to be delivered can be critical news, an important warning or an innovative idea that has to spread to - may be - the whole world! Such type of communication is called “Information Dissemination.” Whatever the message is and how much ever big the audience is, the best way of spreading information is through oral communication. Human brains can easily capture voice and gestures because it is the most primitive and natural form of communication.

One of the advantages of oral communication is the ability it provides the speaker to persuade. In this competitive world, our victory depends upon how effectively we can persuade others to do things our way. A clear, purposeful, targeted and well-articulated speech will attract attention; but not necessarily persuasion. For persuasion, the speech has to be precise, coherent and logical. We can achieve this only by understanding the passions and predispositions of the audience, and by tactfully organizing various phases of our speech. We must start with an idea or a statement acceptable to the prejudiced mind of the listeners. Otherwise, they might quit listening in the beginning itself. Once they get along with us, present the idea we wish to persuade in a way that will agree with the passions of the listeners. They will then pursue this idea as one of their own goals. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech is a good example of persuasive speaking. Instead of simply calling for ‘racial equality,’ King articulated how promoting racial equality would make each one of them uphold the U.S Constitution and its ideals better. This touched the patriotic minds of listeners and resulted in the intended action.

Along with the advantages, oral communication brings about certain disadvantages, too. The fact that it is very hard to hide our emotions when talking can result in bad conversations. Sometimes, we may want to slyly move away from expressing our inner feelings directly to a person. But if confronted in a conversation, it may get spilled. At some point in our lives, we may be forced to participate in “difficult conversations.” A discussion with a subordinate regarding a complaint against him, an unavoidable conversation that may embarrass the other person, a heated argument, etc., are examples. Failure to handle such difficult conversations can result in fights, losing trust, ego-clashes or hurting others’ feelings. We may either become too passive and lose the argument/conversation or become too aggressive and think we have won. However, in either case we lose. To reduce the difficulty, converse politely and don’t be too aggressive or passive. Also get to the point soon!

Oral communication is like a deadly weapon that you can use to persuade others do what you want. But beware! If you don’t use it carefully, it may recoil!

Guest Post: Deepak Rangarajan

Deepak is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College. Here he writes about real-world oral communication.

I strongly believe in the quote “Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people” by William Butler Yeats. Yes, it is true that in real world, most of us fail to communicate information in simple terms. The reality is the more succinct the information, the easier it is to understand. In the current competitive world, the majority of companies have started emphasizing communication skills and as a result lots of job opportunities are available for those people who can articulate their thoughts effectively.

Effective communication must follow some basic rules : The topic must be concise; it must cater to the needs of the audience; it must be attractive enough to make the audience listen; it must be presented with positive body language; the speaker must be relaxed and try to connect with the audience. There is enough evidence to suggest that any information communicated visually will reach the audience faster than those communicated verbally. The reason is that people get attracted to what they see and hence it is highly recommended that one should incorporate efficient oral communications with visual representation. In addition, there are circumstances when we had to face difficult conversation, such as negotiating salary with Human Resources. In such scenarios, we must first try to engage with the people by sharing feelings or exchanging pleasantries and inquiring questions such as how is he/she doing or talk about something that is of mutual interest to both of us. This will make the audience like our conversation and they will gradually connect with us.

I had a personal experience in my previous organization when our CEO presented a session about our quarter performance. Most of us had already experienced similar presentations from other top management people and felt uninterested. To the surprise of all, the session was very interactive as our CEO articulated his thoughts clearly, the slides were very succinct, and he emphasized more on the visual part rather than text in his presentation. For instance, he conveyed the quarter performance and his message for the future through an attractive picture. The message he conveyed was “You are only looking at the trees, but I am looking at the forest;” it had an image of a person looking at the entire forest and a person looking at a single tree. The actual meaning was that each of the employees was only looking at the task that was assigned to him/her rather than focusing on the holistic picture, i.e., the company goal, which was to empower the world to learn. The employees were very attentive throughout the session and understood what their levels of responsibilities were. Hence, this was one such case where an effective oral communication with visual representation made people realize their responsibilities.