Organize your Speech - Communication

A husband and wife were at a party chatting with some friends when the subject of marriage counselling came up.

"Oh, we will never need that. My husband and I have a great relationship," the wife explained. "He was a communications major in college and I majored in theatre arts. He communicates real well and I just act like I'm listening."

Good evening to Toastmaster of the Evening, President & dear fellow toastmasters.

Improving our communication skill has been talking about many years. In my memory, almost every meeting, such as staff meeting, I have been told, communication skill still is the most important area we should improve. Maybe, you will think communication is not as hard as we have emphasized.

Communication is the lifeblood of any organization.  Employees and managers spend a large part of their workday in some form of communication. It is the crucial task of the manager to communicate the goals to the workers to attain success. This can only be achieved through effective leadership, which is only possible with effective communication.

First, what is communication? A simple definition, communication is the way of information exchange between different people. So, there are at least two parties involved in a conversation and it includes three basic phases: Coding, transferring and decoding.

What is the most important section for a successful communication? It is decoding...., the receiver understands, the audience will have a reverse process as the speaker did. Information is lost during this reverse process. The receiver translates the words or symbols into a concept or information that he or she can understand.

Now, you can see communication is a complex coding and decoding process which could cause much misunderstanding and incorrect understanding. The analysis above just came from technical level. However, communication does not only include technical skill, but also art knowledge, social knowledge and cultural knowledge.

Different culture could have different communication methods. I used to read a story about an American woman who married to Japanese. At very beginning, she can only speak a little bit Japanese. She tries to involve group conversation once she can understand a little bit. One strange phenomenon she began to notice that often, the talking will be halt after a while she participated. Finally, after listening carefully to many Japanese conversations, she discovered what the problem is…..

She said, as western-style conversation between two people is like a game of tennis. If I introduce a topic, a conversational ball, I expect you to hit it back. I don't expect you just agree nod and do nothing. I expect you can add something, a reason for your agreeing. I expect you question me, challenge me and even disagree with me..... Just like how my evaluator response will return the ball to me later!!...... There is no waiting in line. If there are more than two people in the conversation, then it like doubles in tennis or volleyball.

A Japanese-style conversation, however, is not tennis or volleyball, it is bowling. You wait for your turn. When your moment comes, you step up to the start line with your own ball. Everyone else stands back, make sounds of polite encouragement. Everyone waits until your ball has reached the end of the lane, and watches to see if it knocks down all the pins. Then there is a pause, while everyone registers your score. Then, after everyone is sure you are done, the next person in line with different ball. Different culture create different game rule. Sometime, that leads into a huge gap between sender and receiver than we might image.

But, even we have the same language and the same cultural background, communication is still not easy. It also depends on the method how you present your idea. Depends on the audience knowledge, depends on their attitude towards you, and depends on the trust and the relationship.

Dear Toastmaster,

In summary - I have talked about communication from technical and non-technical perspectives. Neither of them are piece of cake. Good communication needs - us spend much time to practise, because communication is really harder than we expect. That why we are here today in Johor Bahru Toastmaster Club...........

If you want change, you have to make it. If we want progress we have to drive it.

Susan Rice, Stanford University

With that.... back to you ….

+++++++++++++++

Jokes.....Effective Communication........

Jack and Max are walking from religious service. Jack wonders whether it would be all right to smoke while praying.

Max replies, "Why don't you ask the Priest?"

So Jack goes up to the Priest and asks, "Priest, may I smoke while I pray?"

But the Priest says, "No, my son, you may not. That's utter disrespect to our religion."

Jack goes back to his friend and tells him what the good Priest told him.

Max says, "I'm not surprised. You asked the wrong question. Let me try."

And so Max goes up to the Priest and asks, "Priest, may I pray while I smoke?"

To which the Priest eagerly replies, "By all means, my son. By all means."

Moral: The reply you get depends on the question you ask.