Page 224 - Effective Communication Skills Mastery Bible 4 Books in 1 Boxset by Tuhovsky, Ian

people or even while shopping. Remember to always

give them a good reason for listening to you. Do it at

the beginning of your presentation, before you start

to present the prepared material.

11. Refer to your personal experiences. Every one of

us has thousands of diverse life experiences, which

can be used as examples in the presentation. It could

be even the most usual experiences—perhaps some

time ago you were stuck in a traffic jam for a very

long time, which helped you observe an interesting
social phenomenon. Perhaps you were talking to a

friend and saw a unique pattern in his behavior. It’s

all worth sharing. Why? Because when you refer to

your experiences, two very important things happen.

First of all, the audience knows that you know what
you are talking about not only from books, but also

from personal experience. Automatically you

become an authority in the subject, so they want to

listen to you more and believe in what you say.

Secondly, they get tangible proof that what you’re
speaking about works and has its context in real life,

as opposed to being just another abstract and boring

theoretical concept. Therefore, you can write down

all of your experiences which you want to share and

use them during your performance.

12. Tell stories. Not only from your own life, but also

those found or heard from someone else. Stories can

be used to invoke various emotional states in your

audience. One of the easiest emotional states to
encourage is curiosity. It’s also the state that you will