How to best express WHAT you want to say…

Taken from www.dilbert.com

My apologises for using a dilbert comic but I believe if you want to find comics to do with communication (or the lack thereof), dilbert.com should be your first stop. This post is inspired by one of my professors in the Life Sciences, who insisted and repeated lecture after lecture that we have to find our best learning style and our innate flaws when it comes to learning something. After taking the survey mandated by him, I found I would benefit from a mix of all styles (aural, visual, touch) so the survey was rather pointless for me. (I would include a URL, unfortunately, some links on the page no longer works.)

I am sure several people have described communication style much better than I could have ever done. The focus of my post, illustrated by the comic, is about recognising communication flaws and learning how to best accommodate it. No, I am not telling you to pretend that you can present like the guy in the comic if you lack a whiteboard (and need one)! I believe everyone has their innate flaws that years of education and common sense might not be able to erase (that is what makes people interesting). For me, I seem to always end up messing my presentation notes. Being a spontaneous person, I tend to jump into the situation and when my memory fails me, I will frantically refer to the notes and then fail to find the information I need. After several similar experiences, I realise the best solution for me is to prepare 150% and thus if I can only recall 80% during the actual presentation, I would still pass. This method is not for everyone for obvious reasons.

Recently, during my Singapore politics lecture, the lecturer played a video of speakers talking about Singapore’s future. There were 6 speakers from extremely varied backgrounds and each of them spoke from different perspectives. I will highlight three to illustrate communication flaws in each and how they overcame it. The first speaker was a member of parliament. He had copious notes, typical of a day of parliament where detail is important to argue your case. He spoke well, his message was clear but he had a few pauses here and there despite his notes. To make up for his hesitation when speaking, he clearly demarcated his speech into 3 points and emphasized them again and again. There were clear checkpoints in his speech and no one was ever confused which point he was talking about. The moral of the story is preparation is key (clichéd but true).

The second speaker I remembered was a Singaporean playwright. Unlike the speakers ahead of him, he chose to give his speech sitting down. He told the audience frankly that he was a fidgety person and if he stood to speak, his physical behaviour will distract people from his message. Throughout the speech, even though it appeared that he read word for word from his papers, it was still an entertaining performance. Perhaps, as a playwright, he is best at putting words to paper but letting other people perform his ideas. What I admire about his communication style is his courage to admit his flaws so frankly. He really fidgeted a lot, even while sitting down. Not everyone can do that and find ways to make up for their deficiencies.

The third speaker was astounding. She was Dr Catherine Lim, a famous Singaporean author and social activist. With no notes whatsoever, she gave her speech without any pause except for breath and seemed to have thought of her speech spontaneously as she spoke. She ended with a bang, with a short humorous poem. Her speech was very informative but the humour would have been ill-suited for a very formal situation, e.g. parliament debates. However as it was a talk for university students, it was just right to wake everyone up.

I am still learning to accept all my flaws and make up for them. I would be curious to know what your communication flaw is and how you accepted/corrected it.

http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.sg/success/sl8.htm Most of the links no longer works but it is still a cool website to visit.