ORAL COMMUNICATION
By phone
In person
Gestures and Body Language
The Importance of the Professional Image
The telephone remains the main point of contact for most companies with their customers.
In many cases, how you answer a call to your company will form the first impression your customers will get.
The following tips will help you make that first impression the best:
• Answer all calls before the third ring.
• When answering the phone, be warm and enthusiastic. Your voice is often the only impression of your company that the caller will take away.
• When answering the phone, give a polite greeting and identify yourself and your organization. For example, say: “Good morning, CERPA, Marlo answers you. How can I help you?"
• Express yourself clearly, keep your voice moderate, and speak slowly and clearly so that the other party can easily understand you.
• Control your language.
• Train your voice and vocabulary to be positive, even on bad days. For example, instead of saying "I don't know," say, "I'm going to find out."
Conversation is the most important means we have to communicate orally, so respecting the opinions of the other is fundamental; If not, you will not be able to establish a dialogue, then you will only listen to your opinion.
Listening is much more than just picking up sounds with our sense of hearing, it is more than hearing. It is paying attention to what we are told, internalizing it, understanding it and translating it into some kind of response: an action, an exclamation, a response, a feeling.
Knowing how to listen enriches communication, since it allows us to appreciate the points of view of others and establish a true dialogue, with exchange of ideas, appreciations and reasoning.
When I listen, I pay attention to my interlocutor, I hear what he is saying, and I confront him with the expression of his eyes, the movements of his body, of his face; thus I complete the message that he wanted to communicate to me.
When I listen, I don't look elsewhere, or from one side to the other; nor do I walk my gaze around the person, as if searching.
By listening I am attentive to what is being said to me, I do not let my imagination or my thoughts fly, I focus on what I am and I enjoy it.
I never abruptly interrupt whoever speaks to me, I wait for the right moment to do so and I apologize for it ... but I also have important things to say.
If I do not understand something and I have any questions, I ask, I ask for clarification of what they have just said; this way I avoid misunderstandings and confusion that could affect the relationship.
But above all, what they say here, I do not go around repeating it, that is, I do not participate in gossip and rumors.
The other external element that will condition our first impression before the audience and a large part of the presentation are our manners and gestures.
After entering the auditorium, it is convenient to pronounce some courteous phrases, the weather or the traffic can be good excuses, and then we must occupy our place, looking at the audience and without touching the notes.
It is not advisable to try to review the content of the talk, in a few minutes, the only thing we can achieve is to increase our nervousness for fear of forgetting some important point.
The audience expects us to control our nerves at all times and the movements of our hands or the posture of our body can denote a certain tranquility.
When we speak to large audiences, we must use more expressive body language, since the listener in the last row will only perceive these gestures if they are properly magnified.
If we do not pay attention to the audience, it will not pay attention to us.
Eye contact with the audience denotes authority. We must look at the faces of the people in the group and even notice their facial features.
When the audiences are large, a good system to watch is to make a W or an M to go through the different parts of the room. We will have to do it calmly.
Short, uneasy glances are not a good way to make eye contact. Stuart (1991) advises doing practice by trying to look at each person for two or three seconds.
The hands are an extraordinarily important source of expression, both as a resource for the speaker, who they help to express themselves, and for the audience to whom a richer body language reaches the speech that introduces variety in the speech and contributes to the general tone of it. , reinforcing or weakening the arguments made with the words.
What we should not do with our hands is:
• Fiddle with rings, watch, cufflinks, buttons, glasses, tokens, coins, etc.
• Touching or tapping on the table, chair, hair, or face. - Hold on to the back of the chair, the lectern or the chips.
• Scratching any part of the body.
• Hide hands from public view, behind the back, in pockets, under the table, etc.
• Twist or rub them.
• Point out the audience.
• When we act calmly, the gestures coincide with what we want to say.
The glasses can serve to emphasize a certain point: removing them from the face or putting them on, holding them suspended in the hand, leaning forward and looking at the public face to face ..., we will make an expressive gesture, to put them on again and continue speech.
If we expect applause and it occurs, we should smile and bow our heads in appreciation. If it doesn't happen, let's look at the auditorium, wait a few moments and return to our starting position.
The professional image in the business world and the ways of behavior are subject to constant changes that occur with a hitherto unknown speed.
The rules that prevailed a short time ago are already being lost in time.
The stiff, formal tone has little to do with today's more flexible and spontaneous lifestyle.
Everything you do in a company, from writing a memo to an oral presentation, from requesting a raise to asking an assistant to write a note, will help sharpen the image.
John S. Rockefeller once said: ... “The ability to deal with people can be compared to a commodity, just like coffee, sugar, and I pay more for it than for anything else that exists under the sun ... ”However, with the advent of the“ decade of the self ”, managers of large companies began to complain about how difficult it was to find people with ease for human work.
As one senior manager stated: “” The most important characteristic a young executive should have is the ability to work with others and make their presence welcome.
It is not difficult for me to find people with technical knowledge, but sometimes it is problematic to find someone with communication skills, intuition for relationships and who knows how to instill encouragement and confidence in others ”.
Proper behavior is essential when it comes to establishing good relationships with others, and it also ensures their support and collaboration.
Maintaining a high stress level in the workplace may work for a time, but it will hardly work in the long run.
What really works in the long run is courteous and considerate treatment, recognizing the work of others, making them feel comfortable: in short, use good manners and excellent human relationships.
Many men and women invest years in higher education in all fields of human endeavor, but they spend very little or no time in acquiring the most adequate knowledge of the basic norms of human coexistence.
The professional image in the business world is one of the most determining factors in professional success, actually this topic is not included in almost any field of studies.