Learnings on Verbal Communication

Recent Verbal Communications training at Carnegie Mellon was very useful.
I learned few interesting things.

• Smile makes the difference- Always , during introduction, start and end of a presentation. I tend to be serious, need to learn to keep smiling.
• Self Introduction - Start with an end in mind. What do you wish the person to remember you as. I did give a good introduction, but I was not happy about it.
• What to do with your Hands?- The instructor introduced an interesting concept, 'Strike Zone'. One should keep their hands within Strike Zone. The hands should not in pockets, or hand clasp or sudden movements. The quick actions, quick hand movements distract audience.
• Relaxed Attentiveness - One should be attentive, relaxed, but not too eager or too relaxed. In my case, when I am prepared, I am in relaxed attentive state otherwise I am eagar to please the audience.
• Avoid Daddy Rock or Shuffle - This is an interesting concept. I tend to do 'Daddy rock' i.e. movement like rocking a baby. I also tend to move around a lot, a side effect of teaching experience on blackboard (Indian Style). I am not sure how am I going to avoid this moving forward.
• Voice Modulation - This was a great feedback, I tend to taper-off end of a sentence while speaking, unknowingly. I am not sure why, but I am conscious now, I hope I will manage the voice modulation better.
• Tell a Story - This is a big jargon, I have been hearning for last 10 years. I do not know how can one tell a story in a technical subject without diluting the subject matter. There are subjects those require minimum intelligence level and my opinion is that you can not tell a story everytime. I understand the concept and agree that we need to have a captive audience and things should be simple. More than ever, I have seen people making things simpler to tell a story than simple.

Overall, good experience. I was expecting that Carnegie Mellon means I will come back with light and circle around my head, but alas!, nothing like that happened. It was hectic and tiring course.