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| E-NEWSLETTER |
Sign up for The Spark and get fresh ideas for staying cool in hot situations, giving power-packed presentations, winning your next promotion, staying positive, getting to “yes,” and lots more on the skills you need for breakthrough success.
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We’re excited to bring you The Confident Communication Breakthrough Journal©, a workbook we created especially for people who want to sharpen their writing and speaking style and make sure their message gets heard and gets action.
In Part 1: A Fresh Start, you take a snapshot—a “before” picture—of your Confident Communication skills: Are your emails brief and easy to scan? Do you think hard about your audience and what they want to know? Do you look for opportunities to make presentations so you can get better at it?
In Part 2: Breaking New Ground, you set yourself up for success by planning your Confident Communication goals and the steps you’ll take to make them happen for yourself.
Part 3: Soaring to New Heights is where you write about your Confident Communication breakthroughs (What steps did you take to create these successes? What do they tell you about your strengths?) and build a plan for creating more of them. You’ll also make sure the most important people in your work life know about these achievements.
There’s plenty of room to write, doodle, and scribble. So have fun!
Publisher: New Heights Media, Inc.
Publication Date: April 2009
ISBN-13: 978-1-891019-29-6
Series: Confident Communication Resources
IMPORTANT!
Each Breakthrough Skill has its own Breakthrough Journal. And while many elements in each of the Breakthrough Journals are the same, they are all customized with examples and exercises for their particular Breakthrough Skill.
You can use your own experiences and reading to fill out our Breakthrough Journals, but they work best as companions to our skill-specific Rapid-Read Handbooks™ such as Words That Work (for Confident Communication), Hot Situations, Cool Heads (for Conflict Management), and Step Out of the Box with a Bang! (for High Possibility Thinking).
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PART 1: A FRESH START
A. INSIDE OUT: YOUR SELF PORTRAIT
In the last five years or so, business communication has changed dramatically. It’s gotten sharper, quicker, and in some ways, easier. In today’s rush to get more done in less time, no one can stop to read or listen to more than what’s absolutely necessary to accomplish the task at hand.
The emphasis is on simplicity and clarity, and above all, brevity: what we used to have the luxury of saying in 2,000 words we must now say in 500 words—or less. The detailed memos we used to write are today three-line emails. The two-hour presentations are now 45 minutes—tops—so audience members can collect their papers and run to the next meeting at the top of the hour.
This is great news…to a point. We love the energizing pace, but the quest for brevity can go too far. Our “need for speed” can make us miss vital details or drop information in someone’s lap or Inbox as we run off to put out the next fire. We’ve all banged out those super-quick, one-line emails that say “Attached is the Q4 budget” or “File: Conclusions from last week’s meeting.” On the one hand, these lightning bolt messages can be highly efficient and may even be all that’s needed.
On the other hand, they may rob us of the chance to highlight key facts, synthesize information, point out implications, or provide proactive suggestions about how to best use the information. These highlights and insights add value to any communication and bump it up to someone’s must-read list. We call this “connecting the dots,” and it’s a practice that makes your communication—and more to the point, you—look and sound smart and totally capable.
GETTING THROUGH
What all this means is that getting and keeping an audience’s attention—and influencing their actions—are different challenges today than they were just a few years ago. And since nothing stands still, we can count on needing to be even more brief and to the point in our communications in the future. The bar on excellence in business communication has been raised: it’s no longer just about good writing or speaking. More than ever before, it’s about getting through, being heard above the din of messages and information the business world pours out every day. We must work harder than ever to make our writing and presentations audience focused and motivating.
So let’s get started tracking your Confident Communication breathroughs with a “self portrait”: how strong do you believe your Confident Communication skills are today?
Take this Self-Test. [Note: At the end of The Confident Communication Breakthrough Journal, you’ll answer the same questions and compare your scores to see the progress you’ve made.]
WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS EXCERPT OF THE CONFIDENT COMMUNICATION BREAKTHROUGH JOURNAL. PLEASE DON’T LET THIS BE THE END! BE SURE TO GET YOUR COPY OF THIS POWERFUL RESOURCE FOR BUILDING YOUR NEXT CAREER OR BUSINESS BREAKTHROUGH!
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