How To Write Speak And Think More Effectively

Hello. My name's Michael Ronayne, I'm a director of the College of Public Speaking, and I'm going to be talking about different aspects of public speaking. The key to writing, thinking, speaking more effectively, is to have a clear focus.

So how do you get a clear focus? Well, the best way to do that, whether it's a written presentation, or whether it's an oral presentation, is to ask yourself questions all the time. Journalists are taught to do this. You know, when they start off.

You're taught to "what, why, where, who, when, and how" as the key words when you're building up an article for a newspaper. And also media people will tell you, there is a very, very great difference between having a lot to say on a subject and knowing exactly what you want to say on a subject. So what I always recommend is ask yourself a lot of questions, open questions.

Why, particularly? What? How is this working? What am I trying to do this, why am I trying to write this? When I work with trainers, training people to actually create training programs, then I teach them to ask themselves "why" five times. It's a discipline. Because sometimes, the main reason for doing something is not always obvious.

So for instance, if a manager said to you, "Could you design a quick induction program for new members of staff? Why are we doing that? Well, so that the new members of staff know what their job is, and to find their way around the building." Why is it important that they do that? Well, because unless they settle into the job quickly, they may leave early. Well, why is it a problem if they leave early? Well, if they leave early, then we have to go through the whole process again, train new people, and that costs a lot of time and a lot of resources.

Why is that an issue? Well, the reason that's an issue is we're trying to run a business here. We need to build effective teams, and ultimately the business needs to be profitable, so that everybody has a job and the business can be successful. Now, that's a very simple and slightly silly example, but the point is, we've moved straight away from an induction as a sort of, just to show people around, to a realization that the reason we need to do this induction is to make the business work more effectively, to integrate people more effectively into the organization as well.

So maybe initially, the induction seemed like, you know, where the toilets are and where the canteen are, seemed very important, but as you dig deeper and ask yourself, "Why, why, why?" You end up with the precise focus, what exactly is this induction attempting to do. So the important thing, if you want to think more clearly, write more clearly, speak more clearly, is to ask yourself questions and make sure that everything you produce has a very clear aim and a very clear focus. .