Some brilliant communicators and their unique communication styles No matter how much you try to avoid public

speaking, sometimes there really isnt much choice but to face a judgemental audience head-on: it could be a sales pitch to some venture capitalist, delivering a toast at a formal corporate meet or even proposing to the girl of your dreams. The sole aim of good communications is to convince your target audience, using whatever means it takes to bring them around to your point of view. If you really want to rise to the occasion when it does matter, you must beforehand invest enough time in developing your unique, personal approach to communication: your individual style will anyday trump over the most arduous imitation attempts. Being a good communicator really boils down to having greater selfawareness about who you are, tuning your speech based on the audiences expectations and crafting the perfect pitch to arouse positive emotions in them. That being said, theres no harm in observing successful orators so that you can pick up cues on what will work best for you. Let us remember none of these now-famous people were born to be good speakers; its quite a learned ability like any other. In fact, Winston Churchill was well known to have a stutter before going on to become Britains greatest statesman. Talking of Churchill, historians attribute his leadership messaging to be the singular driving force behind Britains war effort against Nazi Germany. Salient features of his oratory include a Grandfather-like storytelling ability, sarcastic humour and building a larger-than-life visualisation of the enemy to trigger emotional hot buttons in his audience. While Churchill is best known for his blood, toil, sweat and tears speech, there are several priceless gems that can be viewed on Youtube.

In his opening address to the Canadian Parliament in 1942, Churchill brought audience attention to Hitlers boast that within 3 weeks England would have her neck wrung like a chicken. It was a fact everyone knew already, Hitler had failed to live up to his swagger in defeating Britain. It was an ordinary summation of past outcomes however, out came the unexpected when Churchill literally sent his audience rolling on the floor, laughing, with this witticism, Some chicken, some neck! From political speeches in Parliament, lets shift our focus to onstage humour which is really a summation of comic timing, audaciousness and building an anti-climactic scene. A fine example of this would be American stand-up comedian Dane Cook whose videos can be seen on Youtube. The key to Danes comic delivery is recounting ghastly tales, apparently from his own personal life that revolve around cheating, lying, why women win fights and so on. Dane brings a lot of energy and spontaneity to his performances. Like a recoiling spring, he manages to swivel his body around, visually describing various action items in his performance. Although he comes out clean in interviews, Dane does not refrain from using profanities since they reflect his lighthearted choice of themes. There are a lot of actors on celluloid who punch above their weight in communication delivery, although credit must go to dialogue writers. A good example would be Clint Eastwood who personifies the spirit of brevity like no other; right since his Good, Bad and Ugly days, Clints communication style has unchangeably been of a man who means business, and will not suffer redundant courtesies. As opposed to Dane Cook, Clints posture is erect with his eyes having the look of a hard-wired veteran his idea of good communication being to mince few words and straightaway drive the point home, usually with a bullet!

They say successful communication is all about creating rapport with the audience, and becoming one and the same with them. Four years ago we saw Barack Obama rising to the fore as Americas first black President. Compared to other candidates in the race, Obama has years of experience in social work, fundraisers and so on. For him, the art of persuasion equates to building motivation. Even when he came to India and addressed a group of school students in Mumbai, Obamas communication style is all about creating shared empathy with his audience, tapping into their innermost feelings and addressing those concerns head-on. In fact, Obamas Yes, we can invocation has become a signature phrase for motivation leaders worldwide who want to create resonance with the audience. In fact the next time you have to give a speech, all you would need to repeat is Yes, we can or Yes, I can.

Sayak Boral