How Good Are Your Delivery Skills?

One thing I learned early on in my career (Career 1.0) was you had to have strong delivery/speaking skills. As I moved up the HR ladder to the executive suite those delivery skills were so important that if you did not have strong speaking/influencing skills you would not be successful. Now in a consulting  and blogging role they play an even more important part in Career 2.0. That also goes for strong grammar and the ability to utilize vocabulary effectively. 


So what should you take away from this blog post? Here are some questions/pointers you should look at or ask to measure your personal ability to communicate and influence effectively:

• do you have command of the audience?
• do you utilize effective use of your voice and inflection?
• do you practice articulation to make sure your delivery is clear to the audience, not just to you?
• do you apply a speaking/delivery strategy to your delivery?
• do you prepare effectively?
• is your presentation at a level that people will understand it clearly?

I can tell you from experience if you do not ask yourself these questions and work on how to fine tune them your ability to communicate effectively will stumble. As I said in the opening paragraph, you need to work on this even prior to your career and hopefully your professors in college provided you with insight and your college with courses on how to "communicate and influence effectively".