March 13, 2009:
In this economy we want to make ourselves as valuable as possible.
According to FAST COMPANY’s Peter Lawrence in “Design’s Growth”, Tue Jul 8,2008, one of the primary ways to that is to improve our communication skills. He talks of some just “good” industrial designers who are successful because they are better communicators than the “great” designers.
Ask yourself:  “Do my colleagues ask me to repeat something I said more than one time?”  “Do people ask me to send them an email to summarize what I said in a meeting?”  “Am I asked to ‘speak louder’ in a meeting?”  “Are these problems worse on phone calls or during a phone conference?”
If so, then seek specific help.  Your manager wants to keep valuable team members and hone their skills.  This makes their job easier.
Employers are still contracting with training professionals.

I work privately with a mid level manager at a very large international company. We are doing accent, communication and voice/presentation training.
Here are some of the communication strategies that we covered in the last week.
1.     Audio tape yourself.  Read a paragraph… only a paragraph…from a familiar magazine.  Then listen to it.  What you hear is exactly what your Primary-English colleagues hear.  Have a colleague listen to it with you without having the visual of the paragraph.  And repeat back sentence by sentence… no paraphrasing. Usually they will struggle to understand it.
2.     Now read the paragraph very s-l-o-w-l-y and audio tape it.  Have a colleague listen to it again.  They will very likely understand you better.
Why?  Because this gives the listener the time to “edit” what you are saying and interpret better.    Even though you have heard that the brain analyzes a huge number of pieces of information a second, remember that this number really consists of data from your body functions, visual, tactile, muscle motor and varying other inputs.   Each word is not single unit.   Rather, they are combinations of multiples of units.  Each sound has a set of signals, stress patterns, semantics, grammar, and phrasal inflections affect interpretation every second for the listener.
The listener is really processing at about 90-100 words per minute (WPM). The average speaking speed for broadcasters is about 135 WPM.  The average speaking speed that I have noted in engineering, business/marketing, law firms, and financial workplaces has been between 135 WPM to 230WPM. Fast talkers usually get the least amount of information understood.
The brain starts by “chunking” inflection, stress patterns, grammar markers, etc.  And, then the brain begins to assign meaning.  If the listener must edit what the speaker is saying, the analysis slows down.  Unfortunately, the speaker keeps speaking at their usual (135-230 WPM) with accent, grammar and/or vocabulary issues.   The listener’s interpretation speed slows down for each “edit”.  Finally the listener has totally lost pace with the content of the speaker.  The listener stops listening, gets frustrated, tries again and stops again.
The speaker loses valuable time and credibility…….
As a professional in a shaky economy, you cannot afford to lose credibility.
Slow down.  Audiotape yourself and practice slowing down.    It must be practiced repeatedly every day for it to become a habit.
Your value in the workplace will increase.

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