Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Today is my best friends birthday.  Wishing her long, healthy life, abundance of Happiness, and wishing her tremendous success in all her endeavors. She is my favorite speaker and every time she gets to speak on stage, the audience is pumped up. What is special about Shobana?

Shobana has lot of great traits but today I am going to share about her speaking skillset and what I have learned from our speeches.

Mark Twain was once asked the reason for his success. He replied back, " I was born excited". One of the chief reasons for success in life is the ability to maintain a daily interest in one's work, to have a chronic enthusiasm. When Shobana speaks, she has contagious enthusiasm. You can be really enthusiastic only when you are convinced about the topic you are talking about. Sincerity, earnestness, enthusiasm and determination to give yourself to the audience for a few minutes into a feeling of agreeement with you, a friendliness for you, a willingness to be interested. 

What I have learned from Shobana is, to give a speech that catches the attention of the audience, the speaker needs to be convinced first. That is what I have observed with Shobana. I have seen this trait with a lot of good speakers. They get a number of yes- responses. With more yeses,  you are setting the psychological process of listeners in the affirmative direction. The more the Yeses we get at the outset,  the more likely we are to succeed in capturing the attention for what we are sharing. Shobana always finds a common ground of agreement  to connect with the audience.

She also stirs emotions by being intensely earnest, her spirit shining through her eyes, radiating through her voice and proclaiming itself through her manners.  Doing this  communicates the conviction to the audience. She reveals to the audience how deeply she believes in what she says and gets audience to instantly like her through her funny and friendly ways getting rid of audience's skepticism and defensive mindsets. She personalizes her talk based on the audience which is the best way to get the buy-in from the audience. To summarize, following are my takeaways from observing her for the last couple of years.

The Do's

• It is better to talk about something you earn the right to talk about through your own experience.
• One should talk about something they are excited about.
• It should be something you are eager to tell your audience about.
• Good to have brief notes of interesting things you want to mention.
• Talk should have some illustrations and examples.
• Practice/ rehearse your talk by conversing with your supportive friends.

The Don'ts

• Don't write out your talks
• Don't memorize the talk word for word (verbatim)
• Don't imitate anyone, be yourself.
• Speak to express , not impress.