PRINCIPLES FOR POWER DELIVERIES – PART 1

Develop your Power Writing skills (covered in my previous articles) and match that with Power Delivery – you get a winning combination in your talks, briefings, speeches and presentations.

In this article I will cover the first two principles of Power Deliveries.

PRONUNCIATION

Good pronunciation is essential in any language. Wrong intonations or inflections can have embarrassing results as any student on Mandarin will confirm. In English it is about correct stress and phonetic sounds, according to the International Phonetic Alphabet. All English dictionaries contain this.

Refer regularly to www.dictionary.cambridge.org if you wish to master your pronunciation skills. It will help you build your vocabulary as well. Check out words you hear in the news media, documentaries, talks, briefings and presentations. We Malaysians often mispronounce words-not surprising, given the standard of English spoken by many these days.

If we wish to communicate effectively and successfully in this ‘global village’ of ours, do make it a habit to learn the correct pronunciation of one or two words a day. Think of what you will achieve in a year! Fluency in words makes us stand apart from the mediocrity of those who do ignore the challenge to do better. It gives us the “winning edge” whenever we speak.

Test yourselves with how these words should be pronounced:

alias, continue, comparable, economic, garage, industry, initiative, penalty, love. motor.

Anyone with a 10/10?

PAUSE

“The right word may be effective, but no word was as ever effective as a rightly – timed pause” (Mark Twain).

Using pause is a skill. It has the effect of:

• drawing back the attention of the listener to you,
• making the attentive listener anticipate what is to come,
• doing away with non – words like the “umms” and ‘errs”, which have reached pandemic levels today.
• creating space for the listener to assimilate what is being said.
• giving the speaker a precious moment to breathe and prepare what is to be  said next.
• An outstanding speaker who, I believe, has mastered the art of pause is  former President Obama. Listen to his inauguration speech or any of his presidential addresses and you will find his masterful use of pause.  Professional speakers, TM World Championship Speakers and those we hear on TED Talks all use the pause for power deliveries.

Practice your delivery and be mindful of the need to pause. In time this will come naturally and add to your power delivery skills.

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