EBI Leadership and Character Development116 Communication Skills Notes

116 Communication Skills Notes
How to Develop Integrity and Multiply your Ministry
Building the Need for the Course
Thanks for joining us for this special course on communication skills. As we invest in these 14 sessions together you will leave equipped to listen and communicate more effectively.
We want this course to have real-life value that truly transforms your life and relationships to live a life of authenticity, connection, joy, meaning, and significance, and spiritual victory.
In this course you will learn about the transformational habits of listening and understanding what people mean by the words they use.
Casting the Vision of the Future
This world needs your talents, your passion, and your faith.
By the time you complete this course, we see you sharing what you have learned and helping others find faith, hope, love, and purpose using internet blogs, Facebook, Social media, Twitter, and YouTube.
Explaining the Rationale for the course and its design
This is a strategic course to master. This course incorporates accelerated learning techniques.
First, this course retrains your brain to read for comprehension by asking you to articulate key ideas and applications rather than merely searching for an answer.
Second, this course encourages you to strengthen your long-term memory of key applications by reviewing for two exams.
Third, this course will multiply your ministry by including a speech to develop your writing skills in ways that will improve your leadership.
Every detail in this course in intentionally designed for life transformation (Romans 12:2). It is about passing on what you are learning to the next generation (2 Timothy 2:2). Your professor is here as a facilitator who will guide your discussion and application of this session’s portfolio assignments. To get the most out of this course complete the portfolio before class.
Providing the Context: We are in the midst of a spiritual battle
Ministry skills is the multiplication of transformation. Once you have biblical knowledge and Christian character, you need to develop communication skills. Your task as a leader is to apply the eternal Word of God to the lives of people. This means you need to understand people—to listen to their hopes, dreams, fears, struggles, motivations, personality, perspectives, and gender differences. As a leader you need to become both a creative thinker and a critical thinker based on the Word of God.
YouTube Introduction - Music
TobyMac – Speak Life
Visual
Applications for Leaders from How to Have that Difficult Conversation
1 / What are the key applications in “The Talk Can Change Your Life”?
2 / What are the key applications in “The Benefits of a Good Conversation”?
3 / What are the key applications in “Be Emotionally Present”?
4 / What are the key applications in “Be Clear about ‘You’ and ‘I’”?
5 / What are the key applications in “Clarify the Problem”?
6 / What are the key applications in “Balance Grace and Truth”?
7 / What are the key applications in “Affirm and Validate”?
8 / What are the key applications in “Avoid the word “Should””?
9 / What are the key applications in “Be Specific”?
10 / What are the key applications in “Telling People What You Want”?
11 / What are the key applications in “Making Someone Aware of a Problem”?
12 / What are the key applications in “Stopping a Behavior”?
13 / What are the key applications in “Dealing with Blame, Counterattack, and Other Problems”?
Applications for Leaders from Messages: The Communications Skills Book
1 / Messages: What are the key applications in “Listening”?
2 / What are the key applications in “Self-Disclosure”?
3 / What are the key applications in “Expressing”?
4 / What are the key applications in “Body Language”?
5 / What are the key applications in “Meta-messages”?
6 / What are the key applications in “Hidden Agendas”?
7 / What are the key applications in “Transactional Analysis”?
8 / What are the key applications in “Clarifying Language”?
9 / What are the key applications in “Assertiveness Training”?
10 / What are the key applications in “Fair Fighting”?
11 / What are the key applications in “Negotiation”?
12 / What are the key applications in “Couples Skills”?
13 / What are the key applications in “Family Communications”?
14 / What are the key applications in “Influencing Others”?
Applications for Leaders from Listening and Caring Skills
1 / Messages: What are the key applications in “Paraphrase”?
2 / What are the key applications in “Productive Questions”?
3 / What are the key applications in “Perception Check”?
4 / What are the key applications in “Expressing of Feelings and Emotions”?
5 / What are the key applications in “Fogging”?
6 / What are the key applications in “Negative Inquiry”?
7 / What are the key applications in “Behavior Description”?
8 / What are the key applications in “Story Listening”?
9 / What are the key applications in “Story Polarization Listening”?
10 / What are the key applications in “Life Commandments”?
11 / What are the key applications in “The Linguistic Bridge”?

How to create a mood in public speaking

I’ll be giving away some speechwriting secrets today. In particular, how to create a mood with your words. It’s not just about meaning. Or even body language.
A team of psychologists and phoneticists based in Germany has tested the effects that vowel sounds have on our moods. And it turns out that “I” sounds (“hi”) generate positive moods and “O” sounds (“oh-no”) generate negative ones.
So far so good – and straightforward enough. The implication is that you can create a positive mood by using a lot of the former sounds and a negative mood with a lot of the latter.
But the researchers kept going, and the further results are a bit more complicated. It turns out that the way we screw up our faces when we make “I” sounds or “O” sounds also creates the same positive and negative moods.
So whether or not you’re making any sound, your facial expressions help determine your moods, and your reaction to things. Of course, we think it’s the other way around, because we don’t like to imagine that our bodies are in charge of our thoughts, but that’s what the neuroscience shows.
Speakers who want to induce positive or negative moods in their audiences should use plenty of I or O sounds accordingly. Or they could just get their audiences chanting I or O sounds, so that their facial muscles induce the same feelings.
The point is that you need to be sensitive to the sounds you’re making when you’re telling a story or relating some key points in your speech. Use I sounds if you want audiences to react positively, and O sounds if you want the reverse.
And if you want your audience to feel really great, get them chanting something like, “Yes, I can!.”
Once again, the research reminds us of the importance of body language in the creation of emotion and attitude. Body language both helps determine emotion and signals to us what we’re feeling. So speakers need to become aware of their own body language to ensure that it’s sending out the desired messages – and watch the body language of the audience to see how the speaker is coming across.
The complicated and mysterious dance of human emotion and its physical expression is gradually revealing itself to neuroscientists. It’s a wonderful time to be a speaker – we’re getting new ways to think about speaker and new ways to optimize our relationships with audiences – every day.

How to Use the Tricolon in Public Speaking

How to use the tricolon in public speaking

John Gray’s Communication Skills

How to Read Body Language

Five Methods:
Understanding Body Language
Reading Power Cues
Reading Attraction Cues
Reading Relational Cues
Reading Emotional Cues

Ten Tips from Abraham Lincoln on Writing a Speech

If you ever have to give a speech, unless you’re an accomplished public speaker, it’s often best to write your speech beforehand. Be prepared. And don’t just write a plain, boring old speech that anyone else can give any day of the week — make it a speech that will be listened to and remembered.
  1. Keep it short. Every year, Congress is forced to listen to the President give his State of the Union Address for more than an hour. Lincoln’s speech followed a two-hour oration by Edward Everett that was 13,607 words long. Lincoln’s speech, by contrast, lasted for two minutes, and was 10 sentences (or 272 words) long. But it was much more powerful. Capture the key emotions and ideas you want to convey in as little time as possible. If you can deliver a two-minute speech, instead of a 30-minute droner, your audience will actually listen, and will love your for your brevity.

  1. Abandon the formalities. The President usually starts his State of the Union Address by acknowledging all the dignitaries, and thanking a million people. Many other speakers make this same mistake, and ruin their speeches. By the time you’re done acknowledging and thanking everyone, you’ve lost your audience. Go right into the meat of the issue, and your audience will pay attention. Lincoln skipped any kind of intro and began with the key to his speech.

  1. Have purpose. Don’t just get up to speak and make yourself sound good or your organization look good. Speak to communicate a message, and to get your audience to act. Lincoln did this by galvanizing his Union’s purpose and resolve to win a war for the ideals of the forefathers of the United States.

  1. Connect to your audience’s hearts. A speech is not a logical argument, or a listing of accomplishments or facts or events. Lincoln knew his audience, and spoke to their emotions, by showing them that the men who died on the battlefield of Gettysburg did so for certain ideals, and asking them to ensure that those men did not die in vain.

  1. Speak to larger truths. While it isn’t best to be too grandiose, especially if you are speaking to small audience like your child’s 2nd grade class on career day, it’s best if you connect your ideas and words to larger causes and ideals, as Lincoln did when he connected the cause of the Union to the ideals of liberty and equality conceived by the forefathers of the nation.

  1. Speak to the larger audience. When you give a speech, ideally, it’s not just to those before you. Lincoln knew that the Gettysburg address was not really addressed to the audience before him, but to the nation as a whole (and perhaps to history). But his short little speech was reprinted across the nation, and it had an effect on many people. This happens today — speeches by Steve Jobs, for example, are not just for the audience at the conference, but to the entire world. Think about how your speech will affect a greater audience, and what message you want to convey to them. With the Internet, your speech can be communicated to many others.

  1. Use imagery. Lincoln used imagery for birth and life and death — “conceived” and “brought forth” and “perish”. It is important to do more than use bland words, but to create a picture in people’s minds through your words. The imagery, of course, should be related to your central theme.

  1. Recall more famous lines. Lincoln opened his speech with a line from a more famous (at that time) document, the Declaration of Independence (“that all men are created equal”). The reference brings with it many ideas and emotions associated with the Declaration of Independence and the men who signed it. Other famous lines that could be referenced include the Bible, Shakespeare, poetry, songs, books, other speeches. The references bring a lot more with them than just the phrase or quote you use, if your audience is familiar with it.

  1. Revise, revise, revise. Lincoln wrote several versions of his speech before settling on the final version. Each revision should cut out the unnecessary, develop the central idea, make the words flow more smoothly, and powerful develop imagery and phrases.

  1. End strong. Lincoln ended the Gettysburg Address with the line “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” And that line went down in history. End with a line people will remember, that contains the message you want them to remember, because, aside from the opening, it’s the most important line.

Ten Reasons Why People Who Read Books Are More Likely to be Successful

Reading is the pathway to success and fulfillment. While simply being an avid reader does not ensure success, successful people are assuredly avid readers. And all of successful people have the following traits in common.
1. They have increased focus
Successful people are able to focus on one task for an elongated period of time. Anyone who’s read Atlas Shrugged can tell you reading isn’t a quick process. It’s also not a singular process. Readers take breaks, naturally, but the most avid reader simply cannot put a book down for longer than a day after they’ve dove into it. Successful people feel the same way about any task they set out to do.
2. They set goals
Along with focus, readers set goals for themselves whenever they sit down with a good book. Whether setting out to read a specific amount of pages before moving on to another activity, or deciding to read until a certain concept is solidified in their mind, readers actively try to accomplish something whenever they open a text. Successful people set goals for just about every moment of their life, and continue working toward the goal until they surpass it.
3. They spend time wisely
They might only have 20 minutes before they have to be somewhere, but instead of seeing “only 20 minutes” as not enough time to get anything done, they see it as 20 minutes that can be spent reading. Successful people view their time as incredibly valuable, and seize every opportunity they have to learn something new, or accomplish a goal. Readers realize that 5 wasted minutes every day over the course of a year is more than an entire 24 hours wasted that could have been spent reading.
4. They have perspective
Successful people are able to see all angles of an issue, because they have read a variety of literature from various perspectives. Being an avid reader allows you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, if only for a moment; but once that moment’s over, you remember the experience for the rest of your life.
5. They are reflective
In addition to gaining perspective, readers are reflective about what they have read. While gaining perspective allows a person to see from the other side of the fence, being reflective allows them the opportunity to understand how they can be productive with their new-found perspective. Successful people see reading not as the simple act of staring at words on a page. They understand the profound effect that consuming a text can have on the mind, and how books can change a person’s life.
6. They have incredible writing and speaking skills
It’s no surprise that the greatest orators in human history have all been enthusiastic about reading. Successful people draw inspiration from their role models, and utilize this inspiration to further their cause. From Demosthenes, to Lincoln, to Nelson Mandela, people who remain cemented in history became such passionate speakers by studying the great minds before them.
7. They have increased memory
Readers understand just how powerful the brain really is. It can hold almost an unlimited capacity of information. The more you read and learn, the easier it becomes to retain information. Successful people continue to learn, and commit an incredible expanse of knowledge to memory, sometimes without even realizing it.
8. They stay fresh
Great readers also see the brain as a muscle that needs to be worked. Just like going to the gym every day keeps your arms and legs in shape, reading keeps your mind sharp and able to easily retain knowledge. Successful people exercise their mind on a daily basis through reading and other methods such as crossword puzzles and brain teasers. Successful people habitually create challenges to overcome, which in turn improves their minds’ capability to solve increasingly larger problems every day.
9. They are educated and informed
Successful people rise to the top because they have spent their time on earth learning. When they pick up a book, they don’t do so just to finish it, but to take something away from it. Reading textbooks was never just a school assignment to be completed, but was a chance to expand their knowledge even further. Even while reading fictional novels, successful people take with them life lessons that they carry with them forever.
10. They read to relax
Even the most successful people need to tune out the world every once in a while. But this doesn’t mean they turn their minds off completely. Reading just about anything is more beneficial than watching television. Again, successful people value every minute of their time, and even in their most idle moments they still strive to improve. And there’s no better way to chill out while keeping yourself fresh than with a good book.

Dale Carnegie’s Communication Skills