I’ve travelled a lot by train recently. Inevitably on these journeys I end up over-hearing other people on their phones. Sometimes this is because they shout so loudly down them that I’m not convinced the phone is actually necessary at all – for all I can tell the person involved is actually audible back in their office, directly!<\/p>\n
Something struck me, however, as I listened to people calling later and later at night: I’m convinced it wasn’t because they were simply getting more and more tired but rather because more and more of them were calling an empty office, staffed only by an ansa-phone machine.<\/p>\n
Instantly they realised this, their whole approach to talking changed.<\/p>\n
Their voices shifted from interesting, animated, personable and varied to a terrible monotone. Obviously the machine on the far end of the phoneline won’t care – but don’t forget that it’s not a machine that listens to these messages ultimately… it’s a person. (It might be worthwhile thinking about that as you leave messages with prospective employers etc… :) ).<\/p>\n
What this reminded me of, as I sat there, stupified by the effects of three days in London, was that unless people are talking to people<\/strong>, they’re boring – perhaps they become less animated\/interesting in the belief that such a voice will be more clear and easy to understand, I don’t know. (If that’s the case, call me, I can help you!) Perhaps it’s just a reflexive thing as we talk to ourselves… again I don’t know.<\/p>\n What I do<\/strong> know, however, is that if you don’t establish a relationship with the audience at your presentation you’ll believe yourself to be speaking to no one, or to a machine and if that happens you may well find yourself sounding more and more boring. Certainly it would explain the many, many speakers I’ve heard who were so boring I wanted to die (and the few who were so boring I wanted them to die! :) ). As they failed to establish any personal relationships for their presentation they fell back on their “ansa-phone voice”.<\/p>\n Please, please, please… as you make your presentations, remember not to talk at<\/strong> me, but talk to<\/strong> me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve travelled a lot by train recently. Inevitably on these journeys I end up over-hearing other people on their phones. Sometimes this is because they shout so loudly down them that I’m not convinced the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-personal-blog-related"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}