Ignite Your Confidence with Karen Laos

How to become a Clear, Compelling and Credible Communicator

Episode Notes

What is the best way to influence and get buy-in when you’re speaking to others, be it a big audience or small, conference room or boardroom, peer meetings or executive meetings? We all want to come across in a way that moves our listeners to action, show up with confidence, and get what we want. Use these tips to persuade in the best way possible.

  1. Be Clear: Get to the point, use the BLUF principle: Bottom Line Up Front, and don’t ramble on and get off on tangents.
  2. Be Compelling: Speak with authority, use vocal variety, tell stories, use examples and data points to grab your audience’s attention.
  3. Be Credible: Avoid using filler words like “um” and “ah.” and pause to show control and calm. Avoid “upspeak,” which is when you speak with a question mark rather than a period. Make sure to use punctuation - exactly like you do in the written word.

Listen for examples and more stories to demonstrate these principles.

Some resources for you:

My book “Trust Your Own Voice”: https://karenlaos.com/book/

Episodes also available on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEwQoTGdJX5eME0ccBKiKng/videos