Crowns & Roses
Learn Your Communication Skills
Convincing yourself in no uncertain terms that you are capable of winning a pageant is the first step towards winning a crown. We spoke about it in the last issue. Presuming that you have done that successfully and can clearly visualize yourself holding that bunch of flowers, wearing that crown, beaming that 100 crore smile while the press is hounding you, let’s get on to the next step.
Across the world today the realization has set in that irrespective of what field you work in, the one single core skill that you must have is the ability to communicate. Great communication skills can take you anywhere, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that. All we humans are saleable commodities. We are constantly trying to sell ourselves to someone, to our parents, our friends, our employers, those we do business with, our partners in love, and anyone else we need something from. If that be the case, like every good product, we’ve got to have great packaging, because that tells the world what to expect from inside the box. The product is us, and the way we communicate is our packaging.
Communication does not mean just the ability to talk. That is just the verbal aspect of communication. Along with that, it is equally necessary and perhaps even more important to have what are known as non verbal skills. It is said that when two humans meet each other, they make impressions of each other in the first one minute. This first minute impression lasts for a long time. Fortunately, a bad first impression can be made better by displaying your other qualities, but that takes a long time, often a few months. And when we are talking of winning pageants, surely it is either that first impression or nothing.
Notice how most successful people and almost all major pageant winners have that ability to make that first good impression. They are capable of attracting you from the word go. Whether it is Sushmita Sen or Rahul Dev, there are certain qualities in their manner of communicating that display a certain warmth. These qualities have been carefully nurtured by them over the years and a good school, a cultured family and a conducive environment help develop these charms. If you want to become a big pageant winner or a movie star, these qualities are most important. Pay attention to Amitabh Bachchan or Aishwarya Rai talking on a TV interview, you will know what I mean. The good news is that almost everyone who lacks these skills is capable of learning them. All it needs is someone to tell you how, and your own perseverance. Ironically, a lot of contestants in pageants devote very little attention to this, although this should take up the maximum time in your preparation for the crown. You can lose weight, tone up your muscles, get your teeth straightened out or even get a nose job. All that doesn’t take much time. What takes time is learning to getting through to people, and there is no shortcut to that. You need to start now.
The first step is to understand the basics. Let’s look at the basic elements that you can improve in the way you communicate so that people get attracted when you first come face to face with them.
We’ll tackle your Verbal skills first. For whatever reason, English is the chosen language today, though it need not necessarily be. Many a Ms Universe or Ms World spoke their own national language and used the services of an interpreter. Even a Hindi speaking Ms India contestant in 2000 used an interpreter in her preliminaries and question/ answer rounds, and reached the last 5. She lost out when she broke into English in the final question. She could well have become the first non-English speaking Miss
The second important skill is to be able to speak without the unnecessary fillers that most people use. While talking, if we can’t remember the right word to say, we often tend to fill that moment with some kind of a sound like ‘er’…. or ‘ah’ …… or ‘uhm’. We even have our own favorite words that we use too often to fill up these moments, words such as ‘you know’, or ‘like’, or ‘and all’. These unnecessary fillers take away from the main communication and make you sound like someone who does not have total control. The listener’s subconscious impression of you, therefore, is of someone who cannot be relied upon. Become aware of your fillers and get rid of them. You will thank yourself.
In the next issue, we shall talk about some exercises you can do to get rid of these extraneous sounds. Till then, get on the job, make up that list of attractive power words and start using them in your everyday conversation. The crown is closer than you think.
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