The author of this article | Take off without flowers
Please read with these questions in mind
If you were to speak in public, how would you be prepared to introduce yourself?
When you are attending an event and you are suddenly asked to express your thoughts, from what directions will you prepare?
Have you ever encountered an impromptu speech scene? How did you overcome your nervousness?
Conversation, like composition, has a theme, an abdominal draft, a hierarchy, a head and a tail, and cannot be incoherent.
—Liang Shiqiu
Starting today, we're going to address those tense and exciting communication scenarios that may also become our "highlight moments." The impromptu statements discussed in this article are a typical example.
You accompany the leader to inspect the supplier, visit the factory, and listen to the other party's briefing. At this time, the boss suddenly stopped you: "Come, you say two words, talk about today's harvest." "When you encounter this kind of unexpected roll call, and you have to improvise in front of dozens of people on the scene, your brain is definitely a blank."
But in this case, there are also people who can talk about their gains and insights. This will give the people around you a very intuitive feeling: "That's great! You can say it so well without a little preparation. ”
Ah, that's our biggest misconception about improvisation — improvisation equals unpreparedness.
Does improvisation equal unpreparedness? Of course not. Those speeches that seem sudden and wonderful to you are actually "prepared". For example, if you and your leader invite an important customer to dinner, there are only three of you in total, and you can't be silent the whole time. So do you think in advance, what do you want to say when you meet with customers today? Although it is still unknown whether the leader will need you to speak at the dinner table, you must prepare yourself.
The so-called impromptu statements are just statements that do not fall on paper. In these scenarios, you have to manage your attention at any time, but also continue to think about the relevance of a certain issue discussed to you, and even simplify the "preparation action" to take some notes In the above example of visiting suppliers, if you take notes, then when you are suddenly named by the leader, you can directly take out the notebook and say: "I have gained a lot today, and I have taken a lot of notes, which is..." This is actually a very perfect impromptu statement.
But you may say: "Although we have this consciousness and have prepared in advance, when we are suddenly named, it is inevitable that the brain will be short-circuited and the mouth will be stuck." "In fact, this situation can be resolved through skills and practice.
The trick is to buy time: usually you don't need to be the first to speak (unless your status is particularly high), and when you see other people getting up and talking about their feelings, you should combine their statements with their own ideas and make a belly draft. If you are really not ready, you can also follow up with the sentence: "Thanks, I digest and digest first, let the two of them speak first." "Buy yourself some time with these kind words."
The exercise is to try more in small occasions: if you feel that it is a little difficult to improvise at the company's annual meeting, you can first "force" yourself to pick up a glass of wine and say a toast at a small class reunion. Fight for such opportunities for yourself, practice repeatedly until desensitization, you can break through this psychological barrier.
After recognizing that impromptu speech can be prepared and practiced in advance, let's look at what an impromptu speech is made of. It consists of a universal beginning and a feeling or action plan that can be unfolded. Let's take it apart and elaborate:
Impromptu speech = universal beginning + talk about feelings/talk about actions
Action One: Prepare a universal beginning
If your job requires frequent outreach and dealing with different people, it's important to prepare a one-size-fits-all beginning for your impromptu speech. First of all, the beginning of the universal can be repeatedly polished, ensuring that there is a play in one mouth. More importantly, through pre-preparation, it will become your subconscious expression without the need to expend additional mental effort, thus helping you overcome the tension. As for how this universal beginning should be organized, as you may have guessed, it can first be a self-introduction.
There is a big difference between introducing myself when preparing to make an impromptu speech and the method we mentioned in the "ice-breaking" section - ice-breaking is a face-to-face interaction scene, and when I introduce myself as a person, I usually hand over my business card or exchange contact information with the other party, and the information provided by self-introduction is relatively simple. However, in impromptu speeches, our self-introduction often plays a role in driving the atmosphere and attracting the attention of the audience, so the preparation method must also be changed accordingly.
Take myself as an example. Because of my work, I often participate in various seminars and exchanges, and I also meet many scholars and university teachers. In a scenario like this, here's how I introduce myself:
Hello everyone, it's a pleasure to meet you. My name is No Flowers. This is a flower name, from a very old martial arts novel "Ping Trace Hero Video", people who know this novel are probably my peers, we are post-70s or pre-85s.
That's right, first of all, unite the post-70s. I'll say next:
She is a less important supporting actress in "Ping's Shadow", but I like this character very much because it is characterized by decisiveness and bravery.
So far, I have introduced my name and the information it contains. I emphasize that Debuhua is a decisive and brave martial arts character who is actively managing the other party's impression of me. In the future, when the other party deals with me, they can look at me with this label. After completing this step, we can jump from name introduction to identity introduction:
I come from Get, a lifelong learning app. Some of the teachers present may know, and some teachers may not know much. Teachers who don't know much are that we don't do our job properly, and we continue to work hard to serve you as soon as possible. We got the app — we've been doing something that's really high-quality knowledge from teachers, reproducting it digitally, and then giving so many people who don't have the opportunity to study at such a good university as you do, but who are self-motivated, can also enjoy the feast of knowledge. Essentially getting an app is doing one of those things.
This is the case for me myself. Although I am working on a lifelong learning app, some teachers may not know that I do not even have a high school diploma, and I am a person with no college education. I definitely did not expect that in this life, I would have the opportunity to sit with all the teachers and listen to such a high-level lecture, and I would actually have the opportunity to speak. So I said, this is the most learner-friendly era.
This is an introduction to my identity. When I introduced the app, I didn't use any black words, and everyone understood what our company was doing. Moreover, I exposed the privacy of "I did not go to college" An impromptu speech is usually a one-to-many scene, and everyone's psychological distance is relatively far; and we take the initiative to "expose" an innocuous privacy, which will give each other a sense of control and superiority, and everyone's distance will suddenly become closer.
In addition to the above-mentioned universal openings, which are often used in seminars, I have prepared another form of opening for those occasions with larger numbers:
Ladies and gentlemen, I say two words, I am a Shandong person, and our values in Onion Province are different from others.
At this time, someone below began to laugh, and I continued to say solemnly:
The level of all the speakers today is very high, but we Shandong people praise a person's high level, not to praise how advanced you are, nor to praise how good you are. The highest praise we Shandong people have for people is called reality. To say that this person is particularly realistic includes positive words such as high level, dry speech, and action ability. Just now the organizer asked me to talk about my current feelings, to be honest, my feelings are these two words, today's event is real.
In fact, this is also by exposing a little privacy, while getting closer to the people on the scene, it compliments the organizers.
This is the one-size-fits-all opening I designed for two occasions I attend frequently. When you are preparing to introduce yourself to different scenes, you should pay special attention to the following two points.
First, don't label negatively. For example, introduce yourself like this: "Hello everyone, my surname is Zhou, which is the week when everyone doesn't want to go to work on Monday." You can't let people mention your name and think of negative information. It's quite possible to say, "I'm a weekend week that everyone loves." Or: "A week of perseverance and repetition." ”
Second, do not add redundant information. Introduce yourself to simplify the other person's memory of you, not to increase the burden of the other person's memory. Suppose my colleague Lu Yuming introduces himself to you like this: "Hello everyone, my name is Lu Yuming, the deer of the sika deer, the universe of Yu, and then Xiaoming you go out ming." After you listen to this passage, you will definitely mutter: "I don't want to hear you say so much, your name is not so important to me." ”
In fact, he introduced himself this way: "My name is Lu Yuming. The name is not particularly easy to remember, everyone remembers that I am Lu Han's deer. When a rough old man says, "I am Lu Han's deer," everyone present will smile and remember the core information of the last name.
In addition to introducing ourselves to begin an impromptu speech, we can also master another way: by praising a detail, we can make a good start in the scene of improvisation.
For example, if you, as a participant in an event, want to show your kindness to the organizers of the event, you can praise one of the details of the organizer's work when you speak. Let me give you an example of what i saw with my own eyes, when a particularly famous economist spoke at a conference:
Special thanks to the organizers of today's conference, because I have participated in so many conferences, this is the first time I have seen two bottles of mineral water in front of everyone, one bottle of ice and one bottle of room temperature. From this considerate detail, I feel that the organizers have given us a very high degree of attention and courtesy for this meeting.
This is the beginning of a compliment detail. While initiating a dialogue with the organizers, it pointed out their meticulous preparations and conveyed goodwill. Of course, this was a common experience of the audience, and he also completed the work of warming up.
As you can imagine, preparing for such a beginning is more difficult than preparing to introduce yourself. It is not a fixed routine and speech, but a speech structure, and we have to replace the content filled in the structure according to the actual situation on the spot. As mentioned above, the organizer prepares two bottles of mineral water, which is a specific detail at that time and place.
But you might ask, "Why praise these seemingly inconsequential details in an impromptu speech scene?" ”
Think back to the big and small events you've been to in the past: the organizers' efforts in the preparation are hidden in seemingly insignificant details. If you find them and express them, the other person will feel that their efforts have not been in vain, and they will appreciate your understanding. But if you start with polite words like "Today's meeting was particularly successful," it would seem perfunctory and uninteresting.
A true communication master, the rhetoric is not necessarily gorgeous, and the speech is not necessarily inflammatory, but he can make the other party feel, "I am opposite this person, understand me." In fact, the top communication is achieved by "I understand" and "you know". Therefore, we need to consciously train our ability to capture details so that we can convey the idea of "I understand you" to the other party.
Action Two: Talk about feelings/talk about actions
If our universal beginning is carefully polished, then saying these few words can often bring the atmosphere of the scene up. Of course, this also bought some time for the next statement to think about what to say at a time. What are the precautions?
Leaving aside the content of the speech, we must first control the length of the speech and do not talk at length. Impromptu speech is just a "hot field" part of the formal flow of the meeting. Speakers should not over-represent, but should bring the attention of participants to the main line as soon as possible after completing the task of setting off the atmosphere. Our speech duration is about 3 minutes, so small impromptu speeches are very welcome. Don't underestimate these 3 minutes, unless you speak very slowly, in general, 3 minutes can already speak five or six hundred words. Well, there is not a lot of information.
But you might say, "I think I only spoke for 5 minutes, and then I came down and looked at my watch and found that there were more than twenty minutes." "A lot of leaders are like that, right?" At first, he modestly said that he only spoke four, and it turned out that each one had dozens of sentences. When encountering such speakers, everyone is very helpless and bored. This is actually a question of whether there is a "sense of time". A sense of time can be cultivated through training. For example, if you usually read to the timer after writing other manuscripts, you can actually feel how long 3 minutes are and how much content you can say. With diligent training, you will have a clearer perception of time.
And after we control the length of speech, we will find that a lot of content is not described in the law. Therefore, we are going to conduct a round of screening of the content of the speech. I've summarized two types of topics that are appropriate to talk about in this time frame: one is related to feelings, and the other is related to actual action. "Stressing the void" to talk about feelings, and "stressing the truth" to grasp implementation.
Let's start with topics related to feelings. We know that after some people have spoken, we can pick up the phrase "Let me make a comment". After others have spoken, we can only pick up "Let me talk about feelings." The former is common in scenes where leaders reply to subordinates, while the latter is common
Scenes where subordinates respond to leadership. In the improvisational scenario, I think it's safest to talk about feelings because it can show the humility of a speaker.
"I am very excited today", "I am very inspired today", "I am particularly touched today", etc., are all topics related to feelings. It does not require any action to fully express the affirmation. We can see how the topics related to the feeling can be expressed through a real scene, and what is the optimization space.
One day, a girl goes to her best friend's wedding. We all know that weddings have a tradition of bouquets, and whoever receives the bouquet thrown by the bride is the next happy bride. But at this wedding, the bride did not throw a bouquet of flowers, but directly handed the flowers to the girl. You see, the bride was very proactive, and she risked offending other girls by preparing a sincere blessing for this classmate.
After being invited to the stage by the host, the girl said something like this: "Hello everyone, I am so-and-so, thank you very much for this blessing for me, I don't know when I can marry myself in the future." I don't know what to say, but I wish the couple a long time! ”
This is an impromptu statement of "talking about feelings", specifically "talking about serendipity". Afterwards, the girl who received the bouquet came to me for help. She felt that her performance that day was not good enough, and asked me how I would optimize my impromptu speech if I had another chance.
When we are away from the noisy scene of the wedding, away from the hot spotlights and the eyes of strangers, calm down and think about it, we will realize that there is a lot of room for optimization of this statement.
The biggest problem in this statement is the sentence "I don't know when I will be able to marry myself in the future." Of course, we know that receiving a bouquet does not really mean that you can really become the next bride, but there is no denying that it is a good blessing, and there is no need to follow a big truth after receiving such a blessing, which will make it appear that the bride is doing a meaningless thing.
We can try to help this girl do an optimization:
Thank you very much, and it is also a great honor to receive such a precious bridal bouquet, I am the bride's girlfriend of more than ten years. Instead of following tradition and throwing out bouquets, the bride gave them directly to me, and she fouled herself in order to deliver my greatest blessing. You can see from this action what a kind and warm-hearted girl the bride is. I want everyone and family today to love this bride who shines both inside and out. She deserves the greatest happiness in the world. In order to reassure the bride and go to live a good life with her groom, from today onwards, I set myself a small goal: live seriously, work hard, and be as happy as the bride and groom as soon as possible!
In this way, the blessings of the bride are steadily received into her own hands. At the same time, we can "reinforce" a technique we talked about earlier, and praise others more by chasing the light: impromptu speech on such occasions should not revolve around "me, me, me". Remembering your own identity, you put the light on someone else (in this case, the bride).
This is the optimized way to talk about feelings in an impromptu speech. In addition, I personally recommend talking about practical actions in impromptu speeches and grasping implementation. For example, in your impromptu statement, you put it like this: "I went to this event today, go back and do what I want to do." "People will realize that you really listened to today's discussion, and you really think that the people you met today and what happened are related to you. Therefore, this kind of implementation statement is easy to impress others.
For another example, suppose you listen to Professor Feng Xue's lecture on "Lifestyle Medicine" from Fuwai Hospital, and Teacher Feng asks you to talk about your feelings after the sharing. You can start by throwing out the prepared universal beginning and then saying, "I was very rewarding after listening to this lecture. Starting tomorrow, I will start my own 21-day healthy eating plan, follow Mr. Feng's guidance for 21 days, and then I will report to Mr. Feng. ”
Ms. Feng will definitely be very happy to hear such a speech, because she feels that the knowledge she has passed on has really affected you. It is conceivable that the more specific this implementation is, the greater the impact on the other party and the more successful your statement will be.
The material for the speech came from the scene
We learned ways to talk about feelings and actions in a few specific cases, and now there is a question that needs to be solved: where should the material for improvisational speech be obtained?
I'm sure you've heard statements like this at some of the events, "Teacher, what you said today inspired me so much that I thought of the last time I went to an event at Harvard..." This is a typical example of a mistake. In just 3 minutes of speech time, it is very good to explain the situation on the spot, why should you blindly participate in other activities?
Any material for improvisational speech, including the feelings we convey and the actions we will take in the future, should come from the scene. This is the best way to express gratitude to event organizers and guests. Leave the scene aside and discuss things outside the scene, everyone will feel "are you dissatisfied with this activity?"
So, how do you find one piece of material for improvisational speech from so many things that happened on the spot?
I think that if you pay attention to the environment on the spot, you will definitely find some special phenomena that are different from the norm, and they can become the material for speaking. For example, it is said: "In the past, when participating in this kind of activity, experts like our teachers must have spoken casually and were not prepared." Today, our teacher actually wrote the speech in earnest, so serious, so emotional. ”
This is a special phenomenon related to guests. Of course, the event venue, the activity process, that is, a special phenomenon related to the organizer, can also become the material for our impromptu speech: "Generally participating in this kind of activity is tall, in the auditorium, I did not expect that your organizer brought us to the factory." It is very interesting to hold this event on such a grounded occasion. "Generally speaking, when participating in such forums, the leaders speak first and set the tone. I didn't expect that the leaders didn't speak from the beginning to the end today, so that everyone could speak freely. ”
In this way, while we grasped the structure of the speech, we also learned the method of obtaining speech material from the scene. The impromptu speech that once left us helpless became our "highlight moment."
Go up the ladder: how to overcome tension
Improvisational speech is a problem that everyone who is suddenly named and ignorant of standing up will face. I've summarized a few small ways to overcome nervousness, and repeated exercises can help you complete mental desensitization.
First of all, don't rush to speak, you have to steady yourself before you speak - the organizer suddenly asks you to speak, you can actually turn the notebook to two pages and then get up. It is a process of harmonizing breathing. And looking at the notebook before speaking will make you look very sincere. Or, you can say, "I'll stand up and tell everyone," and then turn around and move the chair back slightly. Don't underestimate this action, even if it is only a small movement, your tension will be much relieved.
Of course, if there are not many people on the scene, you can also say: "Everyone is looking at me with their heads twisted, I am very nervous." So, I went to the front and told everyone. "Taking a few steps forward can also help you stabilize your emotions a bit.
Second, you have to believe that in such an occasion, it is impossible for everyone to be indifferent to you, and there must be someone who will be interested in what you have to say. When you find that there is such a "friendly army" in the crowd, you don't need to speak to everyone, you can just speak to him. In fact, if someone looks at you very kindly and constantly nods their heads to give you feedback, you will gradually find the feeling of "one-on-one" speech, and the tension will naturally fade.
Some speakers, in order to overcome their tension, would speak to the children in the crowd. Because, no matter whether you talk about it well or badly, you must be confident in front of children and will not worry about them laughing at you. Of course, you can also practice with the person you are least nervous about on weekdays.
Finally, you should always remember that impromptu statements do not have to be long and excessive. That is one of the points we emphasized earlier: impromptu statements are made in a very short period of time. Delivering a feeling, setting off the atmosphere, expressing recognition of the others present, the task has been accomplished.
When you understand that improvisation is an instantaneous task like a flower, how can you still be nervous?
Flower sister gives you the key point
1. Impromptu speech is not unprepared speech, it cannot prepare a draft, but it must be "prepared for consciousness".
2. The most important principle of impromptu speech is to be short, 3 minutes, and completed within 500 words. The important thing is not to show your level, but to pass on your attitude.
3. You can improve your improvisational speech skills by taking notes and preparing for the universal beginning, etc.
4. There are two ways to unfold impromptu speech: one is to talk about fiction and talk about feelings, and the other is to talk about reality and talk about action. But no matter how it unfolds, the material for your speech must come from the scene, set off the atmosphere, and give others a show.
Transferred from the public account: material sharing sink