My Reality Check Bounced! - Jason Ryan Dorsey [31]
Even if your voice does not crack like mine did at age sixteen, improving your verbal signals will help you in our information society because language is the currency of information. If you can’t send a signal that gets the response you want or need, you’re as useful as fancy software that won’t install on your computer. The software may have cost you a bundle, but it’s of no value to you except as a paperweight.
To Send Verbal Signals That Get What You Want, Do Four Things
1. Choose your words carefully. In the English language there are approximately 961,958 words (according to languagemonitor.com). However, the average educated person has a vocabulary of about 14,000 words and uses about 2,000 in a week’s conversation. This is why most newspapers are written on an eighth-grade level. They must appeal to the widest audience possible. This tells me that a good vocabulary is a competitive advantage. How? The more words you understand, the more resources you can turn to for educating and inspiring yourself.
At the same time, there are few things more embarrassing than having all eyes in a crowded room fixed on you as you are making a critical presentation—only to use an important word incorrectly. For the rest of your presentation, your one vocabulary booboo may be the single thing people think about and ultimately remember. To fill the void in your vocabulary caused by playing too many videogames and sending thousands of text messages on your cell phone, all you need to do is learn one new word each day. The new word doesn’t have to be a huge word, just a word that you don’t already know. The larger your vocabulary, the easier it will be for you to join any conversation.
TO PLUG IN: Join a monthly book club. This will get you in the habit of reading different kinds of books and discussing them in a group setting. A book club will also introduce you to new people who can take your network in unexpected directions. Subscribe to a word-a-day mailing list, like the one provided free from www.merriam-webster.com, and have a new vocabulary word delivered daily to your in box.
2. Watch Your manners. Nothing repels me faster than rude people. This includes people who are not rude directly to me, but those I see showing a lack of respect toward another human being. I want nothing to do with them. Rude people often can’t see that disrespecting others only reveals their own lack of self-respect and maturity. Plus, they usually get what they give!
One of the most common mistakes young professionals make is being rude to people and co-workers who they think are low on the totem pole. Often the people with most menial jobs are also the ones most trusted in a company—they have keys to every office and can see the CEO whenever they want. Learn from those before you who ended up with egg on their face because of their arrogance. It’s a mistake to be rude to people simply because they don’t have a fancy title. You never know who they are related to, which boss they play cards with on weekends, or where else they might end up working.
You may be thinking, “But Jason, there’s no way the tough, get-it-done leaders on the cover of big-time news magazines got there by always being polite.” Sure, some of them are probably jerks, but the most successful leaders I know didn’t get there by cursing at clients or slamming doors on little old ladies. In fact, the higher their profile, the more likely they are to mind their manners. Why? The media loves showcasing few things more than people whose power has gone to their head and eventually their head gets so big it falls off! Mind your manners, so when you make the cover of a magazine it has only good things to report.
TO PLUG IN: Think before you speak: If it would offend your mom’s mom, don’t say it. And definitely don’t leave it on a voice mail!
3. Perfect Your presentation. My college career adviser told me that I had to have a great thirty-second commercial about myself.