Listen Up By Susan Tomai, Founder, Oratorio
Great communicators are also great listeners. Before you start giving advice, the best thing you can do for your clients is to listen - really listen - and hear what they want to say and achieve.
I’m a great believer in the “get to know you” conversation at the start of a media training or presentation training session. Rather than getting right down to business with the training (which is what some clients expect given their busy schedules) I prefer to just let the client talk for a few minutes first. When they let their guard down, when they’re relaxed and being themselves, we glean a wealth of helpful information about messaging and performance style that makes the rest of the training session much more personalized and time-efficient.
I can’t tell you how often we’ve been in a training session with a client and a senior comms director will say “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.” What they don’t realize is that the show already started with the first handshake.