Rhetoric training: How to give your words more weight

Rhetoric training begins in childhood. For example, who among you can still remember the puppet theater from your childhood? As varied and diverse as the plays were, the beginning was almost always the same:

Children, are you all here? Yes!!

What conclusions can we draw from this for our rhetoric training, leadership, and communication?

1. Step: Prepare for recording
2. Step: the content (the play)

Unfortunately, we often experience the exact opposite in our everyday work with our clients during (business) rhetoric training or leadership seminars:

• Meetings are held while half of the participants are busy with their cell phones or laptops (and not with the speaker or the actual meeting topic).
• In his presentation on the current business situation, the managing director informs all employees and showers himself and his colleagues with praise. Unfortunately, he fails to notice that the employees are (virtually) uninterested.
• During the initial meeting, the sales representative spends a long time informing the potential (new) customer about their own company—something that the customer is not interested in.

The examples have one thing in common: a lack of emotional receptiveness. Most people immediately focus on the content, i.e., the WHAT or the topic, when communicating. However, they pay too little attention to the emotional connection with their counterpart. It is clear that this topic has generally been neglected in everyday management and communication, which is why rhetoric training is so important.

Emotional receptivity is at least as important as content.

May we let you in on a secret about what makes our trainers in the leadership seminar different from other trainers? Take a guess. We only begin with the content (i.e., training on our leadership topics) once emotional access, or emotional receptivity, has been established across the board. And we do so consistently.

1. Step: Create emotional receptivity
2. Step: Content (in our case – Leading Simple)

We therefore interpret our role as leadership experts primarily as access architects (to build the bridge to emotional receptivity). Basically, as trainers in leadership seminars, workshops, and coaching, we are constantly active on both levels (receptivity and content) and ensure that both levels are kept as high as possible. This is comparable to a two-component adhesive: it only develops its full adhesive effect when both components are mixed together and are in the ideal ratio. Applied to emotional receptivity, this means that both emotional receptivity and content should be present in as high a degree as possible.

How do you do that? How do you implement that?

The following steps are important parts of rhetoric training, which will significantly increase your emotional receptiveness in everyday management situations:

1. Use of metaphors (figurative language):

Use lots of images and metaphors in your communication. We recommend that you prepare at least five metaphors for each new topic you introduce and use them as appropriate. Images are much easier to understand than complex formulations.

2. Use of (real) stories:

Use as many real stories as possible in your communication. By skillfully using these stories, you will be able to create an even greater emotional receptivity relatively quickly.

3. Ask questions:

Increase the proportion of questions for better business rhetoric. Make a conscious effort to ask lots of questions.

Benefits of emotional receptivity – how does it benefit you?

• Simpler and faster communication in business and everyday life
• Better results in leadership and sales
• Significantly fewer conflicts/misunderstandings
• Higher productivity (in meetings/workshops, etc.)
• Identification and commitment of employees, customers, etc.
• Even better customer relationships
• More fun and enjoyment

Another example based on a true story:

Mid-2017, a leadership seminar at a new client's premises in Düsseldorf: When we welcomed the participants to the seminar, we immediately noticed their "unfavorable" attitude towards the seminar. This was evident in their extreme irritability, detailed destructive test questions, and closed body language. If we had started with the content right away, the seminar would have been a complete failure (which the participants confirmed at the end of the seminar two days later). In our role as access architects and bridge builders to emotional receptivity, we addressed the "unfavorable" attitude. We wanted to understand what the origin was and why the seminar participants unanimously held this view.

During the discussion, it emerged that a member of the management team had sent the participants to the seminar with the following words: "You urgently need this leadership seminar. The way you have been leading and developing employees so far is disastrous. I don't need the seminar because I already do everything perfectly." Once we had addressed, understood, and acknowledged the origin of this attitude, the resistance virtually dissolved and we were able to get started with^{Leading Simple®} relatively quickly.

Image source: ©Pixabay