8 ways to show speaking skills in a meeting
Careers are often enhanced, or blunted, in business meetings. Do you sound like someone on his way up -- or on his way out? How you come across as a meeting participant can be pivotal. The skills involved in getting your point across are not vastly different than those of a keynote speaker giving a speech to a meeting group. "Just because the spotlight isn''t shining directly on you doesn''t mean that you can''t be seen," says Susanne Gaddis, a Chapel Hill, N.C., speech coach and communications authority. Like public speaking, the art of effective business-meeting communication is very much a learnable skill. Here are eight important, yet often overlooked, tips on speaking well as a meeting participant. 1. Keep it upbeat. Speech tips and body language aside, nothing is more critical to constructive give-and-take in a meeting than emphasizing the upside. Rather than criticizing, stay focused on the implicit value of what someone else says. It''s...