5 Ways To Become A More Effective Storyteller
The Amplified Impact Podcast
April 27th, 2023
On today’s episode, I’m pumped to dive into the topic of intentional communication, with a focus on public speaking.
Trust me, practicing can elevate your words, inflections, and gestures, ultimately shaping how you are perceived.
Plus, we’ll explore how effective communication can help conquer the fear of isolation and have a meaningful impact on the world.
I’ll be revealing five game-changing concepts for improving your communication style. From kicking filler words to the curb to using body language to project confidence… these tips will leave you feeling empowered and ready to take on any situation.
Tune in to learn how to make your communication skills soar.
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“Learn how to improve your communication skills, specifically speaking and public speaking, as it is essential in conveying messages effectively.” – Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
What’s up all you beautiful people? Welcome back to the podcast as always. I’m jazzed to have you here today. I want to talk about one of the most important skills I think everybody in the world should be working on, mastering, or at least improving, because this one skill pays massive dividends in every single area of your life.
And it’s a skill in particular that I haven’t spoken about a ton in terms of practical, tactical ways you can improve it. That skill that I’m going to talk about today is the skill of communication, or more specifically, the spoken word, or interpersonal communication or public speaking. There are a lot of ways that we can communicate. In previous episodes we’ve talked about the written word because as you guys know, I’m a writer, I’m a storyteller. I really like that form of communicating. But there is also what most people think of when it comes to communication, which is actually speaking to other humans, whether that’s one on one or one to many in like a group setting something maybe on a stage even. And I think everybody deep down they want to be better communicators because there’s nothing more frustrating than to tell a story and see people’s eyes glazing over, to see people looking off into the distance as they’re not even paying attention. They’re just not enraptured or to tell the punchline of the joke.
And then the person just kind of looks at you and they give you one of those condescending, polite smiles like, oh, that’s so funny. And you’re like, don’t say it’s funny if you don’t think it’s funny. But nothing feels worse than trying to communicate a message that just doesn’t land. And so when that happens, I think it makes us feel isolated and alone in a lot of ways. It’s one of the lowest feelings in the world to be in a group of people and try to start talking or share a story and then have other people talking over you or ignoring you or not really paying attention or engaging with you. And it’s this feeling of despite being in a group of people, you have never felt so alone in your life. And there’s a lot of deep biological reasons why this feels so horrible. If you think about to our ancestral tribal days when we’re living on Savannah and we’re traveling around in small little tribes.
If you were kicked out of the group or black sheep of the group, it very much affected your ability to survive. Like if you were kicked out of the group, you’re probably going to die in the wilderness, even within the group. If you were ignored and nobody respected you, then you probably weren’t going to procreate, which means you’re not going to pass on your genes, which is one of the most like deeply ingrained evolutionary imperatives for most humans. Right? So you can see how this is a very existential threat when we are in a group of people but we feel isolated and alone. These alarm bells in our lizard brains start to go off and say like, oh my God, I’m going to die alone and it’s going to be horrible. And in a lot of ways it could be. And it all stems from the ability to effectively communicate our stories, our ideas, our emotions, our feelings, our ideas for the world. And I think everybody feels compelled in some way to try to make an impact on the world and make it different.
Everybody wants to make the world different in some way better, hopefully, ideally. But some people will settle for making it worse just because they want their life to have had some kind of meaning and impact, right? In most cases, if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably want to leave the world better than you found it and you might have some ideas for how you want that to play out. But your ability to actually execute that is going to be predicated on your ability to communicate those ideas to other people, to rally them around your cry or to get them motivated moving towards the goal or to just to see the world through a different perspective. And so all that’s to say, long ramble, that communication and the ability to communicate effectively is one of the most important skills. And I’m talking in really big grandiose terms of changing the world and all that stuff. But let’s bring it back even further. If you want to have a good relationship with your spouse, your children, your coworkers, just simply being able to effectively communicate what you want them to do or how you want them to treat you or how you are treating them, all of this stuff, your life is just one constant communication with the world after another. And so anything that we can do to improve at that is time well worth spent.
So I’m going to share with you guys five different concepts that I want you to think about and to actively incorporate into your own communications with the world. Specifically, we’re going to be talking through the lens of speaking one to one or one to many on a stage. Okay? So number one, this is really important when it comes to being on a stage, but it’s also pretty important when it comes to just talking with other people. It’s removing filler words. I’m not the best at this. I still use a whole lot of likes and UMS, and to a certain extent, that is okay. The place where it becomes problematic is when you are literally starting every single sentence with like, you know what I mean? And then just kind of really stop and starting, right? It’s so uncomfortable to listen to. And at the end of the day, if you can’t embrace silence as you’re formulating your thoughts, as you’re moving forward from trying to connect one idea to another, the inclination is just to put so many noises into the equation that the ideas lose any of their value.
They lose their impact that they could have otherwise had. So remove filler words as much as possible. Now, I realize this is a very difficult thing, so what I would recommend is practicing it. Maybe getting into a public speaking group, something like Toastmasters, where they actually count how many times you say or like, or really in the course of a speech. If you’re giving a public speech, you definitely need to remove all of those filler words. They’re more natural in day to day conversation. And there like, in this context, I have plenty of filler words. This is a very casual, informal environment.
However, if I was on stage, I would ruthlessly cut every single filler word. And instead of putting in that um or that like, or, you know, you would just allow for silence. Silence projects confidence. And in those moments where the nervous tick is just to put in an um or like, instead, just sitting and allowing the silence to expand a little bit is going to be far more impactful than the alternative. So that’s, number one, get rid of those filler words or just be more conscious of it. And you know, if you’re guilty of this, you probably already know what your filler words are. And so you need to work very ruthlessly to start eliminating them. Because there is nothing more annoying than being in a conversation with somebody who just keeps using the same catchphrase.
The one that kills me is, you know what I’m talking about. I know people who go, you know what I’m talking about after every single sentence. Even when it’s not like a statement, when it’s a question, it’s like, hey, what’s your favorite color? You know what I’m talking about. What? You asked me two questions. They’re completely unrelated. What the heck is this? And it’s just a nervous tech. So that’s number one, get rid of filler words. Insert silence.
Number two, you got to learn how to use these digits. For those of you that are listening to the podcast, I’m up here wiggling my fingers on the camera. If you’re watching on YouTube, on the channel Amplified Impact, you can see me wiggling my fingers. But you got to learn how to effectively use your hands to communicate. These thumbs, these are what separate us from the animals, lets us manipulate tools, but it also allows us to communicate things more effectively than if we just had our hands at our side. Like a wet noodle. There’s two ways that you can go when it comes to hand movements. You can either go with not enough hand movements and you’re an absolute tree, and it’s, like, really hard to watch, right.
Or you’re this bombastic, hands everywhere, flowing all over the place, kind of spastic person that is also kind of scary and overwhelming to listen to. You want to be somewhere in between the body language that you exude. The usage of your hands should ideally highlight and help draw attention to the words or the ideas of the concepts that you’re trying to share rather than distract. As soon as the hands become distracting because they’re waving everywhere, it’s far, far too many. I did a live public speaking seminar. It was a three day event with my buddy Renee Rodriguez. And two things that were very, very interesting from that is when you are engaging with another person or if you’re on stage, there are a couple of different ways that you can stand. One of those is what’s called the fig leaf, which is you lack confidence.
And so you stand there with your hands crossed right in front of your crotch, like your hands just down. And you’ve seen this position countless times, I’m sure, and it’s a position of trying to protect your most vulnerable area subconsciously. People don’t even realize that they’re doing with just hands crossed right in front of their waist. It feels very natural. But when you’re looking at somebody standing like that, it looks as though they do not exude confidence. So instead, just by bringing the hands up from out of that fig leaf position and instead holding your hands here between the waist and the head in this region, if you’re watching the video, if you’re not, then my hands are floating kind of around my chest region, but just here, even if they’re not moving. If I have my hands crossed here at mid height, this is considered the influence zone. It projects authority and confidence, even if you’re not really doing anything with your hands.
And so if you’re in a public speaking context, really think hard about what your posture, your body language is saying. If your hands are in your pocket, what’s that saying about you? If your hands are covering your crotch, what’s that saying about you? Really think intentionally about your hand motions? And are they being used as a means for highlighting? And there’s a word right on the tip of my tongue that I really want to use, and I cannot think of it. And this is the risk that we run when we’re trying to speak in public. Sometimes which is why rule number three, or not even rule number three, but the third concept that I want to share with you guys is that of practicing or rehearsing. So when I come into this podcast, I don’t have any content rehearsed, I’m just taking a topic and then I’m just riffing on it for ten to 1520 minutes. And for me, there’s a couple of reasons that I do the podcast this way. One is it’s a challenge for me to see can I talk or speak extemporaneously on a topic for a number of minutes and interweave stories. So for me, this is a form of practice and rehearsal for the times when I’m getting on a stage.
And now I need to deliver something very compelling and concise or when I’m on a YouTube video where it’s very scripted, right? So this is a very different type of practice for me. There’s also all the other reasons why I do this, which is like, I really enjoy teaching, I like sharing my stories, I like sharing the content because this is a way for me to learn it more deeply when I’m teaching. And so there’s a lot of reasons, but part of why I do this as a daily podcast and I do it off the cuff and I don’t have guests here and it’s not an interview style, is to challenge myself to become a better extemporaneous speaker. And in the same way, you need to find a way to practice communicating intentionally. So most of us have dozens of conversations throughout the day, whether that’s through text messages or through emails or through a spoken word on the phone. We’re always communicating in relationship with people and yet very few of us are doing it with intentionality. So despite the fact that you communicate a whole lot, you’re not necessarily a better communicator than you were 510 years ago. And the analogy I always use for this is, as a driver, you’re probably no better than you were when you were 20 years old.
So if you’re like 38 years old like I am now, I’m probably no better than I was when I was a kid when I first started driving. And the reason for that is, despite having driven for years, I haven’t approached it with the intent of improving at it. And if you’re not bringing intentionality to the practice, then you can’t expect to improve, right? It’s the same with typing on a keyboard. You probably type about as fast as you typed ten years ago. You’re not any faster, despite the fact that you’ve typed thousands and thousands of characters more over the years. In the same way, when it comes to communication, unless you practice with intentionality, you’re not going to actually improve. And so for me, this is one outlet. Another is I actually work with a coach.
I get on mock stage or I record myself and then we break down the video. Or when I’m about to record for a YouTube video, I go through the script. I’ll record that too. Or I’ll just do dry rehearsals over and over and over. You should be rehearsing and not just like the words that are coming out of your mouth, but the inflections that you use, the silences that you allow between your words or the hand motions that accompany certain words to help accentuate them. All of this needs to be practiced. And when you do, you’ll find that when you’re in the live situation, whether that’s a one on one conversation or it’s on the stage, your ability to communicate in that moment is so much more effective because everything that you’re doing has more intention behind it. And one of the guiding principles that served me really well in my life is that everything is improved with intention.
All right, another thing to think about two concepts here, and these are short. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on these because these are pretty straightforward. Number one is eye contact, though the interesting thing with eye contact is you don’t want to have too much, but you also don’t want to just stare off at the distance. You don’t want to stare at the person’s forehead. People can tell when you’re not staring at and looking them in the eyes. So really what you want to be doing is finding a good mix of connecting with them through eye contact, but then looking away, breaking that so that you don’t feel like a predator who’s stalking them and then coming back, and then reconnecting with that, and then looking away again. And this is something that takes practice. And the same thing when I’m working with the camera here, right? It’s a little lieball.
It’s not the same as a human, but it’s very similar. If I was looking just slightly up into the side or if I’m looking over here. The impact that it has on you as the listener or the viewer is very different when I’m looking over here rather than when I’m looking directly at you and connecting through the camera. All right, so these are things to be thinking about. Eye contact. Next one is just smiling. The energy that you bring in any communication is almost always improved when you do it with a smile on your face. Even if you don’t feel happy, even if it’s not a true, genuine, authentic smile, just even just raising your lips and going through the motion brings a different intensity and a different inflection to your words.
And there’s interesting studies that show when you’re on the phone with somebody, you can tell if the person on the other side is smiling. It doesn’t matter. You can’t necessarily tell if it’s a genuine smile or not, but you can’t tell if they are speaking through a smile. And most people, they get on the phone and they immediately go into their resting bitch face and like, what’s up? And that could feel really good. But the tone, the projection, the way it’s coming across is not that. And so if you’re one of those people who, for whatever reason, people always seem to think that you’re in a bad mood or grumpy and you’re like, I don’t understand it, it’s because you’re not smiling enough, probably. You’re not communicating through a smile. And this is such a simple, easy trick, but I found that it’s a very effective way of engaging people.
We did an experiment, actually on Instagram a while ago where we put out a bunch of short videos where I was in a very bad mood and I wasn’t fixating on speaking through a smile. And then in that same session, I caught wind of it and then I was like, oh, I need to start smiling a bit more and being a little bit more engaging here. And as soon as I started smiling, the quality of the video improved and we saw it demonstrably in the amount of viewage that those different videos got, the ones where I was not speaking through a smile got way less engagement, way less visibility versus the ones that had more. So just smile more, bring more positive energy into your communications, and I can almost guarantee it’s going to make your ability to communicate way more effective. So that’s going to do it. Those are some tips, some things to think about when it comes to the spoken word and communicating with body language. I hope these serve you really well. If there are things that I missed or there’s things that you want to go deeper into, make sure you come and find us on Instagram.
That’s the anthony Vasino there’s a lot of scammers out there, guys. By the way, there’s a lot of people who are pretending to be me on Instagram and Twitter. Just be really careful. Even on YouTube, be really careful. I will probably never friend you and follow you, but I will always respond to your DM. So if you see me and my account following you all of a sudden out of the blue and then reaching out and saying, hey, it’s probably not me, so just be really careful. That’s a scammer. Don’t click on anything that they send you.
But with that said, I would love it if you come and find me. Tag me in any of your posts, DM me. I do respond to them. I probably won’t friend you or subscribe to your channel or anything like that though, because I try to keep a very low profile in terms of who I follow. It’s all about curating my feed so that it’s addressing very particular things that I need to address. So all this to say, I love you guys, appreciate the hell out of you, thank you for being here. I can’t wait to see you back here bright and early tomorrow. But until then, staff or folks my friend.
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