Holding the room and projecting your presence is not an inherent skill—mostly, it is learned. 

Most learn through trial and error, but here at Poised, we prefer you learn from others’ past mistakes instead of making your own.

Excellent communication is essential for any career, especially when you're working remotely. Executives, managers, product marketers, and sales personnel impress, stand out, and inspire action within their teams by optimizing their speech and communication skills.

Your communication style will be assessed consciously and subconsciously in situations like interviews, pitches, and promotional events. Therefore, making your speech more listener-friendly should be a priority on everyone’s personal development wish list this coming new year.

Wondering where to start? Here we present the top 7 communication goals for 2022 shared by our users and tips for how to achieve them.

1. Speak with more clarity and confidence

You know those people who grab your attention every time they speak? They have mastered the basics of confident communication by avoiding these common mistakes.

Filler Words

Filler words are the worst verbal offenders. The most common filler words to watch out for are:

• Um
• Uh
• Okay
• So
• Well
• Ah
• You know?

Stay focused on the key ideas you wish to communicate and get to the point. Overcoming the overuse of fillers is about becoming aware of them and minimizing their use in your speech.

Pace and Pausing

Fast-paced speech is often a side-effect of nervousness. If you have doubts about holding your audience’s attention, you will speak in haste.

Here are some techniques for improving your pace and pausing:

• Deep breathing exercises
• Memorizing your material
• Practicing pronunciations
• Managing your speaking anxiety

Be Authentic

Being clear and confident in your speech is not about being robotic. 

Improving your energy and empathizing with your listeners are the first steps towards developing a clear, authentic communication style. 

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2. Communicate effectively in online meetings

Sounding professional in meetings both on and offline is an important skill to master if you wish to get your message across and captivate your audience.

However, online meeting communication is very different from in-person communication. During a Zoom meeting, it is important to avoid:

• Looking at the screen
• Looking at yourself
• Accidentally muting the meeting
• Untidy or distracting backgrounds or filters
• Oversharing your screen

The best piece of advice for improving your presence on Zoom is to maintain eye contact by looking directly into the camera.

Sitting in an upright posture will also help you to project verbally and physically.

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3. Advance your career through effective communication

Good communication skills are especially important for senior roles that involve a lot of time working and talking with other people. After all, your managers and colleagues are human, and they will emotionally react to your communication skills.

The key here is to become aware of your body language and your verbal speech. Sit upright, display open body language, avoid over-explaining, and stick to the necessary points.

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4. Increase your executive presence

If executive presence were a fragrance, it would be a sellout.

Those who listen to their audience and project their ideas back instill confidence and trust. According to Forbes, the doors of opportunity open more easily for those with executive presence. 

To increase your executive presence, you must:

• Become aware of how others perceive you
• Listen to your peers, but do not claim their ideas as your own
• Practice motivational communication
• Develop a vision and commit
• Demonstrate confidence in your body language

Executive presence isn’t magical or elusive; it is just about being a great speaker and a great listener. 

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5. Engage participants in meetings

Engaging others is a sure-fire way of holding their attention. When people are engaged with what you are saying, they are more likely to remember the key points, and more importantly, they will remember you.

Stick to the material, discuss the main points, encourage questions, and allow time for your audience to ask if anything is unclear.

Slowing your speech and road mapping your presentation will help keep everyone on the same page, and you will deliver a more powerful presentation.

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6. Improve your virtual presentation skills

People love stories. Enthusiastically presenting your ideas in story form is the best way to keep your audience interested and engaged.

Doing this virtually is no easy task—thankfully technology is on your side.

Slides make a massive difference to any presentation. Visual aids add dynamism, so your audience does not have to do all the hard work trying to imagine your vision.

Walls of text have no place on a PowerPoint presentation. Use images, infographics, and charts and reduce lengthy written content to bullet points.

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7. Increase awareness of your communication

Getting objective feedback on your communication skills is essential for improvement. This can be tricky to get from managers and colleagues, so recording yourself and being your own critic is an option.

Learn from your meetings

Listening to recordings of yourself speaking is a powerful way to "hear" what you sound like. It might be uncomfortable at first, but the direct sense you can get of your speech is worth it.

You can go further than just listening by getting specific about what you want to improve. Poised does this for you by analyzing your online meetings and giving you real-time and objective feedback on your speech.

Use coaching services or tools 

Personal speech coaching services or tools can provide more hands-on guidance for improving your speech over time. From one-on-one coaches to digital communication tools like Poised, there's a variety of ways to work on your communication depending on the kind of coaching you prefer.

Speech coaching can help you overcome fear, increase your confidence level, and wield effective communication toward ongoing professional success.

What are your communication goals for 2022 or favorite tips for achieving them? Let us know on Twitter @poisedhq!

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Learn about your communication skills. Poised is a digital communication coach that gives you real-time and personalized feedback for your online meetings. Request access here.

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