What Is Poised?
Exceptional communication drives success. When you are confident in your ability to communicate, you excel in many areas of your life.
Enter: Poised.
Poised is your personal AI-powered communication coach designed to give you real-time feedback and personalized plans for common communication topics such as pace, clarity, confidence, energy, filler words, rambling, etc.
Poised is an essential tool for online meetings and digital workspaces such as interviews, webinars, classrooms, team meetings, project management workflows, and business presentations.
Whether you’re a teacher, a student, a business leader, a project manager, or a public speaker, Poised can help anyone with live feedback, personalized lesson plans, and identifying trends to improve your communication skills over time. And the best part is, no one even knows you’re using it.
How Poised Improves Your Online Communication
Eliminate Filler Words
Filler words are one of the most common habits people fall into when attempting to bridge concepts or fill awkward silences. It usually appears as a result of nervousness or anxiety. Unfortunately, this habit can have damaging effects on your credibility rather than your intention of being seen as an influential leader with poise and professionalism.
Because it is common for your nerves to get the best of you, the Poised tool comes in handy because you may not realize you are using filler words, or it might be a challenging habit that you’ve become accustomed to.
Even some of the best speakers can use filler words such as “um, uh, well, like, you know, and literally" from time to time. One of the best ways to combat filler words is to practice the art of pausing.
Poised helps you eliminate these filler words by analyzing your speech and alerting you with notifications when you are speaking so that you can practice pausing instead. Poised will also provide a detailed report on filler word usage and how many times they were used.
Increase Speaking Clarity
Talking too much in virtual meetings, whether it is nervous rambling, trying to impress your coworkers, or because you are struggling to get to the point,, means that you might need to spend time improving your communication skills.
To communicate effectively, it is a good idea to work on saying just enough to convey your message. Rambling is a sure-fire way to lose your audience’s attention and may reflect poorly on your reputation. Using the Poised tool can help you improve your speaking clarity.
Since Poised gives you alerts, you will have the opportunity to expand on points that you might need to clarify during an oral report or virtual meeting.
Boost Your Confidence
It is very easy to slip into feelings of low confidence when you are new at something or get nervous quickly speaking in front of crowds. But it is better to start somewhere rather than avoid situations or opportunities to practice.
Boosting your confidence will help your boss, coworkers, or professor to trust your abilities, which can help you advance in your career and personal life. In addition, having a sense of confidence as a communicator or leader will help you build a solid executive presence. Plus, confidence plays a significant role in our daily actions and decision-making.
How To Present Yourself as a Confident Communicator
Confidence isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, but here are some templates for appearing more confident:
- Focus on your appearance by dressing well and standing tall with an erect spine but relaxed posture. Keep your hands visible. This will facilitate back support and improve breathing. You can also practice the power pose technique by standing tall, hands on your hips, and elbows stretched out wide before entering a room or stage.
- Make eye contact. You don’t have to hold your gaze for a long time, but you want your audience to feel connected to present yourself as a confident communicator. Avoiding eye contact makes you appear shy or indecisive.
- Speak slowly and clearly, and get comfortable with pausing. Many people mistakenly view “awkward silences” as bad, but it allows your audience to digest and reflect on what you just shared.
Having a tool like Poised in your back pocket is like having your personal communication coach. We don’t always receive timely feedback, know what our areas of improvement are, and how to improve right away. It can take months or years to become a confident communicator if you try to do it independently, and it can be costly to hire a personal coach.
Since Poised offers feedback on moments that could’ve gone better and personalized plans, you can feel more at ease knowing exactly what you need to improve and making progress quicker. Poised will also provide positive feedback as you improve, thus boosting your confidence.
Speak at the Perfect Pace
Everyone has dealt with poor communication habits. Unfortunately, it can become an ingrained habit without correction, whether rambling or speaking too fast. When speaking too fast, you risk losing your audience’s attention and your intended impactweakening your potential impact. Fast-talking can also create confusion and add stress.
Influential speakers say that mastering the art of pacing is one of the best ways to improve your communication skills. Ultimately you want to have a conversational pace which means it will be a combination of slow, medium, and fast speech that will be your best recipe for success.
Since the Poised app is designed to analyze your speech and give you live recommendations, you can receive reminders to pause and make adjustments to your speaking rate.
Follow Up With Detailed Feedback After Meetings
Learning new habits takes time, practice, commitment, and feedback. But, just like a sports player needs a coach and tutors are helpful for academic success, Poised can be just the tool you need to become great at communicating.
In addition to real-time feedback, the Poised app offers a detailed recap or report on areas of improvement and feedback on what you did well. This comes in handy for job interviews, presentations, or speeches.
Setting Up Calendar Integration With Poised: 5 Steps
- Download Poised on Mac or Windows
The Poised tool is compatible with Mac and Windows. You can easily download Poised to begin setting up calendar integration.
- Link Poised With Your Video Call Software
Next, you will link Poised with your video conferencing software of choices such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams. It might be challenging to know which platform works best for your needs with so many options.
One of the key differences between Zoom and Google Meet is that Zoom has the the capabilities to host up to 1,000 participants, whereas Google Meet’s maximum capacity is 250. Microsoft Teams and Google Meet operate as part of larger productivity suites,, while Zoom is a stand-alone video conferencing platform.
Microsoft Teams offers robust features for professional users and Zoom caters to a wide variety of casual users. All of these platforms have free versions with limited capabilities.
- Follow Prompts To Integrate Your Calendar
Poised asks you permission to access your calendar when you create an account with Poised. You can later edit/add more calendars in the settings action. Additionally, you can set up Google calendar integration or other calendars such as iCal.
Poised displays your upcoming meetings,, and you can toggle on/off the ones you'd like to use Poised in. Poised automatically starts when the session or event starts and stops once you hop off the call. The calendar integration step is critical to receiving the most relevant feedback for the meeting.
- Don’t Forget To Put Meetings on Your Calendar!
Now that you have your calendar integrated with Poised, don’t forget to utilize this feature by adding specific events to your calendar where you will be speaking or presenting. By planning and being prepared, you will reduce speech anxiety and set yourself up for success.
Whether it’s your next job interview, sales presentation,, or business webinar, integrating with Poised will ensure that the tool launches automatically in the meetings you would like to use it for.
- Wait for Feedback After Each Meeting
Remember to review Poised feedback after each meeting to understand what went well and what you can incorporate into your lesson plans for improvement. Feedback will be provided on areas such as rambling, filler words, speaking pace, clarity, facial expressions, and non-verbal cues.
Become a Better Communicator
Being an exceptional communicator can take time, and just about everyone could use feedback on areas of improvement. Several options areSeveral options are available,, such as recording your speech and listening to the recording, hiring a communication tutor,, or using Poised as the AI-powered communication coach you didn’t know you needed.
Use Poised to help you communicate your best self today.
How to Get Rid of Filler Words and Sound More Professional in 4 Weeks | Inc
Your Speech Pace: Guide to Speeding and Slowing Down | Speaker HubSources:
7 Ways to Appear Confident (When You're Really Not) | Inc.com
1.1 Why Is It Important to Communicate Well? | University of Michigan.
