Teri Burgos-Gutierrez, Corporate Trainer

Teri, a wife to a dentist, and mother to 3 adolescent sons, trains professionals and writes textbooks in Speech. She can be reached at gutierrez_teri@yahoo.com

To Read is To Lead and To Speak
By Teri Burgos-Gutierrez

“Many a friendship is lost for lack of speaking.”
- Aristotle

Everyone decides for himself the direction which his growth and development will take. What we are as persons directs and shapes ideas and feelings we reveal through our speaking. We all must know that speaking cannot be separated from us as individuals. To become a powerful speaker, the individual needs to become a capable person – a person worth listening to; a person of knowledge, who knows and understands himself; who thinks clearly, creatively, and soundly, and who applies his power of speech to those subjects and areas to which his information is related. Speaking comes after having involved oneself in intensive reading. As we have read in last months’ article, to read is to allow a person to lead. It also opens wide avenues to speak not only at work but in any place he finds himself into.

Read…Speak

Everyone needs to communicate and everyone possesses that power to speak! To be a successful speaker at work, one needs to:

1. Love to speak since this is our way to relate to others.
2. Have a purpose and believe in that purpose because our reasons for speaking are generally larger than ourselves.
3. Know what we are speaking about.
4. Apply good verbal skills by using effective language and well-chosen spoken words.
5. Connect with listeners by inviting a two-way communication to elicit responses from them.
6. Believe in yourself.
7. Be real. People will be more comfortable with who we really are.

These are qualities we can all possess. They do however take time to develop but we need to commit ourselves to the challenge of improving our skills. Always bear in mind that speaking is our power!

Quote from Emerson

As you continue to attain your goal to be a good speaker at work, remember that positive thinking can and does a work miracles. Believe that you can and you can. Emerson, the great American poet once said: “There is no defeat except from within. There is no insurmountable barrier except your own inherent weakness of purpose.”