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

SPEAK UP and be a Sparkling Conversationalist
Teri Burgos-Gutierrez

“Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.”
-Jonathan Swift

I have just written a book entitled SPEAK UP. This is a SPEECH series for pre-school and elementary Filipino students published by the Rex Group of Companies focusing on the importance of communication to make them leaders and active participants in the global world they live in. This series is also cognizant of Multiple Intelligence and Transformative Education where phonetic sounds included in easy-to-learn drills and dialogue exercises highlight the series to enable the young students to speak up, be heard, become leaders in the society where they belong, and get along with people in their future workplaces.

Just what do you consider as the most important characteristic a person should have in order to succeed in the workplace? I believe that the most important attribute aside from getting along with people is to have a keen sense of knowing how to SPEAK UP. One who can’t handle people by knowing how to speak to them on all levels usually doesn’t last very long. People who advance to higher positions are those with the ability to speak up. They become successful team leaders and team players as well.

Here are 7 very simple steps on how to become sparkling conversationalists:

1. Know when to speak and when not to.
2. Speak about things that interest others.
3. Use simple, everyday language.
4. Speak without pomposity.
5. Gesture naturally.
6. Maintain eye contact.
7. Be confident.

As Lee Iacocca aptly puts it. “The only  way to motivate people is to communicate with them.” Let us continue to speak up and be sparkling conversationalists in our workplaces. This will surely be our ladder to corporate success.