The Power of Connection

CHAPTER 7CONNECT THROUGH COURTESY AND GRATITUDE

‘You connect so easily with people … what’s your secret?’ I’ve lost count of how many times I have been asked that question. The simple truth is, like anything that looks natural, it’s the result of intense focus, commitment and long practice. I have been speaking in public since the early 1980s, beginning in high school, as related in chapter 3, and through most of my professional life both as a presenter and a coach. So the simple answer is that anyone can speak in public, if they are prepared to engage with the process!

People who know me well will say that communication comes naturally to me. But I know I wasn’t born that way. If truth be told, I didn’t form actual words until well after my second birthday. My parents were genuinely concerned that I had a clinical speech challenge. I basically grunted and made inaudible sounds much like Bamm-Bamm in The Flintstones. If I wanted something, I would simply grunt and point, and my older brother or one of my two older sisters would fetch it for me. Given its success, this became my regular communication pattern.

The trappings of royalty

It wasn’t until my parents observed the behaviour that this pattern was broken. And lucky for me this ‘toddler intervention’ occurred, as I haven’t found too many successful caveman communicators operating on the speaking circuit. Little could I have guessed that day, sometime in 1969, when from the ‘throne’ of my high-chair I pointed at a Vegemite ...