Yes, it’s a Good Talk piece about AI. I know, I know – you’re sick of talking about AI…

Maybe it will take your job; maybe it will go rogue like Skynet and destroy us all; maybe it will just let us all generate copyright-infringement images of cats.

I don’t know what job you have, so I can’t weigh in on that one. And I wouldn’t dream to hazard a guess about the scale of AI-led dystopic cataclysm. And I’m allergic to cats. So.

I don’t know.

Something I do feel qualified to examine though, is how AI may affect spoken communication.

First, I’ve written a brief-but-brave chapter on this in my forthcoming book, Don’t Say Um. I’ll let you pick up a copy in late 2024 when it comes out and read chapter 20 if you want to get my full thoughts on the topic (shameless plug). But AI is a juicy enough subject that I’ve decided to dedicate this Good Talk piece (and perhaps future pieces) to it in addition to the book chapter.

The first of my musings on the topic of Speaking and AI are as follows.

AI will mean that:

• Delivery (how you say it, not what you say) will matter even more.
• Idiosyncrasy must be defended and valued (if we’re not careful, AI could create a sort of communication homogenization and have us all delivering like droning politicians).
• Speaking may accelerate its takeover of writing as the primary way we get our ideas out. (This dovetails with an exercise I already teach clients, called out-loud drafting, in which I have them craft speeches via speaking, not writing.)

What this means for you now is the following – invest in your delivery. Communication was recently listed as the most highly prized business skill, according to this NY Times article. Aneesh Raman and Maria Flynn are predicting that the “soft skills” will overtake the practical skills that have dominated the “fields of the future” preparation most undergraduates are advised to study.

How does one invest in delivery? Increase your awareness of how you speak when you are at your most other-focused – like speaking with friends and family: Do you use your hands freely? Inflect your voice with energy? Look at people intently when they talk? Spit out your enunciation as though you were a play-by-play announcer? The answer to each of those questions is likely a resounding YES – you do all those things more when you’re not dutifully practicing “Business Communication.” Once you establish what good looks like for you, your job is to map those behaviors to your speaking style when you are in more business-centric situations.

Usually the easiest place to practice all that is this: video calls. So if you’re game to get better, try this. Have a 30-minute zoom video chat with a friend and record the call. Discuss juicy subjects – really get into it. Then, watch the recording later, but skim through it. Watch certain sections on mute; drag the cursor along and watch some of it sped up; get a flavor of how your mouth, face, breath, and hands are working.

Then pull up the footage of any business meeting you had in the last year, watch that video too, and compare.

Now cringe at the difference between the two.   

If generative AI is going to steal the SME (subject matter expert) crown from all of us, the place you’ll get to wow your audience isn’t with your dazzling smarts, but with how you deliver it. So embrace using all of your physical and vocal communication instrument. You’re going to need it so you can avoid sounding like a robot (even as the robots keep sounding better and better).

As Always – Happy Learning,
Michael Hoeppner and the GK Training Team

P.S. If you ever miss a Good Talk piece and want to read previous ones, we post them to our blog, so you can always look for them there.