4 Levels of Speaking You Must MASTER

Your Career Will Never Outgrow Your Communication: The Four Levels 15 years ago I had a powerful realization that completely changed the trajectory of my career. Your career will never outgrow your communication, and after a decade of speaking and training communication skills to millions of people, I've discovered there are 4 levels of speaking that you need to move through if you want to grow faster in your career, business, or relationships. Level 1. Unaware. This is where you have no idea what you're doing wrong. You think you're saying saying the right things, but you're repelling people without even realizing it. Level 2 Aware. You understand the skills now required to be a great communicator, and now you know what you're doing wrong. Level 3 skilled here. You're practicing, you have the tools, but it takes deliberate focus and intention. You feel like you're performing the skill and it doesn't feel like you're embodying it. Level 4 Mastery. At this level, communication is second nature to you. You just think about the outcome and you're communication skills take you to where you want to go automatically. And understanding which level you're stuck on is crucial because at each and every level, there's one core skill you need to learn in order to be able to advance to the next stage. So let's start with level 1. The problem here is you don't know what you don't know, which is why if you want to move to level 2 of knowing you need education. Just by watching this video, subscribing to my channel, and attending one of my communication classes, you'll be learning the fundamental skills that make you great as a communicator. To save your time, let me share exactly what you need to know to be a great communicator #1 this is your vocal image, and that's how you use your voice. It's your volume, your rate of speech, your pitch, your tonality, and your use of pauses. If you look at the greatest speakers in the world, they don't get stuck in a default volume, default pitch, default rate of speech. No, no, no. They move from loud to then quiet. They go from slow to then fast. They go from high pitch to then low, filled with authority. You get the point. Great communicators are dynamic with how they speak #2 this is visual image, this is how you use your body. And the greatest communicators are hyper aware of what they're communicating non verbally. Your body language consists of your hand gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, and the way you use movement as you're talking and #3 verbal image. This is how you use your words. For example, when you communicate, do you use storytelling to help get your points across or do you share just raw data, facts and information? Do you use frameworks when you communicate or do you just ramble and share your thinking out loud? Once you understand these three areas, vocal image, visual image, and verbal image, you never look at communication the same way again. I usually spend 3 full days deep diving into those areas in my communication workshops, so I won't be able to cover them all in detail in this video. But I have created a few free resources and trainings for you where I've distilled the 8020 of what you need to know in order to move from level 1 to level 2 faster. I'll leave all the links to the free trainings and resources down below in the description. Go check it out, I highly recommend it. OK, now once you've educated yourself on the different areas of communication, you now know what you don't know. Diagnosing Your Communication: The Record and Review Process Now you are at level 2, the awareness stage. This is where you start to notice things about your voice, your body, and the words that you use throughout your everyday interactions. You catch yourself now rambling using umms and ours being monotone and it's painful because you thought you were communicating just fine, but now that you can see the problems, you cannot Unsee them. But here's where most people go wrong. Most people will get stuck on level 2 and never graduate to Level 3 because they don't have a clear plan to go from where they are to where they want to be. And in order to diagnose where you are right now with your communication, you need to apply a process that I call record and review. I know what you might be thinking. No, I don't want to record myself. It's cringe. Vim. Is this actually necessary Vim? I want you to think about the greatest athletes in the world. They don't just show up on the global stage and then perform. They will rewatch their games. They will analyze their movements and break down the mechanics. They study the heck out of it so that they can identify their weaknesses, their blind spots. And that's why they're world class. So if you want to become a world class communicator, it starts with you applying the recorder review process. Here's how it works. To begin the process, go to ChatGPT and type in this exact prompt. I'll leave it for you in the description below. This gives you a list of questions that you need to answer on the spot while you're filming yourself. No preparation here. Now that you've got the list of questions, the first step is to record a 10 minute video. Get your phone and go to the camera app. Sit your phone upright on a desk or on a tripod if you've got 1 and make sure you're standing for this. Now I want you to hit record and start answering the questions out loud. You want to be speaking for at least 10 minutes and by doing this it teases out all of your non functional communication behaviours that's related to vocal, visual and verbal image. You can now see yourself the way other people see you when you communicate. Once you're done, this next step is very important. Leave the video for 24 hours. This is such a critical part of the process because it takes you out of judgement mode and into observer mode. If you watch the video straight away, you'll be hypercritical, leaving up for 24 hours. You're better looking and you sound better too, trust me. Now, once the 24 hour passes, you're going to review it in three different ways #1 vocal review, number two, visual review #3 verbal review. So first, to do the vocal review, I want you to turn up the volume and turn the video face down so you can only hear yourself start taking notes on your vocal image. Am I speaking too fast? Am I pausing enough? Am I too quiet? What's distracting about my voice? Start to take notes as you isolate the vocal image. Second, now we're doing the visual review. Turn down the volume. Turn the video face up so you can only see yourself but you can't hear anything. Take notes on your visual image. Do I sway my body around while I'm talking? Do I vary my facial expressions? Or am I stuck in what they call an RBF? You can Google that later. What that means? Resting blank face? Am I darting my eyes? What's distracting about my body language? What are the non functional behaviours here that I see? Start taking notes and finally the verbal review here. Get your video transcribed so you can see exactly what words you used and then start to highlight the words you use all the time that add no value and sometimes distract people from the answers and the clarity of your message. Am I using too many filler words? So like know what I mean? Do I have too many non words? Am I talking in circles? Now you can see your communication from a completely different perspective. Once you complete this process just once, you've now created a customized list of communication behaviors that are specific for you to improve. And this is critical because if you don't do this step, you're just applying generic advice and random tips hoping it will improve your communication skills. That's basically like you reading the top ten books on Amazon hoping it's going to make you a better person. Sure, they might be useful in general, but they're not tailored to solve the specific problems you're dealing with in this chapter of life. Applying general advice tends to lead to general outcomes and general results. Applying specific advice leads to exponential results. Why New Communication Skills Feel Unfamiliar, Not Fake Okay, you've moved on to Level 3. Only 3% of people are here, so give yourself a pat on the back mate, you're doing bloody great. This is the stage of conscious competence. You know what you need to work on, but it still takes deliberate focus and attention to create the outcomes you desire. So for example, you're in a meeting and you're mentally checking off the list. OK, am I speaking clearly? Am I making good eye contact? Did I pause after the important point? Did I use the right body language? So at this stage it still takes concentration, but you're doing it. You're doing it Now. Here's the biggest trap that stops people from moving to level 4. As you practice these new behaviours, you might feel like you're performing or you're acting. You'll think to yourself, gosh, I feel so fake. Stop. But I'm going to stop you right there. I want to reframe this for you. It's not fake, it's not phony. And I'm going to tell you why. You see, back when I was in my early 20s, when I started working on my communication skills, I took up singing classes. I really wanted to unlock the the potential of my voice. And at the first lesson that I ever had meeting my singing teacher, the first thing she does in the piano room is she just plays one key on the piano over and over and over again. I remember sitting there feeling like, oh, my God, what's happening right now? She's been doing this for the last two minutes. Is she crazy? And then she stops. All of a sudden, she pauses. She turns around and she says, how do you feel, young man? I remember saying to her, I don't feel anything. I feel a little bit scared, to be honest. And then she turns around and she says, good. Oh, I was thinking to myself, what the hell is going on? And then she turns around and she goes listen. And then she plays this beautiful song. It goes for about two to three minutes. And then at the end of that, she turns around. She goes, how do you feel, young man? And I said to her, listen, to be honest, I'm quite scared still from that beginning thing of you doing the one key. But now I actually feel a little bit sad. It felt like it was a song about love about about lust. And then she goes good. And then she says the most beautiful thing, Vin, most people go through their whole lives using their voice like this. Your voice is an instrument, Vin. I'm going to teach you how to play it like this. This was the greatest sales pitch I've ever heard. I said that's it. I mean, I don't care how much it cost. I'll give you all my money. And here's why I'm telling you this story. As you practice these new communication behaviours, you're learning to play new keys on your instrument, on your piano. But here's what you need to understand. These are your keys. It's your instrument. It can't be fake. It can't be phony. It's your instrument. They're your keys. The only thing is, when you start to play these unfamiliar keys, it will just start to feel strange. But you have to reframe it in those moments. It's not fake, it's not phony, it's just unfamiliar. And if you make this reframe, what happens? It means you explore the whole damn instrument. But if you don't make the reframe, you'll just keep using your voice like this for the rest of your life. So embrace the discomfort and lean into the unfamiliar. Applying the Mastery Cycle to Achieve Unconscious Competence OK, so how do you actually move from Level 3 to level 4? It's through a process I call the mastery cycle. The first step is try and apply, the second step is review and reflect, and the third step is plan and improve. Starting with trying and applying. Pick just one behaviour that you created during your record and review process. Doesn't matter which bucket it comes from, it could come from the vocal, the visual or the verbal. Just pick one and commit to testing it in a real conversation. Trust me, most people just go from watching one YouTube video to another YouTube video to another YouTube video and they apply nothing. And then as a result, no transformation, nothing changes in the communication. So apply the things you're learning. Try it. Now, for example, when I did my recording review, let's say, I discovered that I speak too fast when I get excited about a certain topic. So then this week, I want to focus on simply this. Slow down then and add more pauses when presenting to your team. That's it. And then once you've done this, the second step is to review and reflect after an interaction with one of your team members. Just ask yourself, did I work on slowing down? Did I pause more? What worked? What didn't work? And as I'm reflecting, I'm thinking through the interaction. Oh, you know what? I did slow down in moments of excitement. And when I reflected even more, I realized that something interesting happened when I slowed down. It made me feel more confident, not less. But I also caught myself rushing again after someone asks me a question. So I need to slow down in those moments too. You see that reflection that I just did. That's all valuable data. And finally, the third step, plan and improve based on your reflection. You make one small adjustment, then you go back and you try again. So in my case, my adjustment, I'm going to be keeping a slower pace, especially when people ask me a question. What I'm going to do is once they ask me a question, I'm going to pause, take a deep breath, and that pause and the deep breath is going to slow down my rate of speech. So I'm going to test this again in my next conversation. That's my plan to improve. OK, this is subtle, but I hope you didn't miss it because what I'm doing here is I'm going through the mastery cycle again. And this is what makes the mastery cycle a cycle. You're not just applying what you learn once, you're refining it with every single cycle of the mastery cycle. Every time you go through it, you get sharper, more natural, more effective, and here's the magic. The more cycles you complete, the faster you reach level 4. Level 4 is where everything changes. This is unconscious competence, or what I like to call mastery. This is where you've done so many reps of your communication that it becomes second nature. You walk into any room, any conversation, any presentation, and you simply focus on the outcome that you desire, the outcome that you want, and your skills and abilities take you there automatically, without you even thinking about it. At level 4, people stop and they listen. When you speak, your ideas land and you finally get the yes that you've always wanted and your communication finally matches your capability so people can actually see what you're worth. Don't be like most people and get stuck at level 1 or level 2. You now have the road map to become a world class communicator. So here's my challenge for you. Pick one behaviour from your recording review this week and go through a cycle of it. Just one. Because when your communication transforms, everything else follows. This is the tide that lifts all boats. If you're still not convinced and you want to see how powerful this recording review process is, click this video up here. Watch me go through it live with one of our students from our stage programs. You'll be shocked at how much they transform within just minutes.