Developing communication and public speaking skills: A guide

This article is part 2 of our series on developing personal skills. Part1 is located here.

In our quest to improve our personal skills, let’s first consider communication and public speaking skills. Here is a short guide to develop these skills using resources that are available online and offline (institutions and resources). Although many others many find it useful, this article is optimised for new migrants in Sydney.

A basic knowledge of written and spoken English is necessary to travel, interact with the wider community and to be aware of what is going on in Australia. Yet, many people find that they don’t have enough English spoken skills to get by on their own. For them, English classes run by local Migrant Resource Centres are very valuable. Contact your nearest Migrant Resource Centre to learn about their English classes. For example, BHHPMRC (Baulkham Hills Holroyd Parramatta Migrant Resource Centre Inc)  runs an Adult Migrant English Programme (AMEP) where you can study 510 hours of English free of charge. Now that you know about this service, readers who want to help a new migrant get on their feet faster, can help such people by directing them to the nearest Migrant Resource Centre that runs an English programme.

For people who already have advanced knowledge of English already and want to improve their communications skills to become more effective in their business or job, Toastmasters International in Australia can be very useful. Toastmasters increases self-confidence by developing communications and leadership skills with an emphasis on public speaking. Toastmasters is divided into districts and NSW is covered under District 70. You may check out Community Speechcraft short courses that may be done in two full days or 2-hour sessions over 6 weeks. These are affordable courses and you may get your employers to sponsor you. In addition, Toastmasters Business Speechcraft courses are run in Sydney CBD every six to eight weeks and are especially designed for businesspeople and professionals to enhance their presentation skills.

Once you become a member of Toastmasters Club, you may attend their meetings, access their resources for speakers and attend club meetings where you will get opportunities to speak and make presentations. Toastmasters courses and clubs a very useful resource for migrants who want to improve their communication skills. The best part is that you would most likely not have to travel beyond your suburb to attend a Toastmasters club.

Going beyond public speaking, a few more high quality but cost effective venues are WEA Sydney located at Bathurst Street in Sydney. They conduct workplace communication skills courses in business writing and career skills this autumn.

Continuing education divisions of universities are also rich sources of quality courses to develop soft skills. For example University of Sydney’s Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) conducts a two days course on Assertive Communication Skills aimed at people who you want to learn how to say ‘no’, make their presence felt in a meeting, tell someone their behaviour is unsatisfactory. This course teaches how to handle people who ignore you, interrupt you, unduly criticise you, make unreasonable requests, or vent their anger against you. Check out their other useful courses and find one that suits your specific situation or communication problem whether it’s learning to be assertive, present to an audience, speak under pressure, deal with a team, interact with media or make a sale. CCE has courses on each of these topics.

To round out the discussion on this important area of skills, let me point out that there are some good books too. Some of these are:

Messages: The Communication Skills Book
The Art of Talking So That People Will Listen: Getting Through to Family, Friends & Business Associates

In the next article in this series, we will consider management and leadership skills. Stay tuned.