Becoming an outstanding speaker: rules are meant to be broken

If you want to learn to communicate effectively with members of your organization you’ve got to study their style. Interacting according to commonly accepted norms with help you build a bridge of trust with your audience that will make them much more receptive to your message.

With that said, rules are meant to be broken.

Break rules on purpose, only for a purpose

But you’ve got to always be sure that you are actually breaking a rule to satisfy some audience-friendly purpose, not out of ignorance or laziness.

In formal presentations or large group discussions where slides are to be used, a different template, rhythm, or novel use of graphics and sound (if these are uncommon in the usual presentations) can be used to powerful effect if what you are talking about is a departure from the norm.

Small group and individual interactions are a little less tolerant to radical change, however, because here the rules of social interaction start to come into play. A little change here can have a big effect, so you’ll want to make changes more slowly.

Just don’t go all avante garde

No matter what you do though, in general you don’t want to routinely and radically depart from all convention. You must remain focused on your primary motivation: communication. Never depart so far from the accepted standard that your eVect drowns out your message, whether in large group or one-on-one interactions.

And it’s not just me saying that too much departure from the expected can be a bad thing. There was a saying in Canon Law “Nemo admirandus ordinandus est,” which means, “Nobody who would be stared at is to be ordained.” The idea is that the messenger (in this case, the priest) mustn’t draw so much attention to himself that the message gets lost.

In general depart from the norm only infrequently, when it really matters, to achieve a specific purpose, and only after you’ve demonstrated a clear command of the usual way of doing things.