Think on Your Feet: Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Impromptu Communication Skills on the Job

by Oleniczak Brown

“[Think on Your Feet] is a helpful maven’s guide ideal for anyone who views a podium with fear and trembling.”― Publishers Weekly Get out of your own way! Our professional lives are full of situations outside of our control. A job interviewer asks a question out of left field. A coworker puts you on the spot in front of the boss. Your PowerPoint presentation crashes at a critical moment. Most people react to the unexpected with anxiety and unease. We get rattled, stumble over our words, and overthink the situation. Others, though, handle it with self-assurance and aplomb. They gain a sense of empowerment and energy when the pressure is on. Like great improv actors, they’re able to think on their feet. The great thing is, improv isn’t about winging it or flying by the seat of your pants; improv at its core is about listening and responding. It’s based on rules and techniques, and it taps directly into your soft communication skills. By incorporating it into your prep work for professional situations, you’ll learn how to retrain your brain for the unexpected and get out of your own way in those unexpected―and expected―professional situations. Practicing improv isn’t about being funny. Instead, it’s about developing the mental agility to spin any surprise in your favor and to communicate with confidence. Filled with engaging improv activities, this interactive guide will ensure you never come away from a tough moment pondering the woulda, coulda, shoulda! again. You’ll learn how to nurture your personal style for communicating in every professional situation. From effective listening in the office, giving presentations, and leading meetings to negotiating a raise, acing an interview, and more, you’ll start communicating with confidence and stop letting the unexpected hold you back. Take your workplace communication―and your career―to the next level by mastering the art of Thinking on Your Feet.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published November 8, 2019

Reviews

[Vanessa Bush · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, very professional like energy and instructions on how to develop better communication skills and listening skills

[Fernando · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Yes* the book has good techniques on how to improve conversational skills *and* I believe it could’ve used a different delivery with more in depth examples. Overall a good read! I feel I need to sign up for improv classes.

[Srinivasan Nanduri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful tips and tricks to improve communication / conversation skill on the job.

[marshponds · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a random find at the library for me. Lots of good impromptu exercises that were actually fun to do with my kids. There were some helpful ideas in here.

[Mihai Rosca · Rating 3 out of 5]

What do you get when you write a book on practical skills with a wide range of application that most readers feel uncomfortable recognizing they lack (even to themselves)? A mixed bag..

I'm sure that it can't only be me who reads a non fiction book, especially one that treats a topic in a workbook fashion and tries to make it happen. In this case, it's impossible. You're trying to learn communication skills and the only way to do is to learn the theory and then go and see what stuck and probably remove some old habits along the way too.

And, by the way, there's nothing soft about learning soft skills. Learning to read the emotional state of a person, the room and how you come across while at the same time correcting your "uhms" and trying to keep that nervous eye twitch under control is a HARD, ARDUOUS and GUT WRENCHING journey.

My natural instinct to put theory into practice collided with the impossibility of doing it solely by thinking about it from the comfort of my favorite chair or couch. I'm not even sure if I'm ready to make the commitment to learn what the book has to offer. Even if I know soft skills are hard, there's still some active belief in there that tells me I should still focus on those palpable skills of mine.

Assuming, based on the western-style, material-prone thinking that many more people feel this way, Thinking on your Feet could have benefited a lot more from the classical style of taking one idea and going at it from various points of view. Instead, you are presented with a lot methods for improving your listening, voice, acting, thinking and stage presence skills. This is why it feels too heavy, especially when it's not easy to start practicing.

In this day and age, easy is the new status quo. If you don make it easy for your consumer, you're going to loose that person fast.

In the end I think it's a good book. Even more, YES I firmly believe that the author is a very good coach who brings a lot of value to any reader AND I ended up with a lot of notes that I'm going to forget because they all refer to skills that are gained by practicing mindfully on a regular basis.

[Jezzeri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Understanding your own emotions ties into learning empathy for others. By developing an awareness of your own emotions and how they drive your communication and decision making, you're seeing people in a different way. This awareness might cause you to pause before making a judgment of another individual and how they communicate, and it definitely will give you a completely different lens on how others might make their decisions with respect to communication.

Active listening is making that conscious choice to hear what someone is saying and understanding the mssage being conveyed, usually by thinking about it. You are essentially digesting what's being said. This is a critical skill in life. When you choose to listen to someone, you're really hearing what they have to say, making sense of it in your brain, and working on the meaning behind it. To improve, we need to understand how we listen.

The most common types of listening are informational listening (listening to learn), critical listening (listening to evaluate and analyze), and therapeutic or empathetic listening (listening to understand feeling and emotion). One verbal tactic to show you're listening is summarization. You're taking the key points to what's been said and relaying them back to the speaker.

Clarification helps to make sure you understand the information the speaker is trying to relay, and uses an open question to let the speaker expand on their points.

Questioning involves getting more information from the speaker and often shows interest.

The point of "Yes, and" versus "but" is that "Yes, and" affirms the other party and links your idea with that and making them equal. You're not necessarily agreeing with what they said. You are allowing the two opinions to be equal.

Smile and display eye contact to show confidence and increase your status in the conversation, making you more credible and relatable. Eye contact is meaningful, and you should use your words to connect with your eye contact.

In being interviewed and being asked "tell me about yourself," you want to craft your statement with where you were, where you are, and where you'd like to be.

[Viktor Malyshev · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is on how to improve your improvisation and communication skills. By all means, starting from a conversation between two people up to talking to a big audience, using tricks, and approaching people.
Overall interesting, but I wasn't able to finish it. Because the topic of improvisation is not that needed to me, actually. I've read a few topics related to basic skills improvements in terms of talking to people in different situations and some tricks to get away from a conversation. It was really good, but overall I think it would be useful to people who do standups or work with huge auditory, teaching people, maybe selling stuff. Not my type of person))

[Rachelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Think on Your Feet... a guided exploration of improvisation - watching your audience or peers or boss and reacting, basing your response on a similarity in their communication. Based on performance attributes, the author visits professional communication involving listening, networking, leading meetings, interviewing, and negotiating. Resourceful and well researched advice and suggestions to help you succeed in your career. Techniques are somewhat generic- don't expect overnight transformation.

[Emily Goenner Munson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really useful book about business communication. The information is pretty standard to the discipline, but what makes this book unique is the improv exercises suggested to help develop skills. I'm eager to try several of the suggested exercises with my students to help improve their public speaking skills.

[Ambivert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to the audio version. A good book to help you build confidence while working on your communication and networking skills. Not gonna happen overnight, but it's good to have an idea how successful people do it and take the turn to push yourself beyond the comfort zone.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think a lot of what is presented seems like good advice. However, at the same time, it did feel a lot of generational assumptions are made regarding what a worker should or shouldn't do (like discussing wages).

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

The guide to faking it until you make it. We should all learn improv, not to give us confidence in our lack of ability to do the task we're 'acting out', but to ensure others believe we are the best person for the job even if there's a bit of a damp patch in our pants.

[Ruth Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

work read

[Ronda Canary · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Michelle]

For me, this was like eating popcorn while watching a fitness video. It’s only going to be useful if you actually do the excercises.

[James Marotta · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a fun and entertaining book about incorporating improvisational comedy skills into communication skills.