Perfect Pitch: You talk too much! (or not enough)

                                              I could have talked all night
                                   I could have talked all night
                                  And still have talked some more.
                                  I could have spread my wings
                                 And said a thousand things
                                 I've never said before....
                                          (Apologies to Julie Andrews!)

In the old days people could really talk. Talking was considered an art form, and an academic discipline known as rhetoric. This pertained mostly to public speaking, but the principles are also relevant to one-on-one interactions.

Oral communication was understood to consist of four basic elements: invention, arrangement, style, and memory. 

Those categories are actually still very applicable today, and they’re intuitively understood by everybody who really communicates well. Today and in my next three posts we’ll look at these topics one by one.

What used to be called invention really means just having something interesting to say. You can’t be a great talker if you don’t have anything of value to talk about.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop a lot of people. Plenty of men and women can hold forth for a long time without any good reason to do so. This can happen at the board of directors meeting for a major corporation, it can happen on parents’ night at a nursery school, or (worst of all) it can happen on an airplane, where the window is the only way out. Usually compulsive talkers talk when they have nothing to say, but sometimes they have too much to say and they’re just trying to fit it all in.

There’s also another category of person who actually does have valuable information to share, but who’s afraid to say anything. That’s also a failure of what used to be called invention.

Right now, ask yourself where you stand on that spectrum. Are you someone who feels the need to talk for talking’s own sake? Or do you back away from communicating even when people would benefit from what you have to say?
         
Try to be ruthlessly honest about this. It’s not easy, because most people are amazingly unaware of their true nature as communicators. Plus, this is something that other people will usually be uncomfortable discussing with you.

Questions like, “Did I talk too much?” or “Was I too quiet?” or “Did I make a fool of myself?” may not get a frank answer. But if you train yourself to give focused attention to what you say, how you say it, and how people seem to be reacting, you can probably make a pretty accurate assessment on your own.