Welcome to episode 107 with Richard Newman, founder of Bodytalk. Richard founded Body Talk in 2000. His team have now worked with over 75,000 clients from 46 countries around the world improving the way they communicate.

Richard is an award-winning expert in leadership communication, storytelling, and influence. Working in advanced communication since 1995, Richard specialises in showing leaders how to speak with greater impact and influence. He is regularly featured on BBC London Radio and is the author of the best-selling book ‘You were Born to Speak.’

So, what does this episode cover?

We start by discussing why communication is more than just what we say. Richard explained that as someone recently diagnosed as high-functioning autistic, he’s naturally shy and highly introverted. Communication to him has always been extremely different to that of the average neurotypical person. Richard had to work very hard to have his voice heard, building his communication skills from the ground up.

Not everyone is born automatically recognising what good communication is. We therefore discuss what every person can do to improve their skills. Richard feels communication is like a game of tennis. To win, everyone must have the skills of forehand, backhand, serve and volley. Richard explains that whilst every player is different, if they don’t have these fundamental skills to play, then they won’t be a good at the game! The same goes for communication.

Teaching universal strategies and techniques is the key for everyone. Picking up on and understanding effective body language, is a high-level skill that we often take for granted. Richard saw this for himself when in the 1990’s he went to teach at a remote monastery in northeast India for 6 months. None of the monks spoke English. Within a very short period he was able to understand them through their body language and tone of voice.

Richard explains that if your tone of voice doesn’t ‘match’ the spoken word, then
communication is often difficult. People do things that they are unaware of that ‘pull away’ from others. He describes how to avoid that and how to encourage engagement when
speaking.

This is really such a great episode and not to be missed. As Richard said “everyone was born to speak”