How to sound smart...while saying nothing

These days, the way we communicate and interact with other people is very important and the effectiveness of this process will depend on 2 main elements: the content and the non verbal elements.

When giving a speech, we already know that the whole objective is to convey information, promote or defend a point of view, or even on occasions to persuade the audience. The essence of a good speech is in what you say, but this can be enhanced by other elements (tone of voice, eye movement, facial expressions, hand gestures...) that differentiates an average speech from a great speech.

An interesting research about non-verbal communication led by Albert Mehrabian (1971) concluded that just 7% of the credibility in a speecd is attributable to the actual words (study focused on salespersons). This research found that 55% depends of the speaker´s body language and another 38% was due to the tone and pitch of the voice, as shown below.

In contrast, I have no doubt that the verbal (what you actually say) is of huge significance, but it´s also interesting to see how important and powerful is the way you say it. In the following TED talk (5:55) , Will Stephen (an American comedian) shows, in a very peculiar way, some “tricks” , which will make you sound brilliant!