From building a good family relationship to landing a good job and getting a promotion, effective communication skill is necessary. It is crucial for both professional and personal life, serving as a cornerstone of successful relationships.
Communication accompanies everything we do, whether in interacting with friends, bonding with partners, or at work to meet deadlines. Building excellent communication skills can support you in building positive relationships, expressing your needs and wants, and furnishing understanding to all parties.
Ineffective communication, on the other hand, can lead to missed opportunities, misunderstandings, conflict, mistrust, and dissemination of misinformation. It’s no longer a surprise that poor communication is the root of many problems. And although schools and universities teach communication, they barely manage to plant the seed of effective communication in us.
The ability to communicate gets sharpened by experience. The more you communicate with exceptional communicators, the more fine-tune your skills can be. Unfortunately, we are prone to develop poor communication habits since it’s difficult to find excellent communicators just anywhere today.
The good news is that you can polish your communication skills by employing a few strategies. So, let’s stop beating around the bust and get down to it!
Give yourself some time to think alone
As a head start, the first thing you need to do is to stop talking. Although it seems quite odd since the main goal is to improve your skills in communication, there’s a reasonable rationale behind this step: Unless something is “identified,” nothing can be refined.
In schools, the grades we get from our professors serve as a benchmark to see how well we are doing. This is how the first step in improving your communication looks like. You need to identify and self-grade yourself on how well you are performing in terms of communication.
Once you’re done identifying your ability to communicate, see the areas where you can improve. Regardless of how great a communicator you are, you still need to assess yourself regularly to push yourself further to be better than your best.
Discover the basics of non-verbal communication
Studies suggest that non-verbal communication accounts for 55% of how audiences see a presenter. These non-verbal or physical cues communicates your messages more than your words do. Hence, in order to communicate confidently and clearly, you need to adopt a proper speaking posture.
In communicating with others, you need to maintain eye contact and move around the space given (if appropriate). You should refrain from making yourself look smaller than your size, avoid folding your arms and abstain from slouching. Try going for the old-fashioned, formal way of speaking.
Overcommunicate
Sometimes, the things we thought we expressed clearly weren’t really communicated well. And this is where the power of hand gestures, storytelling, and visual cues often enters the scene.
However, even though there are so many ways to say what you want to convey in a more comprehensible way, the best way is to give multiple perspectives regarding the issue at hand.
Don’t rely on visual aids
Rather than preparing all night for a PowerPoint presentation, prepare yourself to use compelling storytelling and non-verbal cues to fetch your critical points with the audience. Unless necessary, stay away from the use of any form of visual aids because studies have shown that it can interfere with effective communication.
In line with this matter, Steve Jobs created a rule at Apple, banning the use of PowerPoint presentations. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg followed this shifting.
Entertain the audience in conversation
All audiences have a limited concentration span, regardless of how excellent the speaker is. This is the reason why you need to keep your audiences engaged and entertained by making your presentation and discussion interactive.
You can call out their thoughts in the time of brainstorming or ask them hypothetical questions to stimulate their attention.
Begin and conclude with critical points
To avoid any misunderstanding, you should make sure that the critical points in your presentation or conversation are understood really well. This can be achieved by reiterating the key points from beginning to end. Aside from this, you can give the audience a one-pager that contains points that they should take regard throughout the presentation.
Get the hang of the art of timing
Do you know what makes standup comedians an effective communicators? It’s because they have mastered the art of timing. Comedians like Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock were able to host an entertaining 90-minute-long comedy show because they know the time when to repeat an idea or push on to a new topic.
You should learn how to master this tactic to communicate effectively too!
Understand who you are talking to
This is critical in establishing effective communication. To reach your audience better, you need to know which approach and tone would work best for them, and to achieve this, you need to get to know and have a full grasp of who they are first.
Don’t rush into speech and take time to evaluate your audience first. This will help you convey your speech with a strong momentum that will maintain your audience’s attention.
Be at ease speaking extemporaneously
Extemporaneous speaking is a pretty challenging type of speaking at first, but once you get the hang of it, it can be rewarding for your career and confidence. By equipping yourself with the ability to speak extemporaneously, you will be able to adjust in response to audience inquiries and reactions smoothly.
Write out what you want to say before actually saying it
Writing what you want to say can give you the edge of fully processing your thoughts rather than letting all words play into your mind all at once. Since your thoughts are forced to keep up with the phase of your writing hand, they propelled to slow down, aiding in comprehending what you truly want to convey.
Furthermore, when you write the things you want to say, you give yourself a chance to have a clear view of your message. If there’s something that seems missing or wrong, you can edit the message to make it a better one. Because you had your practice and the words you will say are already engraved in your mind, you can be more effective in sharing your insights with your colleagues and coworkers.