Communication skill is one of the most sought after and important skills in today’s workplace. They are essential for leaders, team members and collaborators to improve.
As someone coming from a tech background and completely tech savvy environment, I was very bad at communication.
But through continuous practice and following some of the basic rules in communication, I am now able to effectively communicate with my colleagues and managers on a daily basis at work.
Are you also someone who is struggling to communicate effectively with others, whether it is in a workplace or in a college or in your regular life or with your loved ones?
In this blog, I will discuss some of the action plans that you can take every day to make your communication skills better and become an effective communicator.
Let’s start with the first action plan.
What Will You Learn?
Practice Talking Daily
The first thing that might come to your mind when being better at communicating is how you can talk in a much smoother and better way.
And there is no better action plan than practicing talking on a daily basis.
So what do you exactly need to do?
Write down a small script about anything that you know or that you want to do or maybe you want to express.
After you are done with your script, you need to get your camera ready. You can use a smartphone or a camera, whatever seems fit for you.
Start talking in front of the camera with your front camera on and keep on talking about the things that you have written in your script.
First you will find yourself nervous if you have never done this, but as you gradually do it, you will feel more and more comfortable and feel fluent in talking in front of the camera.
If you do this on a daily basis, it will gradually improve your speaking skill in front of camera, increase your confidence and also make a social presence if you share these videos on social media.
Whether you share the videos on social media or not, what matters the most is you shoot yourself every day in front of camera while talking, no matter how good or bad you are.
This is the first action plan you need to make sure you do on a daily basis to become good at speaking.
Listening In Communication
Another important part involved in communication is listening.
Listening is the most underrated skill in communication that most of us are not able to do properly because most of the time we are busy with our own response and our own judgment that we miss out what other people in front of us are saying.
In communication, proper understanding only comes when you listen patiently to the person with whom you are talking.
Simple way of improving listening skill, is to stop thinking much about what you are going to say next. Instead, be quiet, focus on what the person is saying.
Listening patiently means that you are listening to things that are not even said. You are trying to understand what the intention is of saying it, why they are saying it and with what kind of emotion they are saying it through their body language and, their verbal cues.
Just by becoming good at listening, will make you far better communicator than any other person who does not listen properly. Because people love to be listened to, and they also pay attention to what you are saying.
Keep It Short
Don’t waste the other person’s time with unnecessary talk.
Always be short, to the point and make sure that you use simple to understand words while communicating.
Always try to keep track of what you are trying to say and communicate only those things in the shortest way possible and never talk about other unimportant things as it can make the whole message confusing.
Remember that the time you are spending with the other person is not just your time but also the other person’s time. So, understand the worth of other’s time and value your own time.
For that, always opt for short and concise communication options and choose simplest words that will make the whole communication easy for the people to consume.
Eye Contact
You are face to face with someone and you are trying to communicate something to him or her. Then you have to make sure that you are maintaining proper eye contact when talking.
Make sure that you are not staring at the person too much because that could make them uncomfortable.
Make sure that the duration of how much you are staring at them is long enough to not make them feel weird. Let’s say after 10 or 15 seconds, you can break eye contact, smile, look at something else, and then go back to make eye contact again.
Keep You Audience In Mind
The whole point of communication is mutual understanding.
I am someone from the programming domain, so when I talk with my colleagues, I talk in programming dialect.
But if I do the same with my managers, I do a little bit technical but still use simple words. To make sure we understand each other.
When I talk with my product manager, I talk about the product and use words suited for the product manager, and do not go into too much technical detail.
So when you are communicating, it is important that you know your audience and what kind of words you should use to communicate with them.
It is your responsibility of making the other person understand what you are trying to say. So, you have to find the right words, correct tone and, the body language that is fit for the person with whom you are talking right now.
If you are talking to person A, then you might need to use some words to make them understand it which could be different when you are talking with person B.
Depending on the person, you have to change your way of communication.
Practice Before Giving An Important Message
Practicing is the key for perfection. If you are going for an important meeting and you need to deliver a message which you have to make sure that the people understand, then you have to practice the whole message again and again before actually delivering it.
Always make sure that you are ready before you communicate. You have to be clear of what are communicating, how you have to communicate to make people understand you, prepare for different kinds of questions they might be asking and how you can make your message smooth and easy to absorb for your audience.
Communicate At Right Time
You have to let other people know at the right time instead of overloading them with too much information and making them confused.
Remember when communicating that you need to pass only one important message to the person and for that you have to choose which thing you need to communicate right now, and which can be ignored for now.
Make sure that you are delivering the right messages at the right time instead of overloading the pupil in front of you with all the messages at the same time and confusing them.
Conclusion
I have highlighted some important action plans in this blog that you can follow from today onwards and try to improve your communication skills.
Communication is a skill which you can master overtime with practice and with more practice.
There is no end to how good you can communicate, so you have to always improve, always look and learn about how people are effectively communicating.
Sometimes your communication will be incredible and sometimes it will be horrible. But what you always need to do is improve yourself and learn from your mistakes.
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