What are the Best Strategies to Improve Communication Skills?
What are the Best Strategies to Improve Communication Skills?
strategies to improve Communication
How to Learn Communication Skills
Your communication capabilities influence every aspect of your life.
Career, love, bonds, family relationship – Everything gets moulded by the way you communicate with people encompassing you. Wrecks in interaction can bear far-reaching consequences, while strong communication skills can result in victory, confidence, and self-improvement.
In this blog, we will take you over 12 strategies to improve communication skills that will not only help you connect efficiently with others but will also add up to your success in work and life.
Today, we’ll be talking in brief about several great communication strategies but before we walk down that lane, let’s take a swift look at some of the prevalent mistakes these strategies intended to avoid.
5 Common Communication Mistakes
You must have noticed that every successful leader can meaningfully communicate his message to his audience. How so?
Steve Jobs motivated his workers to strive for independent hardware outputs. Jack Welch mentored his senior management unit of GE to new achievement. Jeff Bezos is recognized for connecting the Amazon ethos precisely to workers and the world.
All of these world-renowned leaders possess exceptional leadership skills and understand how to use communication as a tool to influence people. However, there are several nuanced ways bad communication can exhibit. Given below are few of the most common blunders:
Weak dedication to listening
Communication is not a one-way flow of information. It is a two-way street. This means that being ready to listen to what other person has to say is just as valuable as being able to represent yourself adequately. Lack of listening habits is among the most popular communication barriers, and you’ll see it frequently rising when wi will talk about the strategies to improve communication skills later.
Prominently inadequate writing skills
Writing well is never an easy task. And every thought you don’t have to be a masterful storyteller to convey your message, you mustn’t mess up the grammar, or punctuation. Communication also included written interplay of information your vocabulary needs to be apt for successfully delivered via writing.
Permitting tenacious distractions
Distractions act as a considerable part of our day to day life. From talking on phone calls to physically addressing someone, we are all the time around some kind of disturbance. This can lead to an ill transfer of data, and your message may get lost in the way.
Making postulates regarding information or intent
While you are striving to explain a topic you understand entirely, it can be obvious to omit necessary information, because you believe the others attending to you are on the same page just like yours.
Practising passive communication
Another communication barrier happens when you withhold information, though on a deeper emotional level. An individual who follows passive communication will be hesitant to share information that might cause them discomforts—such as awe, rage, sadness, or resentment.
strategies to improve communication skills and become a more robust and productive leader.
strategies to improve communication skills
Master the basics of non-verbal interaction.
According to a study, nonverbal communication constitutes as much as 55 per cent of how viewers perceive a presenter. That indicates that the majority of what you speak is expressed not by words, but by your physical cues.
To interact precisely and positively, you must focus on adopting a proper attitude and posture. Avoid slumping, crossing your arms, or making yourself look tinier than you are.
Preferably, fill up all the provided space, keep eye contact, and (if relevant) walk around the area while you talk.
There is a need to over-communicate just to communicate.
Sometime in the 1990s, a grad scholar from Stanford University was able to confirm that presenters overestimate how much audiences understand. As per a study which later came to be known as “the tappers and the listeners,” one group of members was asked to tap the music of 120 popular songs. The other members were ordered to guess what song was getting drawn.
The tapping members determined that 50% of all songs tapped would be accurately recognized. However, in actuality, the percentage of songs that were rightly identified was as low as 2.5.
This whole crux of the study was to shows that it is crucial to communicate clearly, and one must over-communicate while sharing or discussing new ideas. As this research portrays, the audience will possibly fail to assimilate as much as you anticipate.
Avoid relying on visual aids at all.
Steve Jobs initiated a custom at Apple that forbade all PowerPoint presentations. Likewise, Sheryl Sandberg established a ban on PowerPoint on Facebook. Both the leaders mentioned above realized that PowerPoint presentations could hinder instead of helping the share of information.
To cut a long story short, you should always be combat-ready. Try to apply words, compelling storytelling, and nonverbal signs to express your point with the listeners. And you must avoid relying on or using any unnecessary visual aids.
Ask for honest feedback.
Asking for honest feedback is one of the crucial strategies to improve communication skills. Just like any other leadership skills, getting straightforward and candid input from companions, supervisors, and members of your group helps you to grow into a better communicator. When you continuously ask for feedback, others will also aid you in discovering areas for growth that you might have otherwise missed.
Engage the audience in discussion.
Despite the fact of how compelling you are as a speaker, all attendees have restricted attention spans. If you want to become a more influential communicator, you should focus on making your presentations and talks more interactive.
Start by asking questions with your audience or encourage people to speak out their ideas during a brainstorming session, or at the very least, to stimulate your listeners, ask hypothetical queries.
Start and end with key points.
Pause for a moment and think about the “tappers and listeners” study that we mentioned earlier in this blog. Open dialogue is of supreme significance.
If you want to assure that your audience comprehended the key takeaways from your performance, reemphasize on all the key points from the beginning to the very end. This can also be achieved by giving your audience a one-pager that covers all key points they should take into account during the presentation.
Use the PIP strategy.
A simplified structure practised by corporate experts, like those at McKinsey, is the PIP approach – purpose, importance, preview. It is one of the crucial strategies to improve communication skills used for presentation introductions.
In this method, the speaker first declares the scope of the presentation and then shares the reasons that make the presentation valuable. He or she also further reviews the implications and potential consequences. Eventually, the speaker provides a preview of the issues that will be addressed during the entire session.
This structure is a useful method to get your audiences thrilled about the exhibition, assisting them to concentrate on your message and valuable takeaways.
Record relevant presentations for posterity.
Communicating effectively takes a great deal of your time and strength. If you find yourself in such a situation where you may have to give the same presentation various times, consider recording it. This way, you can easily share it in the future and save both your hours and workforce.
Video-recording platforms such as Wistia and Zoom permit the speakers to record the entire session. Thus, you can use it while delivering a presentation. It can also be further used to edit the video ad, turn them into a more engaging and helpful asset. Further, they will also present you with metrics about audience engagement.
Recorded presentations can be particularly valuable for communicators who need to continually give training in a corporation that is hiring workers promptly.
Master the art of timing.
The next one in the list of strategies to improve communication skills is understanding what to speak and when. While a handful of jokes may be inappropriate for the workspace environment, otherwise we all will agree that standup comedians are certainly powerful communicators.
Comedians such as Chris Rock and Andy Samberg can entertain compelling 90-minute comedy acts, in part as they have understood the art of timing.
Get comfortable and speaking spontaneously.
When attorneys present a case in front of the high court or supreme court, they typically talk extemporaneously. The trick behind this is that the lawyers note down a list of topics they propose to address, but they do not commemorate them word by word.
This way of interacting enables the lawyers to present a lawsuit to cover all of the essential details while providing them versatility as to how to communicate based on public response or enigmas.
If you are looking forward to enhancing your business communication, you should consider applying an extemporaneous speaking style. It demands discipline, but it will provide you with a more natural tone and will keep your audience engaged.
Add novelty to enhance audience retention.
According to a recent study, people usually retain more data when they are presented with the novel, contrary to monotony, conditions. To help your listeners retain the information, try to inject some sort of novel experience into a performance. This might be something humorous or something that entirely grabs the audience by surprise.
Pay attention to earning respect rather than laughs.
It can be attractive to interact with others cheerfully; above all, this can be an excellent means to make buddies in the workplace. However, you should keep in mind that the most prosperous communicators are the ones who have gained respect, more than laughs.
So, even though telling a joke or two will warm up the environment, and the audience may start liking you, avoid ending a presentation with a laugh.
Final thoughts:
Communicating is among the top skills you must take into account and develop in your career. By employing some (or all) of the strategies mentioned above to improve communication skills, you can attain success in your workplace. These abilities equip you with more devices to become the most reliable asset you can be, and they will carry you a long way in your life.
Take these skills just like learning a new trade or attaining a degree. They will lead to enhanced work quality, heightened content from your co-workers or clients, and more stable power over your business.
Always keep in mind the verbal as well as nonverbal cues when you communicate with others. Be an active listener and try to comprehend what others have to say, and over-communicate in novel ways to ensure your audience has successfully received your message.
Excellent communication supports positive experiences with all those you interact.
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