7 Tips to Improve your Communication Skills
Good communication is an essential tool in achieving productivity and maintaining strong working relationships at all levels of an organization. In the business context, communication is effective if the information shared among the company employees contributes towards the organization’s commercial success. Therefore, possessing strong communication skills greatly supports your career and personal development.
Here are 7 tips to improve your communication skills.
Listen
“Listen more than you talk.” Being a good listener is half the equation to being a good communicator. Thus, when you listen attentively you can answer in a more meaningful way. Listen attentively to someone completely and be comfortable with short periods of silence. This skill is crucial to effectively improve your communication skills.
Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is another critical component to having strong communication skills. To communicate effectively, it is important to get to know your audience first. Indeed, each audience is different and will have different preferences and cultural norms that should be considered when communicating. Therefore, the way you interact with your manager should be different than how you interact with your friends. This is not to say you need to be a different person with everyone you interact with. You want to ensure you are using the type of communication most relevant to your audience.
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Maintain eye contact.
Whether speaking to a crowd or one-on-one, maintaining eye contact builds credibility and demonstrates you care about your listeners.
Minimize
The goal of talking to or communicating with someone is to share actual information. The goal is to provide clarity and not confusion. State what needs to be stated as succinctly and clearly as possible avoiding bogus words and vague assumptions.
Body Language
A critical component of how to improve communication skills especially for workplace success is body language. Body language refers to the nonverbal signals that you use to communicate your feelings and intentions. It includes your posture, your facial expressions, and your hand gestures. Studies show that 65% of all communication is non-verbal. Watch for visual signs that your listener understands, agrees, or disagrees with your message. And be aware that your body is sending signals, too. Understanding body language is important, but it is also essential to pay attention to other cues such as context. To communicate clearly and confidently, adopt proper posture. Avoid slouching, folding your arms, or making yourself appear smaller than you are. Instead, fill up the space you are given, maintain eye contact
Ask for honest feedback
As with most leadership skills, receiving honest feedback from peers, managers, and members of your team is critical to becoming a better communicator. If you regularly solicit feedback, others will help you to discover areas for improvement that you might have otherwise overlooked.
Engage the audience or listener in a discussion.
Regardless of how compelling the speaker is, all audiences have limited attention spans. To become a more effective communicator, make presentations and discussions interactive. Ask the audience a question, encourage people to call out their thoughts during a brainstorming session, or at the very least ask hypothetical questions to stimulate the audience.