“If you just communicate, you can get by. But if you communicate skilfully, you can work miracles”.– Jim Rohn
What is Communication?
Communication is a way of transferring information and presenting your thoughts to others. It could be verbal, non-verbal, written or visual. People use a combination of these to transfer information to others.
Communication can be defined as ‘imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing or some other medium’.
Why do we need to Develop Strong Communication Skills?
“Skill in the art of communication is crucial to a leader’s success. He can accomplish nothing unless he can communicate effectively”.– Anonymous
The ability to communicate effectively with others always leads us to live a successful life. Knowledge and experience can help us in taking the first step while effective communication skill can help us in achieving our goal magnificently.
Effective communication is not just limited to passing information; rather it also conveys what you feel about that information. This turns simple communication into an extraordinary one. Strong Communication effectively deepens the personal and professional terms of a person.
Strong communication skills help us in improved handling of our team as well as relationships. We take better decisions with no resistance by the team or family. We are able to present our outlooks proficiently with a rational attitude. It further promotes us in achieving our targets well.
Nowadays, organisations look for soft skills (like communication) too along with hard skills (knowledge) while hiring an employee. As strong communicators are good at problem-solving, decision making, team-building, they are always preferred over people who carry only hard skills.
How to Develop Effective Communication Skills?
There are 5 easy ways of developing strong communication skills.
- Communicate with intent and purpose
- Public speaking
- Persuasion and negotiation
- Personal branding
- Present well
- Communicate with Intent and Purpose
Say the things clear and straight. Your intent and purpose should be purely explicable to the audience. It helps in gaining the faith of the people. One should speak aptly and deliver the required information instead of talking meaningless things.
While communicating one should also think from the audience point of view – problems they may face or questions they may want answers for. It helps to solve our purpose in a better way.
- Public Speaking
Public speaking is presenting your knowledge on any subject or matter in front of a live audience. Speaking in front of a live audience can make anyone nervous as the fear of speaking wrong or rejection from the audience is always there in mind.
To improve public speaking skill we need to get out of the fear of rejection or criticism.
Speaking constantly and endlessly without involving and relating with the audience is the second important area to work on for public speaking. To develop strong communication skills we need to activate the Power of Pause. Power of Pause instils to take 2-3 seconds of pause in between the speech. We must learn when to take a pause and for how much duration.
Effective and timed pauses help the audience in engrossing in the topic and it makes us look more poised and thoughtful.
A good public speaker keeps the audience involved till the end by not telling everything at the same time. It generates curiosity among the audience to know more and more about the topic, which keeps them attentive and focused. They may even ask questions out of their inquisitiveness.
Always keep the curiosity alive as it helps in better connectivity with the audience.
Public speaking is for the public, which means one must regale them according to their mood, energy level and body language. We must notice these non-verbal communicative factors to match the mood and energy according to theirs for effective public speaking.
- Persuasion and Negotiation
Strong communication skills always demand a person to be good at persuasion and negotiation. One must have the art of promoting recommendations effectively to the people and persuading them for the proposal. This skill gets the tasks done as per our demand without any refusal. To develop the skill, we must gain the trust of people by communicating with them clearly and concisely. Be a good and attentive listener to persuade a person for the proposals. It enables us to win the confidence of people and makes it easier to persuade and negotiate with them.
- Non-Verbal communication for effective presentation
Communication is not only about what we speak but it also includes our voice tone, body language, gestures and eye contact. These are non-verbal signals that depict how a person is feeling while interacting. During the conversation, one must take care of these signals to present the thoughts clearly and effectively.
- Work on Communication
We can make our communication more effective by reading books, listening to popular communicators and working on our flaws with a positive mind-set. Pick the qualities that have made those communicators popular, adapt them and practice to develop the required skills.
Effective communication makes you a leader and gives success at all levels. With good communication skills, wherever we are, we can mark our presence and can stand out in the crowd.
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