Communication is one of the most important modes in any organization or industry which enhances the overall effectiveness, productivity, and betterment of employees and company both. Communication is done through verbal and nonverbal mediums which include writing, chatting, reading, signs, and gestures. Whether it is your scholarly or professional career, effective communication is required everywhere.
As per the communication professional experts, following are a few important tips to improve communication skills:
1. Check your body language
Your actions speak louder than words, and 55% of the listener’s perceptions are based on your nonverbal communication. Always work on your body language and physical cues to communicate accurately. Avoid crossing arms, fiddling fingers, slouching, looking at your phone while talking to another person, make eye contact, fill up space with nods instead. Never show your disinterest in conversation and try to make it two-way. This will also help you in class presentations and interviews where you have to engage your audience more from your gestures than your words.
2. Get rid of unnecessary distractions
In a communication process, distractions are known as noises which interfere with the transmission of information. These may be anything from the language barrier to technical errors. When you convey something to another person, these noises may hinder the message. So, make sure that your conversation is not disturbed by unnecessary elements and for this speech in a common or known language, soundcheck, etc.
3. Engage the audience
Try to adopt the methods that engage your audience more. For this, you can ask frequent questions, use the art of storytelling, move around, etc. Also, when you use fillers such as umm, like, then it takes away the flow of your speech. One important lesson that you need to know is that listeners have a limited attention span, and once they get distracted from the conversation, it might be difficult to get their interest back. So make your discussions active, interactive, and try to involve them by asking their opinions.
4. Be brief and precise
As you already know, you can get the attention of the audience for a limited time, so you should always express your thoughts and views in brief yet making them specific and precise. This is applied not only in two-way communication but also in one-way communication like emails, presentations, etc. In fact, ‘brief’ is an abbreviation for background, reason, information, end, follow-up, which implies that you should know how to converse in short messages without leaving anything out. So don’t try to make a long and detailed speech, keep them clear and concise instead.
5. Always listen
When you exchange your views and opinions, it is essential for you to listen to what others have to say. You have to respect their point of view too. Your communication skill is incomplete if you don’t know how to listen to others with undivided attention. Let them talk without interruption and provide a thoughtful answer to ensure that you have taken their thoughts into account too. If you won’t listen to them, then they might also ignore what you have to say.
6. Ask for feedback
No communication process is complete until and unless the messenger gets the proper feedback as it shows that the receiver has got the message and clearly understood the motive behind it. Whether it is employee communication or scholar level communication the flow of feedback from one level to another has always been important. Actually, feedback ties all the above-mentioned points together and assure complete conversation cycle. Always convey in such a manner so as to have a scope of honest feedback be it appreciation or criticism. An audience should also be able to ask questions in case something is unclear. When you get reviews, then you can discover the areas that require improvement.
These were some of the proven ways to improve communication skills. Hopefully, you will not ignore the importance of having an effective conversation and start working on it soon. Try to get more involved in small talks with your teachers and classmates to be more confident.
