Top Five Ways to Improve Your Communication Skills
How many times have you heard or read about the importance of written and verbal communication skills. 50? 100? 1,000? The primary reason for this subject retaining its popularity is its overwhelming importance. Clear communication is critical to successful personal, group, professional, and volunteer activities.
For all the shortcuts, grammatical errors and poor sentence structure created by tweets, emails and instant messenger software, communications volume is higher than ever. Consider your average day at the workplace.
How often do you communicate with co-workers, management, customers or clients, vendors, or anyone else? Constantly? If you count your internal and external emails, phone calls, meetings, presentations, and general work-related conversation, you will quickly understand the importance of clear speaking and writing to accomplish anything of value.
All “Messages” Must be Clear and Understandable
Regardless of the strength or weakness of your vocabulary, writing skills or position on the organization chart, your messages MUST be clear and understood by your listeners. Whether you are the CEO or the newest hire in the customer service department, you must communicate clearly to complete any task, just as those speaking with you need to express themselves properly.
Have you heard about or experienced criticism from a superior for a less-than-successful project or task you completed? Did you really under-perform or did you misunderstand the job or management expectation because of poor communication from someone?
The most important business communication tips start and end with clarity as the most critical component. Just as you should ask questions regarding any detail, however small, about a task or assignment you receive, you should also think “clarity first” when communicating with everyone at the workplace.
While clear communications will not overcome poor performance, strong verbal communication skills can improve your image, brand and respect with management. Co-workers and management will notice that you speak and write clearly, making their jobs easier and more effective.
Even those who may miss the “subtlety” of your clear communications, most people subconsciously understand the value of straightforward statements and questions. Over time, you will reap the benefits at promotion time or receiving future job recommendations.
Business Communication Tips
Mindtools.com published a “checklist” for clear communication that can help you develop the critical habit of expressing yourself effectively. Use these brief reminders to help you become an outstanding communicator on the job. Along with boosting your career, you might enjoy a more pleasant personal life, as you polish your verbal communication skills.
Adopt these business communication tips to improve your performance.
- Be clear. King of all the communication skills, clarity is the foundation for all business and personal verbal success, whether spoken or written. Even the most eloquent presentation, report or opinion can be rendered useless if readers and listeners are unclear of your point. Before eloquence, strive for clarity first.
- Be concise. Stick to your point, state your position, goal or request as briefly as possible and eliminate unnecessary words, sentences and, of course, paragraphs. Time can be more valuable than money. Respect the time constraints of your listeners and readers, just as you want them to respect your responsibilities.
- Be concrete. Similar to good taste, you may be unable to define this feature, but you know it when you see or hear it. Much like the creed of all writers, “show, don’t tell,” being concrete delivers a clear “picture” of the purpose and subject of your communication. Certainly, you might face challenges to paint a vivid, exciting picture with more mundane, repetitive or less than stimulating communications. However, creating the correct picture in the mind of your listener or reader eliminates confusion and delivers the proper message.
- Be correct. This tip may, at first, appear to be self-evident. Think about instructions you’ve received, confusing emails addressed to you, memos not worth the time you spent reading—and trying to decipher them—or other directives you have read that either made no sense or were filled with spelling and word usage errors. Being correct involves using proper grammar and spelling, along with tailoring your oral or written communication to your “audience.” For example, over using “buzzwords” to express your point to a non-technical group does more to confuse than enlighten. Strive to make all of your communications correct in content, point-of-view and message.
- Be coherent. This is another of the important verbal communication skills that is often overlooked. Are you aware of the once-famous writing style called “stream of consciousness?” If you haven’t yet had the “pleasure” of reading this style, find a book, essay or other communication using this method. You only need to read a page or two to start a headache. This exercise will reinforce the importance of being coherent in your workplace communications. Thinking about something is typically very different than expressing your thoughts in a logical and consistent fashion. That which makes perfect sense to your mind may be excruciatingly incoherent to your reader or listener. Communicate logically to people, leaving no need for “reading between the lines,” which often leads the reader/interpreter to misunderstanding.
Use this brief checklist of business communication tips to become a better employee. You will benefit in many other areas by using clear communications. Your perception at the workplace will improve, more promotion opportunities will magically appear and your career will accelerate as your reputation as an effective communicator expands.
Source:
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCS_85.htm