No matter which domain you work for or what your role is, if there is one skill you should have apart from your job-specific skill is the ability to communicate effectively. Communication is one of the most elementary skills humans require for survival and progress. In a corporate setup, having good communication skills can greatly differentiate individuals and highlight them out of the crowd. It is what drives a team to work collaboratively and creates a cohesive bonding which ultimately leads to achieving common goals. If communication does not sound like your strongest forte, here are a few tips from Pragati leadership – a leader in communication skills training – that can help you UP your game.
1. Be an active listener:
This may sound like counter-intuitive advice but a major part of effective communication involves you listening attentively to the other person. That does not mean you should only keep listening without talking at all but rather that you respond and acknowledge the speaker and let them know you are receiving their message correctly. This is probably also why we have 2 ears and one mouth.
2. Speak with your body:
Most experts agree that 70 to 93 percent of all communication is nonverbal. Body language is all about communicating maximum information using bodily gestures such as facial expressions, body posture, eye movement, touch, and the use of space. At any given point of communication, body language is inadvertently at play. For example, if you struggle to make eye contact with a person when you engage in conversation, you are jeopardizing the interaction with the chance of having your intentions misinterpreted.
3. Keep the conversation going:
Being a part of an active conversation requires you to respond constructively and add to the conversation. For example, simply agreeing to the other person by a ‘hmmm’ or a ‘yea’ is a surefire way to kill the conversation with a slow death. On the other hand, contesting each point with a counterargument can also become annoying. Instead, being able to give positive feedback is a skill that can make anyone you work with feel good.
4. Be confident, clear, and concise:
Consider this, the average human attention span today has dropped down to only about eight seconds. This directly means that people may get impatient when they have to spend extra time exerting their brains to grasp what you’re saying. Lengthy sentences are considered to be an indication of being indecisive and may hurt your image as a leader. Hence, being concise in your communication is an essential part of establishing an executive presence and projecting confidence.
5. Being respectful of others’ opinions:
Sometimes in a conversation, you listen to someone talk, and when it’s time for you to give your viewpoint, they either look elsewhere or have an expression of disregard on their face the whole time. This is an uneven and one-sided conversation that yields nothing but a loss of respect and a feeling of resentment. Avoid being the former and instead, give respect to the other person by hearing out their point with full attention and then giving out a fitting response. Sometimes, even great arguments can be resolved with a little bit of understanding and a slight modulation of tone.
Besides being able to communicate effectively at your workplace, honing your communication skills can influence your career – and your daily success at work. For organizations aspiring to achieve breakthrough results, Pragati Leadership offers powerful learning solutions to accelerate leadership effectiveness and talent performance at all levels. To learn more, explore the Pragati Leadership website today!
