These days communication skills are more important than it was in the past. In this corporate world, Communication skill is important for career and personal success. Good communication skill helps to express and connect to people more effectively. In this modern Civilization, communication skill is so important that we cannot underestimate or deny this. When it comes about the essential life skill, communication skill is on the top of the list. Knowing how to improve communication skills will keep anyone many steps ahead of their competitors.
No matter family or workplace communication skills help to maintain a good relationship and productivity.
What is meant by communication skills?
Communication indicates Verbal and nonverbal. Verbal communication means as we speak to people and connect to them through using words and nonverbal means connecting and expressing using body language.
There are more importance of Communication in our life. So the ability to express and share feelings, thoughts, and ideas, effectively with others is Communication skill.
Sharing information and also gathering information is a basic purpose of good communication skills.
Communication skill is a combination of the following process, shortly explained below for better understanding:
- Verbal
- Is a communication process like Speaking to people, though Lecture etc?
- Nonverbal
- Is a communication process indicating communication using Body language, signs, and different expressions
- Written
- Is a communication process through writing letters, email, notes, books etc. This can be done through digital or manual processes.
- Visual
- Is a communication process of transferring and collecting data through different Graphical explanations like charts, photos, graphs, logos etc.
The importance of communication Skills
To connect with people, communication is the medium. So for better connectivity and better relationships, good communication skill is very important. Good communication skills will help everyone with every aspect of life no matter what the profession is.
Good communication skills also unlock many qualities like leadership, good lecturer, also important for better relationships and teamwork.
Importance of Communication Skills
The importance of communication at the workplace cannot be ignored, regarding that in a workplace people from different educational and professional backgrounds work together for the same output or result. So to stay on track with everyone besides desk work communication plays a vital role.
The importance of communication at work is not often realized by the administration because of their lack of knowledge about the importance of communication skills and its effectiveness.
So to achieve the goals of an organization, determining the vision and keeping continuous productivity flow among employees effective communication skills at the workplace are very important. Also for these reasons the importance of communication in business also carries a great value.
So no matter an employee, student, businessman, or different professionals, everyone should know about the importance and how to improve communication skills.
How to improve communication skills
As we know the importance of communication at the workplace or business from above, now let’s focus on how to improve communication skills.
We are about to discuss below some strategies to improve communication skills and that will work for everyone.
Does not matter if you are an employee seeking the answer for how to improve communication skills in the workplace or a student or a businessman looking for effective methods to improve your communication skill, given strategies below will work everywhere.
5 communication skills for everyone to practice
- Listen to other
- The first method to improve communication skills is that you have to stop talking and listen to others. Because if you keep talking continuously you cannot listen to others or what they have to say.
In this case, you can think about the natural ratio, you have two ears and one mouth so you should listen more than you talk.
You have to be an active listener. Active listening means not only listening and forgetting at the same time but also focusing on what the person in front of you is saying to you.
You should try to understand their point of view, what they are trying to say to you, and what is the message or the context. You should always let them finish their talk. You should never start your story while they are not finished there talking yet
By doing this, the person in front of you will notice that you are really listening to him. This will create a positive impression about you and he will feel free to communicate with you.
Obviously, to perform active listening will require practice and if you can stick to this simple method you will see a dramatic improvement in your communication skill.
- Improve Body Language
- Body language is a process of nonverbal communication.
Body language helps to explain what we are trying to say or what we are trying to share. Even without words, we can communicate through body language, so this is really important.
Body language can have a positive or negative effect on our communication process. Proper body language has a major impact on the message we deliver or receive. It can increase or decrease the whole effectiveness of a conversation.
So to step up the communication skills we need to work on improving our body language.
Open posture and staying relax helps to improve our body language. for proper body language, good confidence is necessary and Good posture increases confidence. So if anyone has an issue with their posture or has a bad posture, they should start working on their basic body fitness.
Another important thing for proper body language is staying calm and relaxed. If you feel nervous while communicating it may interrupt the proper body language expression. This will reduce the effectiveness of communication and pull down the level of your communication skill.
If you have this issue nothing to worry about almost everyone has this issue but doing practices over and over again everyone gets rid of this problem. Meditation can be a great help to this problem.
- Be friendly and Empathize with talkers
- The first condition of being friendly is that you have to smile at people. A smile is a sign of friendliness and acceptance and while communicating makes eye contact because this will indicate that you are into conversation. If you make eye contact it will create some natural facial expression that will confirm the other person that you are caring for what you are saying or what the person is saying.
Another important indicator of being friendly is that you should never use rude words and no matter how your temper or mood at the time of conversation you should never let that have an impact on your conversation.
Another important thing is to empathize with talkers, which means if you are listening to a bad experience or a sad story it should have the same types of emotional impact on you and your emotional reaction should be proper according to the context.
So always try to imagine yourself in their condition. This will help you to feel their problem much better and will also help you to react correctly.
Suppose someone is sharing about their bad time with you and how much they are struggling to recover it, and instead of being sad, your facial expression was like you don’t care or you started laughing. Can you imagine how inappropriate that would be, and for this inappropriate reaction, the negative impact on the person’s mind was set it will take almost forever for you to recover.
So to improve communication skills you have to be friendly and empathize with talkers and definitely, this will help to improve your communication skills.
- Keep your message simple and Ask questions
- While having a conversation keep your message simple and straight on your topics so that the listener can understand that quickly. If you use complex terms and if the context is unclear to the listener or the audience will lose interest, your conversation will not be engaging.
This may cause a negative impact on your improvement like as unwilling to improve communication skills. So it is important to keep your message simple.
Asking questions is proof that you are engaged in conversation, this shows that you are listening and understanding what the other person is trying to say to you and you are also trying to get it cordially.
- Pay attention and take your time
- Now in this digital world, it is really hard to pay attention without the distraction of smartphones or smart gadgets for a while. But if you really want to improve communication skills you have to pay attention while communicating with others and also while applying these methods given above.
Most importantly you can never achieve any great skills overnight. Find what you lack and work on to improve these. Keep Practicing and don’t be in hurry take your time.