Being able to effectively communicate in the workplace, or in more general situations, is crucial. How you use language, and how you understand the particular audience that you’re working with, will affect how well you can put across ideas and build stronger bonds between others. You also need to know how to change your communication methods depending on a situation, and how to best use techniques like body language and active listening to improve your communication.
1 - Think About Body Language
When speaking to an individual or group, always think about your body language, and what you may be indirectly communicating. Try to make eye contact, and keep your gestures open and not defensive - this means avoiding habits like folding your arms when speaking, as this can contradict the message that you’re trying to put across. Positive gestures like nodding can also be useful, while it’s important to cut down on any fidgeting that may distract your audience.
2 - Improve Your Listening Skills
While most people will carefully listen during a conversation, it can be easy to switch over and try to bring a conversation back to you; try to be as attentive as possible, rather than just waiting for your turn to speak again. The more focus you place on the other person, the better you’ll be able to gauge their tone, and won’t mean that you’ll pass over important information. In the same way, it’s important to look at body language and nonverbal cues.
3 - Being Consistent
One of the most important things to focus on when building up your communication skills is being consistent in the way that you speak and engage with the same people. Switching tone, or being very attentive one day, and more detached the next can make others view you as uncaring, and calculated in how you give out your attention. This kind of approach also works well when delivering speeches to employees, in the sense that you need to avoid mixing up overly casual and formal language between sessions.
4 - Dealing with Criticism
This can be difficult for anyone, but does represent an important part of effective communication; you need to make sure that you’re prepared for criticism, and that you can view it as constructive; this may cover anything from one to one discussions to fielding difficult questions from an audience. Always remember to discuss, rather than go on the defensive in these situations, and try to not see criticism as personal.
5 - Understanding Your Audience
So much of communication is contextual, which means knowing who you’re speaking to and why, as well as how to find common ground. You can’t always rely on the same communication method for every audience, and will have to learn how to respond to unfamiliar environments where the same techniques won’t always work. Never assume anything about an audience, and learn from any mistakes or miscommunications that may occur. The more time you spend on finding a comfortable communication level for different situations, the easier it’ll be to deal with difficult ones.
Speak First offer a huge range of soft skills courses helping people use these skills to their full potential. If you’re looking to improve your communication skill, presentation skills or personal impact these are the people for you.
1 - Think About Body Language
When speaking to an individual or group, always think about your body language, and what you may be indirectly communicating. Try to make eye contact, and keep your gestures open and not defensive - this means avoiding habits like folding your arms when speaking, as this can contradict the message that you’re trying to put across. Positive gestures like nodding can also be useful, while it’s important to cut down on any fidgeting that may distract your audience.
2 - Improve Your Listening Skills
While most people will carefully listen during a conversation, it can be easy to switch over and try to bring a conversation back to you; try to be as attentive as possible, rather than just waiting for your turn to speak again. The more focus you place on the other person, the better you’ll be able to gauge their tone, and won’t mean that you’ll pass over important information. In the same way, it’s important to look at body language and nonverbal cues.
3 - Being Consistent
One of the most important things to focus on when building up your communication skills is being consistent in the way that you speak and engage with the same people. Switching tone, or being very attentive one day, and more detached the next can make others view you as uncaring, and calculated in how you give out your attention. This kind of approach also works well when delivering speeches to employees, in the sense that you need to avoid mixing up overly casual and formal language between sessions.
4 - Dealing with Criticism
This can be difficult for anyone, but does represent an important part of effective communication; you need to make sure that you’re prepared for criticism, and that you can view it as constructive; this may cover anything from one to one discussions to fielding difficult questions from an audience. Always remember to discuss, rather than go on the defensive in these situations, and try to not see criticism as personal.
5 - Understanding Your Audience
So much of communication is contextual, which means knowing who you’re speaking to and why, as well as how to find common ground. You can’t always rely on the same communication method for every audience, and will have to learn how to respond to unfamiliar environments where the same techniques won’t always work. Never assume anything about an audience, and learn from any mistakes or miscommunications that may occur. The more time you spend on finding a comfortable communication level for different situations, the easier it’ll be to deal with difficult ones.
Speak First offer a huge range of soft skills courses helping people use these skills to their full potential. If you’re looking to improve your communication skill, presentation skills or personal impact these are the people for you.