The power of good communication is undeniably great. Effective communication skills is one of the specific abilities that enables some people to succeed while many fail. In fact, the building and sustainability of all relationships, from personal contacts and family members to business related contacts, is largely dependent on effective communication skills.
It is these skills that help you know when to be assertive and when to be supportive, how to be persuasive and how to be an active listener. Mastering the art of effective communication enables you to improve all of your relationships, including your relationships with customers, coworkers, suppliers and prospective customers.
By knowing how to be an effective communicator, you can inspire your coworkers to do and learn more, convince your suppliers to give you better deals, encourage your customers to trust you with bigger contracts and persuade prospective customers to choose you as their service provider.
In order to achieve these goals however, mastery over multiple components of effective communication is required. Once obtained, you can harness the power of effective communication to not only help you strengthen your personal relationships, but your business relationships and bottom line, as well.
In your quest to maximize your communication skills and improve the way you interact with others, you should be sure to remember the ABC’s of effective communication, namely Active listening, Body language, and Communication.
Active Listening:
People speak at an average of 100- 175 words per minute, but we can listen at a rate of 300 words per minute assuming however, that we are actively listening. If our minds wander or we think about multiple things, our ability to hear, comprehend and retain information decreases.
In order to become a good communicator, we need to be more than a good orator; we need to be skilled at receiving information, as well. To be a skilled listener, it is necessary to not only show that you are interested in and paying attention to your speaking partner, but to also be actively interested in and paying attention to your speak partner. This skill not only gives you the ability to strengthen lines of communication so that you can better address the concerns and needs of your speaking partner, but it also helps you to figure out the best way to relay your own needs and concerns.
Traits of active listeners are their ability to encourage their speaking partner to engage in conversation by focusing attention on the speaker and following-up on the speakers’ remarks with questions or comments to show that they are listening and that they care.
Body Language:
Body language is an unspoken form of communication that conveys to your speaking partner that you are engaged and trustworthy. Even small things, like making eye contact and nodding, reaffirm to your speaking partner that you are committed to the conversation and the exchange of ideas. Similarly, body language also encourages your speaking partner to participate in the conversation while ensuring that lines of communication remain open so that follow-up exchanges are possible.
Communication:
In addition to being a good receiver of information, through both active listening and body language, it is also important to be a good disseminator of information. Being able to be tactful, open and honest while communicating your message in a clear and concise fashion is the true mark of a great communicator. In other words, good communicators use language to convey ideas without being malicious, argumentative, coy, or unengaged. Instead, language is used to express oneself and one’s message in a way that the listener can hear and be open to the information.
Using good oratory skills, you can sway your customers, prospective clients, suppliers and technicians to be open to your suggestions and initiatives. Combined with mastery over active listening and body language, good communication skills can help you transform into an effective communicator who can be persuasive, understanding, a problem solver and a leader.
In this capacity and with these skills, you can maximize your professional and personal relationships, bringing added success to all of your endeavors.
Until next time,
Success Team
Great article, the only comment I would add is that Active Listening require practice, practice, practice.
Agreed. It definitely requires a lot of practice and probably also self consciousness.