How to improve your communication skills is an extremely important question to ask yourself, your peers, your seniors or your mentors. To succeed in any and every sphere of life, you need to communicate your thoughts and ideas well, and good communication skills are simply a boon in life.
Good communication skills make it so much easier to convince people, to motivate them, and to bring their points of view effectively. In short, a person with good communication skills is bound to have a much greater chance of success in life as compared to someone who lacks them.
Contrary to common belief, the answer to the question ‘How to Improve Your Communication Skills’ is not too tough. While some people are innately blessed with a silver tongue, for most people, it is an acquired skill. So, do not fret or despair if you feel you lack communication skills. Just follow the following simple steps on a daily basis and see the magic!
Communication is a Two-Way Lane: When you talk, you must be equally prepared to listen. If you can train yourself to be a good listener, you would yourself see the difference in your conversations. When you listen effectively, you are not only gaining information from the other person but are also showing respect to the views and ideas of that person.
Know the Content: Be well prepared with the basic bullet points that you want to discuss in a conversation or meeting. You do not need to write and memorize everything you want to say, but you MUST have a clear idea of the major topics that you want to speak about.
Know the Audience/Person: If you know the kind of audience you are dealing with or the type of person you are talking to, then it helps to refine your style and content to the tastes of the people. For instance, if you are taking a business meeting and use slang, it will not reflect well on you. On the other hand, if you are addressing a bunch of teenagers, very professional or formal language might bore them.
Interact with the Crowd: To make any session interesting, you must make it interactive, giving the others a chance to speak up or add substance to the conversation. You might ask for their opinions on a topic, verbally or by a show of hands, or you might ask a volunteer to share something or have a Q&A session. Basically, you have to engage the people such that they feel they are part of it, and not merely listening to a lecture.
Grab Attention in the first two minutes: How you start a conversation has a lot to do with how people will respond to you during the entire conversation. The beginning has to be attention-grabbing. If you lose the audience right in the beginning, you will have very bleak chances of getting them hooked again. Use the knowledge of the audience type to begin in a way that they relate to what you say.
Use Anecdotes/Personal Experiences: When you narrate incidents, especially personal, which are also relatable to the masses, it automatically gets you ears. A sense of humour always helps too. You must weave a web of compelling storytelling to have them hanging onto every word you say.
Remember that people have a short attention span: The average attention span of humans is 10-20 minutes. It may be even lower for some humans. Remember that if you intend to speak to a group of people for more than that time period, you need to refresh their minds and the conversation at the end of the attention time span.
Feedback: Getting feedback from the person or people you were conversing with is also an important part of the communication process. Ask them to share their opinion about the talk. Negative feedback can be used to improve upon yourself.
Body Language: Your body language must be such that a person finds you warm and approachable. For instance, stand straight but not rigidly, sit with your arms open instead of crossed over each other, have a smile on your face and many other things like these.
Non-Verbal Cues: Non-verbal communication is equally, or perhaps even more important than your verbal communication. Hand gestures which accentuate or support what you say make people believe more in your words. Eye contact builds trust and holds attention. Face gestures set the tone of the conversation.
We hope that the above points have helped you find ways how to improve your communication skills. The guidelines above will help you understand the basics of communication and you can experiment further with different people and use their feedback on what you are doing right or wrong.