How to Improve Communication Skills at Lightning Speed

Talking is the easy part; really communicating so that you say something worthwhile and people listen to understand your message as well can be more of a challenge. If you are to exchange useful information and react with people who are resistant to your communication through fear, anger or frustration, you need to know how to improve communications skills.

1. Don’t take what people say personally and strike back at them angrily. There are many other reasons why people react as they do and they are not likely to be linked to you as a person so remember that, take a deep breath, count to ten, then you can react in a more calm fashion.

2. It is fine to admit that you don’t know something. Communication so often suffers from half-truths and misunderstandings; don’t pretend you know something when you don’t as you could be wrong and that will lead to further communication problems.

3. Respond with factual information that will help when you are asked something, rather than reacting emotionally, which is subjective and can often be negative.

4. Provide a safe, non-emotional opportunity for people to air their views without you dismissing them or getting upset or angry.

5. Communication is a two-way process; everyone in the conversation must share responsibility for making sure that the conversation works. That means that the sender of the message needs to speak clearly and simply and the receiver of the message needs to say if they do not understand and ask for clarification.

6. Listen to the other person. Give them chance to speak so that they will feel respected. People care most about being heard than they want people to agree with them. You can show that you are listening actively by asking them questions to draw out more information from them or by summarizing back to them what you think they said and asking for them to confirm if you have understood correctly.

7. Assumptions, presuppositions and judgments can all get in the way of good communication. That is because once you believe you understood something that someone is saying to you, there is tendency to stop listening well. That can distort your perception of the communication, so you can improve your communication by checking that you have understood correctly what has been said.

8. If you need to cooperate with others to complete a project, you need to be sensitive to their frustrations and priorities so that you can compromise. If you don’t compromise there will be anger and resentment that will get in the way of successful communication and completion of the project.

9. Seek common ground rather than differences between you. This is another reason why it is good to state the aim of the communication early on in your conversation so that you can check out what you both want to achieve.

10. Listen to the other person. Let them feel that they are a real partner in the communication and they will be better disposed towards helping the communication succeed. Also, you will be ale to learn from them in a way you can’t if you are not really listening.

It’s important that you know how to improve communication skills because in your life you will need to communicate with all manner of different people for a variety of reasons.