Whether it be at work or in your personal life there is always room to learn how to communicate better. At work it is especially important that we have good communication skills so we can get our message across to our supervisor, co-workers and those that we serve daily in our job position.
“Communication is something we do reflexively — like breathing. We talk to our spouses, kids and friends without giving much thought to how we’re doing it.
It might seem easy, but communicating effectively actually takes quite a bit of finesse. Choosing the right words, listening with our minds instead of just our ears, and getting our message across are skills that we all need to work on.”
There are four communication skills that we must perfect in order to make our workplace life easier and more understandable.
1. Learn to speak clearly and concisely. Know what you want to say and then think it through so when it comes out of your mouth the person or people you are speaking to understand clearly what you are saying to them. Shooting from the hip and stumbling over words and sentences only complicates communication and leaves room for confusion.
2. Recognize there are problems in communication. Study communication so that you can define what these problems are and how to solve them. Education is the key to learning how to communicate better.
3. Learn about tone of voice and body language both of these play a big part in communication. Here is a link to several great communication books that will help you understand communication better.
4. One of the best communication tips I ever received was to “never assume” that I knew what the other person was meaning by what they were saying. Ask questions for clarification so that you know what the person was trying to get across to you.
Communication is an ongoing learning process. It takes time, effort and the desire to want to understand others completely. Not only will others appreciate the effort we make to understand them, we will grow in wisdom and knowledge by doing so.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak” ~ Epictetus
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