Communication is a skill, and like any other skill, it can be improved and developed as part of continuous professional development (CPD). It involves both verbal and non-verbal skills to share information with others while listening to what they have to say. You will find in this essay the best tips and advice on how to communicate with your colleagues, friends, customers or anybody else.
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Communication skills are needed in all walks of life
Communication skills are needed in all walks of life, where they may be used to make a point or to see the point being made by others. Skills are involved in virtually every aspect of daily life, from writing and speaking to non-verbal communication with friends and family. These skills often contribute to the success of an individual, as well as their ability to adapt to different social situations.
There are many factors involved in the development of communication skills. Some people are born with natural ability and the capacity to communicate clearly and concisely, while others must study and practice before they make any improvement at all. The vast majority of people will fall somewhere in between these two extremes. While some people learn best by simply observing others, others need repeated practice before they can master new skills.
The most common type of communication is spoken word; this requires the use of language and vocalization. Written communication includes letters, emails or instant messages; this type of communication allows for more time to find exactly the right words but also lacks non-verbal cues that can aid in understanding. For example, if one person is angry about something that has happened between them and another person, emailing them may not convey this emotion clearly unless the anger is specifically stated.
Communication is about the connection
Effective communication is a critical skill for success in today’s competitive business world. It is what distinguishes great leaders from average ones. I’ll concede that some people are naturally better communicators than others. But I also believe that communication skills can be learned, and honed, by everyone.
Communication is about connection, not perfection. For example, when I’m speaking to an audience of hundreds or thousands of people, my goal is to make a real connection with each and every person in the room. What you say isn’t nearly as important as how you make people feel.
When it comes to communication, the medium doesn’t matter either. It could be a speech or an interview; a video message; or one-on-one conversations with your team, your customers, or your investors. The key is to speak clearly and concisely so that your words have maximum impact and influence. The best leaders build trust through clear communication, rather than forsaking it at the first sign of trouble.
Most people fail at communicating
But unfortunately, most people fail at it. You can tell by looking at them. You can see the results of bad communication all around you. In the company design centres where I used to work, a good designer could tell what kind of programmer had written a module by looking at its interface. If it was done by a good programmer, the interface was clean and consistent; if it was done by an incompetent one, the names of the procedures told you nothing about their effects, and every time you called one you had to look at its internals to figure out what would happen. A friend once spent two hours tracking down a bug caused by two similar variables accidentally having the same name in different scopes. The moral of these stories: there are lots of bad programmers out there.
The most dangerous liars can be the kids who grow up to become programmers. They’re smart, but they’re very bad at communicating with normal people. And since they’re so smart, they often don’t realize they’re doing anything wrong. Sometimes they get so frustrated with other people that they feel justified in twisting the truth till it snaps to manipulate them into doing what they want.
Communication skills help you get your ideas across
Communication skills are ostensibly the most important thing for a startup. If you can’t talk to other people, especially investors, you are not going to get very far. At the same time, communication skills are not something we usually think of as teachable. Maybe you can learn a technique or two, but basically, they’re like native languages: either you have them or you don’t.
I used to think this too. I was wrong. There is no such thing as a native language. Language is the combination of two things: vocabulary and technique. Vocabulary takes years to acquire and cannot be taught; hence the impression that languages are unteachable. But the technique is something else again; it’s what people mean when they say a person has a “good ear.” And the technique is teachable.
In fact, communication skills are not much more than a few techniques put together; a sufficiently small number, in fact, that it makes sense to try to teach them all explicitly.
Communication skills are difficult to learn and practice
The reason communication skills are hard is not just that they are hard to learn and practice. It’s more subtle than that. They are hard because being good at communication requires one to be simultaneously good at two things that are, in general, at odds with each other.
On the one hand, communication is about getting your ideas across. If you can’t make other people understand what you’re thinking, you’ll have trouble convincing them to agree with you or do what you want, and thus you’ll be at a disadvantage in any situation where your success depends on cooperation.
So one aspect of effective communication is figuring out what someone else is thinking and acting accordingly. But there’s a second, equally important aspect: it’s knowing who you are–knowing what you think and feel yourself.
In other words, being good at communication requires empathy on the one hand and self-awareness and self-confidence on the other. These two abilities don’t always go together in real life. And they’re often inversely correlated: people who can see themselves clearly tend to have less insight into others; conversely, people who have a strong theory of mind tend to be less self-aware.
Communication skills reduce misunderstandings
The ability to solve problems using logic and reason is the most valuable skill that a rationalist can possess. The ability to talk with others and resolve misunderstandings is the most valuable skill that a rationalist community can possess. At best, communication skills help us avoid wasting time on confusion, and at worst they save us from repeating history’s greatest tragedies.
The sequence on social skills discusses how to engage with others in order to improve your own thinking, but it leaves open the question of how to interact with others when they are not particularly interested in improving their thinking. In such situations, it is the community’s ability to communicate that determines whether its members are able to work together.
In any given situation where a conflict could arise, there is some ideal outcome. Usually, this involves everyone getting what they want without anyone getting hurt or feeling wronged. Often we have trouble reaching this ideal outcome because we simply don’t know how to get there from where we are now.