photo credit: BeccaG
Everywhere you look you see someone requesting good communication skill’s whether it be in business or in personal life matters. Communication is what holds everything together, it allows people to interact, to learn, to teach and so on. I recently read an article on Harvard Business discussing way’s to sharpen these communication skills.
First of all you need to understand the underlying fundamentals of communication. You need to be able to correctly handle to spoken and written language. Think before you speak. Just like when you were a kid and your mother instilled in your mind that you need to think before you start speaking.
Make sure your in the conversation by asking more questions rather than making a statement. If you want points of views from others or suggestions then make it known that you want to hear everyone’s perspective rather than just stating that you want to debate.
Listen to others. Discussions are meaningless if no one is listening. Anderson does not like to see his managers checking their BlackBerrys in meetings. Doing so shows lack of “focus” and is akin to reading a newspaper during the meeting, says Anderson. As little as we may tend to oral and written skills, we spend even less time on listening. For that reason, too many managers end up ill informed and, in turn, ill prepared to deal with issues that subsequently morph into problems. Time spent listening might have headed off such disasters.
How have you sharpened your communication skills?