5 Tips to Improve Your Communication Skills
Kordel Eberly
Successful business leaders understand the importance of good communication – whether you’re texting a co-worker, emailing a boss, or speaking in person with a customer. As more people work remotely, effective communication becomes even more crucial to teamwork, collaboration, and business success.
Here are five tips to improve your communication skills.
Listen
Listen to what the other person is saying. This probably seems like an obvious tip, but we all know at least one person who seems to be oblivious to the concept of listening. They talk and talk and rarely allow you to say anything, and when they do stop to take a breath, and you try to say something, they interrupt you. This is an apparent lack of listening skills.
But it’s important to remember that listening involves more than just being quiet while the other person speaks. Many people let the other person talk while having their own internal dialogue. They may be thinking about how they want to respond or something totally unrelated to the conversation.
Listening takes effort. You need to clear your head of most of your internal dialogue and actively listen to what the other person is saying. Some people don’t know how to express themselves well, and it’s up to the listener to try to understand what they are really saying.
If you aren’t sure, ask questions. Some people see that as a weakness or a sign of stupidity, but it shows that you are interested and want to understand what the other person is saying.
Another good habit is repeating or summarizing what the other person said to ensure that you have really understood what they were trying to communicate.
Put 100% of your attention on understanding what the other person is saying, whether you’re listening to them speak or reading their text or email.
Choose the Right Channel
Before sending a text or email, consider whether or not that’s the best channel to communicate your message. Some messages need to be delivered face-to-face. While other messages are better sent in a text or email.
If you want to communicate detailed information or maintain a “paper” trail, emails are great. If you have a simple message that needs to be communicated quickly, texts or Microsoft Teams chats are perfect.
If, however, you need to deliver a sensitive message, doing it in person is better because you can both see nonverbal communication queues, such as tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, etc. When communicating in person is not possible, video conferencing is the next best option.
Write Well
Think about how frequently you communicate at work using the written word – emails, texts, chats, reports, etc. Writing clearly and concisely is paramount if you want people to understand your written messages.
Sometimes, good writing is just a matter of giving it a few more minutes. We’ve all seen the funny – but sometimes disastrous – text mistakes people make because they don’t take 30 seconds to read the text before sending it.
Proper grammar is essential too. Have you ever seen the “Let’s eat Grandma” vs. “Let’s eat, Grandma”? One comma makes all the difference between you sounding like a cannibal and a good grandchild. Use spell-check! You can go a step further with grammar apps, such as Grammarly.
Finally, people have shorter attention spans today, and more and more people are reading content on mobile devices, so writing clearly and concisely is critical if you want your message to be read and understood. If you ramble on and on in the beginning, you’re going to lose your reader before you get to the meat of your message.
It is a balancing act because you want to be sure that your reader has the information they need to understand your message, but you don’t want to bury your message in a bunch of unnecessary text.
Invest in the Right Tools
As more and more people work remotely, clear communication and collaboration become even more critical for business success. Eberly Systems offers Microsoft Teams and other IT solutions to help everyone in your organization to communicate and collaborate more effectively. Call us today at 610-374-4049 or find us online .
