Developing Effective Communication skills is a must

Language is an expression of our thoughts and feelings. It is important to take a closer look or listen at the language that we use daily. Your everyday messages are the foundations of the attitudes and perspectives you bring with you to when dealing with employees, customers, and colleagues.?

Using disempowering phrases shift the burden of responsibility off your own shoulders. When you believe that you are not responsible for the outcome, you often feel like nothing is within your control.?

Disempowering phrases?

“I Can’t”?

“I should”?

“I have to”?

Using empowering language can help us change our view of reality. They can help us take responsibility and effect change.?

Empowering phrases?

I am willing to?

I choose to?

I am?

Non-verbal Communication?

There are other ways to send messages to people, just by the way we interact, says a lot about us. At times it can be easy to control the words we use. What about our body language or physiology. Consider how you hold your head, your shoulders, arms, and legs. Where are you looking, what about your mouth.?

The messages that we are sending with our body language can have an impact on the people we are communicating with. In addition to letting others know what we think and feel, we communicate to elicit some sort of response. If you feel that people are not responding to you in the way you would like, or if people have the tendency to misunderstand you, it's time to consider adjusting your methods of communication.?

Developing awareness for the body language you use, will also make you more aware of the message's others are sending with their bodies. Some signs can be obvious, but others are not and will need to be taken in context with other signs. An example is if you are standing talking to someone and they are making all the right noises, they are looking at you, yet their feet are pointed in a different direction. ?

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them” - Ralph Nicholls?

Too often when we witness 2 people in the middle of an argument, with each saying the other is not listening. Sometimes one is doing all the talking and the other is quiet. Does that mean that they are listening? Just because we hear someone it does not mean we are listening.?

To really listen you need to be engaged, active and conscious effort. Nodding and smiling is not enough. It requires been engaged with what the speaker is saying and confirming your understanding. Making eye contact, not fidgeting, or making distracting movements.??

Clarifying?

Asking clarifying questions, will help to prevent misunderstandings. If they are asked an empathetic way.?

The objectives of communication are to get a message across and elicit a response from someone. Questions are designed to fulfil both functions in a direct way. Looking at questions that we have asked or ones that others have asked us, we can easily see that questions are not freestanding entities. They can be embedded in a complex context of tone, verbal, and non-verbal cues, setting and the atmosphere in which it is asked. Questions can elicit answers as well as convey assumptions, use them with the right intention and purpose!