Without a doubt, communication is the most vital life skill for thriving and its importance grows when the times are tough. If you communicate in the right way, you will be able to accelerate your rate of success but in case it goes wrong, it would create havoc for you. Let me remind you, this not only applies to business. Communication needs to be effective to prosper in all areas of our life.
Good communication skills make the working environment congenial. It would generate trust between the leaders and their associates. Those who are adept at communication, not only know how to express themselves well but are attentive and course-correct along the way. They know exactly when to be specific and when to be vague to leave an impact.
Free-flowing communication helps the organization to educate everyone about the goals and how to achieve them timely and without any friction. As the tasks always have a definite timeline it becomes easy to achieve them if the communication skill among the stakeholders is clear and well defined. A free flow of communication helps in maintaining a productive culture and encourages bonding between the people.
A smooth two-way communication cuts off all the barriers at work and maintains transparency amongst each other. With a proper exchange of ideas, vast untapped possibilities can be explored in the enterprise.
When we communicate openly, our vulnerability encourages others to share more which eventually generates trust. As this goes, people are better updated and decision-making becomes easy. A big challenge that most executives face of judgment. The fear of being judged prevents them from candid sharing, which creates confusion and doubts in the ecosystem. Therefore it’s important to evaluate one’s intention before the communication. Right messages, communicated through the right medium with the right intention to the right person are the secret of true leadership.
Another thing that you must keep in mind is that speaking to groups is different than talking one-to-one. In one-to-one conversations, you may have more scope to personalize and receive feedback, but when you address a large public, the personalization suffers, so you would need to plan and prepare differently. When you see dozens of eyeballs staring at you, you would feel a loss of confidence. It pushes your anxiety levels. But, not to worry. The same things that pull you down also have the power to be leveraged. Managing anxiety can be easily dealt with with easy breath control exercises like abdominal breathing and managing body temperature. But, those who are masters of speaking suggest, that the most powerful way to manage stage fear is asking oneself: Who am I serving… myself or the audience?
To summarise, keeping the following points in mind would take your interaction to the next level:
1. Listen carefully – While most people prepare how to speak, I would advise you to plan how to listen. If you listen attentively and curiously, you would be surprised to know all that you have been missing so far. Be genuinely interested, ask questions, and set aside your judgments.
2. Be Precise in your conversation. Give others the opportunity to speak more.
3. Take Notes when someone is explaining anything important to you. Take a pause to interpret the underlying messages and implied signals.
4. Tell stories. Our brain is wired to interpret the stories faster and it increases the engagement levels. Story-telling has a big role to play when you wish to give a tough message
5. Before you tell the message, it’s important to inform why that matters. Give them why before you tell them what.
And at last, let me tell you why most communication goes haywire. The reason is a distraction. While in conversation, keep all the distractions aside to leave the impact that you never had.
Change your game!
Vivek