Questions on communications tumbled out of the mail bag during this season’s spring clean up. Similar concerns about being seen, heard and understood were shared with me at seminars and private consultations this year. Some were taken from my Communication Culture Column in The Afro News.
Common to all reader questions, was the strongly voiced belief that communication was the most important ‘thing”. See if any of these soft skill moments are a challenge to you, or someone you know.
Q : How can I communicate better to succeed?
Communication is an awfully complex word. It is the exchange of information or ideas but what do you really want?
What will you be happy to have accomplished? From there, match the mode of communication to transmit your message. Is it phone, in person, a letter or an email?
You may find that your own definition of ‘good communication’ varies from situation to situation. Your answer lies in the TYPE of communication you want to be good at.
Factual intelligence lends you confidence in work email, reports, speaking opportunities and more. For this you simply need to GET the SKILLS you need and strengthen your weak bits. Correct grammar, sentence structure and vocabulary go a long way to presenting you well to others. Learn it in books, online courses, a class or exercises from the first time you learned any language – just do it again and again till it makes sense or at least feels more natural.
I know it can be a challenge. I took my share of cool down walks as I learned first English as a Foreign Language in school and then French as part of my Canadian education. Take the challenge and get the power of smoother messaging to your world.
Emotional intelligence helps you transmit your own messages to suit the situation or personalities and interpret other people’s messages. For this you’ll need an understanding of relationships. My own view as a writer has lead me to see that people function in relation to each other, just as words relate to each other in any given sentence. Their meaning is revealed in their context.
….More about soft skills and English conversation challenges in the next post in the “Spring Clean Up” question on communication series.
About Helena Kaufman