Learning Great Communication Skills

To be successful in life, you need to have great communication skills, involving not only talking, but also listening. Communication allows you to make a connection to another person while gaining an understanding of what that individual has to say. Many people do not realize that communication involves many different forms, each that must be mastered, which includes oral, written, and even visual. Once you become highly skilled with communication skills, you will find that life is easier, on a personal and business level.

However, poor communication skills result in all types of problems such as:
Inaccurate messages sent or received Important directions being misunderstood Confusion over questions asked Concern regarding level of performance Trust being damaged or broken

The truth is that communication skills on any level are critical. For instance, in the business world, being able to communicate with other employees, vendors, sales staff, managers, and of course customers, means better business overall. Communication on a personal level ensures misunderstandings between couples, parents, children, and friends are avoided. As mentioned, communication is not just talking but also listening, which includes:

Passive Listening

Passive listening involves hearing spoken words but not absorbing them or taking action, if necessary.

Active Listening

Active listening involves hearing and understanding words spoken, which means you then have the ability to take any appropriate action.

In addition, every person should learn ways to use open-ended questions when trying to get someone to make a commitment. Finally, learning ways to read body language is another form of communication that is quite powerful. Some people call this "silent communication", which is a great form that should not be overlooked. Remember though that good communication does not mean confrontation.

Good personal communication boils down to breaking out of the traditional mold by making a concerted effort to improve life. Yes, this requires discipline and time but knowing how to communicate the right way is worth the investment. Once you master skills for listening and hearing, you will find that life is much easier. For you to learn good communication skills, you must have all of the following:

Respect

Remember that just because you are respectful in a conversation does not mean you are in agreement with what the other person is saying. In fact, you might have vast differences but showing respect is what helps you hear the other person's point of view and perhaps, you might learn something.

Listen

One of the hardest communication skills people have to learn is being a good listener. This is not just listening, but hearing what the person is saying so you can analyze the information. With this, you would then know the next steps to take.

Willingness

Be willing to communicate and remember that communication is often challenging but by talking and listening, you actually grow personally by being in better control and showing patience.

No two people communicate the same way. Everyone uses different words, has different skills levels, and uses different methods for getting points across. All you need to do is worry about yourself, being patient and accepting the fact that good communication skills put you in better control.

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How To Master Basic Communication Skills

I have a problem with the term 'basic communication skills'; my problem is that this term implies that these skills are very simple and that you are somehow lacking and weak if you don't have them. Certain communication skills are certainly 'basic' to the extent that they are very necessary and that a lot of the success of communication has to be built upon these foundations.

But it is by no means true to say that everyone should somehow naturally possess these skills, which is a slur on those who find communication difficult. Communication skills can be earned.

In every situation and every occupation in adult life, it helps to have certain communication skills.

Verbal Communication:

1. You should be able to speak clearly and concisely to either report factual information or convey an opinion. This is quite a straightforward skill to practice and you can even start by practising on your friends; they will be glad to hear your opinions.

2. Practice speaking to groups as well as individuals; that is quite a different skill to ensure that everyone is included and that everyone gets your message.

3. When you are thinking of improving your verbal communication skills, is it your choice of language, your style of delivery or the way you speak which needs to be worked on? You could ask the advice of a friend or trusted colleague on that as it is sometimes difficult to judge for yourself.

4. You might want to consider taking an acting class or a course on diction to help you to improve your communication skills; local colleges often offer a variety of these courses. You may also find courses in specific areas of communications skills such as customer services, hospitality and conflict management.

Written Communication:

1. Written communication is a different skill to verbal communication; getting your ideas of paper is something that a lot of people find difficult, whether they are an aspiring novelist or someone who finds it difficult to write a concise, understandable e-mail.

2. Learning how to use grammar properly is often the key to clearer written communication. Most jobs and most purposes of writing will require you to have an adequate grasp of grammar. Grammar is definitely something in which you should easily be able to find a course offered at your local college. You could improve your grammar through a business writing course or one aimed at creative writing, whichever you would prefer.

Alternatively, you can find self-help books and workbooks to learn the skills of grammar at your own pace, in your own home. You can also find online writing courses to help you a lot in this area.

Listening:

1. The ability to listen well is the key to understanding communication; in order to do that, you need to fully focus your attention on the speaker to begin with.

2. You can develop your knowledge along with your listening skills by checking out audio tapes and video tapes, perhaps ones loaned from the local library, and practicing fully attending to what is being said on them. You will soon realize that we very often only listen with part of our attention in normal life, but once you have practiced your listening skills you will be able to discern much more from what is being said to you.

Practising these speaking and listening skills will enable you to much more effectively share your opinions with others and defend what you think against their opposing ideas.

Practise your writing and you can express what you want to whomever you wish. When you have practised communicating for a while you will be able to communicate clearly and concisely and be assertive without appearing rude.

A really fun way to become good at such a skill it to listen to radio phone-ins or chat show; you can do this easily, listening to the radio on your drive into work, for instance. Listen out for how people articulate their views and how others receive the messages, depending on how they are expressed.

You will find it fun and quite easy to develop your basic communication skills once you begin to look for opportunities like this.

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Communication Skills Training Primer

We all stand to benefit from ongoing communication skills training. This is because communication skills are one of the most vitally important sets of skills a person can ever hope to acquire, in both personal and business relationships. Also, with so many forms and styles of communication possible, and so many unique personality types in any cross section of people, having good communication skills is arguable a fairly broad, ambitious goal.  

The good news is, being a good communicator is a learned set of skills. We are all born with varying levels of natural talent at any given skill - but we all have the option of getting better at those skills, and that includes communication. 

Types Of Communication

As we all know, there are many, many forms of communication taking place in modern society on a daily basis. In fact, we are constantly bombarded with communication whether we like it or not. A large percentage are marketing messages in one form or another, and they are delivered by email, mobile phones, online ads, TV commercials, telemarketers, and the list goes on. 

But, what most of us think about when discussing communication skills is that of verbal communication, whether face-to-face, or in a group setting. Arguably, it is this realm of communication where peoples' relationships, careers, and lives to some extent, are truly impacted significantly by their communication skills.  

Along those lines, here is some very interesting data courtesy of Wikipedia, regarding interpersonal communication: 

55% of impact is determined by body language-postures, gestures, and eye contact, 38% by the tone of voice, and 7% by the content or the words used in the communication process.  So, I ask you - is there anything immediately noteworthy about the above statements? Anyone? 

Yes, you are correct: Only SEVEN percent (7%) of our interpersonal communication is impacted significantly by the, well to quote, the "content of the words used in the communication process." The rest of the influence over the communication process is defined by the body language primarily, and secondarily, our tone of voice.  

In other words, what you say is a lot LESS important than how you say it - and I would venture it is fair to say, a lot less important than most of us ever would have guessed - had we not taken time to be good students of communication skills by writing and reading articles like this one =) but I digress. 

When you think about it, this does make sense. Have you ever met a person that, for example, is an immigrant with limited command over the primary spoken language, and yet launches a thriving, successful business or has the highest sales quota in their organization? That is a testament to this principal in action. And, this provides a clue for where to begin in the process of improving our communication skills.

Communication Skills Training

Knowing how important our body language and tone of voice is provides a great basis for where to begin with communication skills training. We are talking about things like having a posture that is relaxed and open, rather than tense, closed, or aggressive. Things like choosing to use a personable, interesting, rhythmic voice while talking or presenting, rather than droning on in an endless, monotone voice. And then there is perhaps the most simple, yet arguably most powerful nonverbal communication tool any of us could ever have; putting a smile on your face, like this:  =)   See how good that works?

Whether you are interested in on the job advancement and success, or improving your relationship with your spouse, investing in solid communication skills training is an investment in yourself that pays very big dividends. The good news is, there is a ton of very simple, powerful techniques you can learn to vastly improve your communication skills. It's not rocket science, and it is not an inborn "talent". It just takes some practice, and optionally, the guidance of skilled communication coach.

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Responses to Anxiety of Public Speaking

Most of us have suffered from responses to anxiety of public speaking. And we may become so ill we may think we are actually coming down with something when in fact it is nothing more than anxiety triggered by the fear of public speaking.

There are many physical symptoms of anxiety. You may perspire or downright sweat t when you are standing on stage. If you are delivering your message to a large audience environment the lights in general may be intense and may make you perspire. I've seen people who are presenting who were so nervous and so drenched with perspiration that it looks as if their clothes just came out of the washer. One way to combat excessive sweating before and while presenting is to cool off before you go on stage. Use a cooling rag on your neck. Stay away from caffeine and chocolate and don't drink any hot drinks before you go on either. Wear light weight or layered clothing so you can adjust your body temperature with clothing removal.

Another one of the responses to anxiety of public speaking is a pounding headache. You start building up the headache hours before you're due to go on and by the time you deliver your presentation you can barely think. If you are medically cleared to take analgesics such as aspirin or acetaminophen, perhaps consider taking something one to two hours before you present so that if one of your responses to anxiety of public speaking is headache, you can ward off the pain before it hits.

I have seen people have such as stomach flutters that you could actually consider it being downright sick to the stomach before they have to present. I have a friend who literally becomes physically ill before she is about to present. Some advice I would give for those who become ill when they present is to think about eating something light because there's nothing worse than an empty stomach. Caffeine is not your friend if you are prone to stomach wobbles when public speaking and caffeine can give you the jitters and trigger other different responses. Also make sure that you're fully hydrated-but only use water or juice.

One of the last signs of having physical responses to anxiety of public speaking is dizziness. While some of the other signs can be embarrassing, dizziness can be dangerous. Passing out on stage could really compromise your safety so make sure if you're dizzy before the presentation don't go into an environment where you can hurt yourself and if you're prone to dizziness make sure you've eaten and had some juice before you go on. But again, stay away from caffeine because caffeine can trigger dizziness.

If you give presentations often, you are probably familiar with the physical responses to anxiety of public speaking. Pay attention to how your body reacts as public speaking is a natural stressor. With you in control of your body, you should be able to deliver a great presentation.

Helping people understand their physical responses to anxiety of public speaking is what this article is all about.

Having had to deliver speeches while in my various senior roles and while owning my own business I can attest to that terrible stage fright that people experience. The anxiety of public speaking is not limited to speeches to large groups. It can be debilitating when simply delivering a stand up message to a small group of colleagues. I was a fortunate sole as I was trained in grammar school,-remember the oral book report- to fashion my stand up ability.

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Bad Presentation Skills - How To Avoid Them

No one willingly gives a presentation when they don't believe in their presentation skills, but a lot of people are forced to in their every day lives. Sometimes these presentations are required through school or work or some other event but most people do have to give one sometime in their life. No one wants to have bad presentation skills either, but sometimes they just can't get it right and none of the instructions on what to do is working for them. Too often guides to becoming a good presenter focus only on what to do and what are good presentation skills and they don't even mention what bad presentation skills are. Sometimes the traditional style of learning doesn't work for people and knowing what not to do helps them more than anything else. Because of this need for information about bad presentation skills, below is a detailed explanation of everything done wrong in a presentation and why it's bad.

There are always two steps to giving a presentation, and because of that there are two steps in which poor choices are made. The first is always going to be the organizational phase. The organizational phase is when all the information for a presentation is gathered, sorted and processed into a presentation. The number one mistake here is that it is done too late. Procrastinating to the night before can be hard not to do, but even giving yourself an extra day can help improve the presentation drastically.

The next example of bad presentation skills is poor ordering. Simply throwing together all the information will create a hard to deliver and hard to understand presentation. Along with the technical aspects of the organization phase, it's often viewed in bad light when you don't write anything down at all. Some people can naturally organize things in their head, but all people will benefit from putting it down on paper, even if it takes a little more time. These are the bad presentation skills that you should avoid during the organizational phase.

The next phase, delivery, has just as many poor presentation skills. The first and most common is muttering or speaking softly. While many people are shy in front of crowds, muttering and speaking quietly will only draw more attention to you than if you were to speak in a reasonable manner in the first place; on top of that it makes your presentation impossible to understand. The next example of bad presentation skills is ignoring the audience. Without acknowledging they are there or making eye contact the audience usually loses interest in what you have to say fast, and that will make your entire presentation wasted. Finally, don't acknowledge mistakes during the presentation. It's fine to discuss and reflect on how you could have done better afterwards, but don't interrupt the flow of the presentation to dwell on a mispronounced word or mistake, simply correct yourself and move on; often times an audience won't even realize that you had made a mistake, so acknowledging it in this fashion only makes it more pronounced.
These are the bad presentation skills related to delivery.

There you have it, the worst and most prominent presentation skills. Often time's people won't realize they are doing any of these and while they're actively utilizing the good presentation skills, they are oblivious to the bad ones and are unable to fix them. Becoming a good presenter is a two step process, the first is to cease using the bad presentation skills and the second is to start using the good ones. Usually being aware of not to do will be just as useful as knowing what to do. Knowing this is half the struggle to become a great presenter.

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Spectacular Content Presentation Tips - Do Visual Presentations Work?

Do Visual Presentations Work?

Visual presentations can be effective if they are adapted to the limitations of the human brain. The typical presenter must modify their writing skills to blend whole brain thinking into the formula. By doing this you can create an effective visual presentation.

What Happens in the Human Brain During a Presentation?

Most business tools that are used to create visual presentations focus solely on left brain activities. They tend to be extremely complex, displaying many statistics and graphics, overloading the left brain capacity.

The human working memory operates on two channels, an auditory and visual channel. Most people would think that a visual presentation would utilize solely the visual channel. However, this is not true. Anytime text is displayed on the screen, both the auditory and visual channels are used. The visual channel sees the information, but the auditory channel sounds out the words.

The Executive Presentation

Over 99% of executives either prepare their own visual presentations or have an internal administrative assistant perform the preparation for them. Less than 1% actually enlists the external services of a visual presentation professional that understands how audiences receive, process, and stores the information that they take in. With these statistics in mind, it is understandable that many visual presentations are not ranked as excellent.

To transform writing skills into persuasive visual presentation skills, you must obtain a complete understanding of why audiences respond negatively to visuals. To be successful, you must develop a broad set of design techniques and sensory communication skills.

Education is Key

Those that are not educated in the way the human brain works do not target their presentations to work with these characteristics in a positive way. Working toward giving your audience what they need and expect from a presentation in a manner that allows whole brain communication to be engaged elicits much more positive and successful results.

Learning to incorporate both left brain and right brain characteristics into a presentation will make a world of difference in your results. Acquiring and implementing the knowledge of the brain's channels that are used and being cautious not to overload one channel will keep your audience engaged.

You Can Become an Excellent Presenter

While employing the services of an educated presentation professional can dramatically improve persuasive presentation results, learning the skills and employing them yourself will improve not only the prepared visuals but the overall delivery of the presentation. In this way you can avoid the pitfalls that cause audiences to respond negatively to visual presentations. You will engage the entire brain participation and appeal to both the analytical and sensory perception to produce an overall excellent presentation. This will be well received, processed, and retained by your audience members. It will also produce the kind of measurable results that you are hoping for, causing you to become a more efficient, effective, and confident presenter.

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Presentation Skills Training - Not Just For the Corporate

Presentation skills are an integral part of our daily lives. Every day, we end up speaking, or putting up some presentation for the people that we interact with. It is a misconception that such skills are needed only in the corporate world. Here are some other people who would require these skills, without even stepping into the corporate world.

Children in School

Children in school have to present something or the other in their school life. Be it in the classroom, or during some activity in the school. These presentations are very important in the broader scope of life, because these are one of the first times that the child interacts with an audience.

In some unfortunate cases, if the first few presentations and interactions do not go right, the child may have a stigma of not being able to present and have lesser social skills all their lives. Therefore, it is very important that the children have presentation skills or are trained in social interactions at an early age. The school is the best place and the child is at the perfect age to learn new things and understand new experiences.

Job Applicants

A job applicant is at a constant presentation, where he or she is presenting their skills so that they are hired by the company. Therefore, the job applicant would also require having some good presentation skills.

The world of looking for jobs is a vast world, and the employers have a lot of options for any one profile. Also, the interview takes place for a short time. Only the individuals who can show present their skills in the correct manner in this short time stand a chance of being hired by the company.

Therefore, a job applicant should have the basic skills to present himself or herself, which would allow them to present their professional skills, experience and ambitions within the limited timeframe.

Hobby Forums

We all have our hobbies. Hobbies haves support and interaction groups for people who pursue the same hobby. The hobby forums are normally headed by someone. This leader requires the basic presentation and speaking skills, so that he or she can make the hobby forum a success.

A hobby group can be anything from a small group of five to ten people or even something that has a global presence with thousands of people. Though everyone may be able to carry off heading a group of say five to ten people without any skills, one would require presentation skills if they have a lot of members and have several interactions now and then.

People in the Sales Business

A salesperson or a waiter/waitress requires such skills at every moment of their job. A salesperson requires these skills to pitch the product, while the waiter would require the skills at every point of their service to the customer, right from offering the menu to getting the dish.

These are just some of the individuals outside the corporate world who require such skills as a requisite in their everyday lives.

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