In one of his hugely popular YouTube lectures titled “How to Speak”, MIT professor Patrick Winston says, “Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the qualities of your ideas, in that order”. This statement is so true, yet many of us do not understand the benefits of being able to communicate effectively and how to do it.
In this article, I am going to share some tips on how you can develop effective communication skills and why is even important to be able to speak effectively. So, let’s dive right in!
What does it mean to be able to communicate effectively?
Do you find yourself eating up your words even when you have a lot to say? Do you try to avoid interactions with people as much as possible? Do you overthink before giving a presentation or speaking up about your ideas? Or do you just find yourself not able to talk about the right things at the right time?
All these characteristics indicate that the communication is not being effective.
Effective communication skills are being able to communicate your ideas, present your knowledge, and provide value to the listeners. By communicating effectively, you can share and receive valuable ideas, thoughts, and knowledge. If this is what you want, you should start working on your communication skills ASAP!
How is it beneficial for you to be able to communicate effectively?
So, what improvement you can see in your life when you consistently continue to communicate effectively? From getting noticed to being able to add value in the lives of others having effective communication skills will add so many benefits to your life. I have explained a few of these benefits below:
Getting noticed and career success:
When you share your thoughts and knowledge with people even when you think it is not needed, when you share and spread your word with the right people, you tend to get noticed more. When you get noticed more, you grab more opportunities in your career. As you represent yourself more, you lead a much more successful career.
Personal Branding
In the article: An Introduction to the Meaning of Brand, I have explained that your brand is the thought people have about you. What you are doing or not doing at any moment is contributing to building your brand. For example, when you shy away from speaking your thoughts and stay silent that is creating your brand as that person. When you speak up (or write down) and share your thoughts and opinions, that is also building your brand.
Having a good personal brand can open opportunities that you might have not even anticipated.
Adding Value
It happens to a lot of people that sometimes even when they have very valuable information to share they stop themselves from sharing it due to less confidence, nervousness, or fear that this knowledge is not valuable enough.
This happens in the case of written communication also. Some writers just skip some important information that they think is already known to the readers. But in reality, writing about things that people may already know can be helpful because it helps in linking the new information to the old information in the brains of the readers and make it easier to comprehend the information.
Thus, when we just say our thoughts and opinions out loud to the world, we start to add a significant amount of value to the world.
Improves cognitive functioning:
To develop effective communication skills, you tend to learn more. You gather good information, read good books, and learn new courses. You articulate your knowledge and share it with the world. This learning and retrieving helps you develop new neural connections in your brain and helps improve cognitive functioning.
How to develop effective communication skills?
Now we come to the main section: “How to communicate effectively”. Here I have explained a few ways in which you can improve your communication skills.
Speak Up (going out of your comfort zone)
The first step to start the journey of speaking effectively is by actually going out into the world and speaking. The best way to build this habit of communicating effectively is by communicating in real life. You cannot learn how to communicate well without literally doing it first. So, raise your hands in the meetings, give those presentations, share your knowledge whenever possible, write articles, post your thoughts online, and so on.
Providing value and educating (thinking about others)
One of the most effective ways to communicate well is by thinking about others. Thinking how your words are helpful to them. Having a mindset of providing value to others. You are communicating effectively when what you are sharing is valuable to others and they are actively listening to grasp that value.
Being authentic
Another important thing to remember is to always be authentic. Being true to yourself and saying things you actually want to say and always avoiding saying things to make others like you. When you are authentic to yourself and others, and do not “try” in any way to make others like you, you can provide “your authentic” share to the table.
Most people can perceive it when you are saying things just to please them. That is why avoid fake smiling or saying yes to everything that you may not even agree with. Also, it is important to note here that being authentic does not mean being rude, on the contrary it implies respecting yourself and others. It is about telling your truth and always be willing to learn from others as well.
Listen more
And last but not the least is to listen more. Communication is not one way. It is not about always speaking or sharing “your” knowledge. It is about listening and understanding what others are saying as well. When we are aware of the thoughts and needs of others, we can communicate well by sharing what others actually want to listen to.
Listening with care and asking relevant questions helps build good connections that in turn motivate others to listen to you more as well.
Conclusion:
Effective communication is a two-way process. It is about both speaking and listening. It is about exchanging and sharing valuable information and insights with others. Knowing how to communicate effectively can improve both your professional and personal lives. One of the most important way to communicate effectively is to go out of your comfort zone and tell your story to the world.
“Even in hesitancy or in nervousness, be brave and express your authentic self!“
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