How to improve communication skills?

 What is communication? How to improve communication skills? 

A process through which individuals mutually exchange their ideas, values, thoughts, feeling and action with one or more people is known as communication. It is the process of sharing information, ideas and attitudes between individual. It is the management of messages for the purpose of creating meaning.

    The process of communication is what allows us to interact with other people; without it, we would be unable to share knowledge or experiences with anything outside of ourselves. Common forms of communication include speaking, writing, gestures, touch and broadcasting. Wikipedia definition UGC - NET/Dr. V. Bastin Jerome/Paper I/Communication.

      Poor communication is the source of interpersonal conflict • Individuals spend 70% of their working hours communicating-reading, speaking, listening UGC - NET/Prof. V. Bastin Jerome/Paper I/Communication 7 

   Two-way process of reaching mutual understanding, in which participants not only exchange (encode-decode) information, news, ideas and feelings but also create and share meaning. • In general, communication is a means of connecting people or places. • In business, it is a key function of management--an organization cannot operate without communication between levels, departments and employees.

Why communication skill is necessary?

The quality of our life depends on the quality of our communication skills. If my communication skills are bad the quality of my life gets directly impacted because communication is everything. Right now I'm communicating with you if I do it in the wrong way the quality of my life right now could just go down. If my quality of communication is amazing I can attract a great life partner, I can impress people, I can do amazing work in my professional life, I can convince my boss, I can talk to my customers properly, I can have a great relationship with my colleagues, I can have a good relationship with my friends everything in life depends on communication skill. So, the quality of our life , quality of our relationships depends on the quality of our communication skills. The quality of communication skill is important very very important if you want a higher quality of life. 

Parts of communication skills:  Mindset and skill

Mindset

Most people directly goes to skill parts. You're not supposed to do that. First part is mindset without the right mindset of communication skills It's not possible to have the right skill for communication. Mindset is how you think about communication and skill is about the techniques of communication skills. Everybody always asks how do I impress people that's the skills part, how do I talk in front of  people that's skill part, how do I talk in front of many people public speaking that's the skill part but if you don't have the right mindset for communication, skill will not work for you.  Communication is not what I say It is the response that I get, this is a belief  that you must have about mind set. what is mindset , Mindset is your beliefs about communication, communication is not what I say it is the response that I get. The mindset which is the negative mindset of communication is that communication is what I say what does that mean, If I said 'x' you heard of 'I' it's your problem I said 'x' now that's the belief.  Communication is not what you understand  communication is what I say that's the wrong mindset the right mindset. The right mindset for communication is communication is not what I say it is the response that i get. I f I said 'x' and you heard 'y' what did I say, communication is not what I say, It is the response that I get. If I say listen I want to give you a little feedback and the other person feels bad now if you felt bad about what I said I am responsible because my communication is iI made you feel bad. Now you may say but I didn't have the intention to make you feel bad. The intention doesn't matter, the mindset matters because what matters is the person who got the communication got the bad feeling. I have to first work with that mindset. Communication is not what i talk it is the response that i get. Try this experiment. Right hand on your heart and repeat say my boss is responsible for what he understands, 2 times. Now try this I am responsible for what I communicate to my boss and what he understands based on my communication, now where do you feel more in control part one or part two. 

Part 2 right, if you carry this mindset only and only then the skills will be useful to you. Why is this very critical, this is 80% of communication skills. 20% of communication skills is skills 80% of communication is actually mindset. For eg.    let us say I'm someone from the village and I don't have good english but I am having the right mindset that whatever i speak other people understand it. If you feel bad of some words then my 80% mindset says that he feels bad it means somewhere i was wrong now i change my fault  I change my tone , my strategy, my words something let me change so that the other person can hear 'x' instead of hearing 'y'. You see how powerful this is, If I work with right mindset of 80% I can make changes to my own words to my own tone to my own vocabulary to make sure that you get the right communication even if you don't have the  perfect communication skill. You have the ability to learn. By introspecting why did the other person hear, 'y'?  why he didn't hear 'x'  is my tone wrong,  is my word wrong,  add something new, my vocabulary what should i do to make sure person gets right. Communication is not what I say communication is the response that I get.

 

          Skill parts   

The first skill that you need to improve in communication is not talking it's listening. The biggest fights in any relationship is all about listening. After 20 years of marriage also a life partner says you don't listen to me. These type of conflict happens with life partner, friends, parents, boss, colleagues, relatives, subordinate. Why does that conflict happen? Conflict happens because listening is a particular  skill if you don't understand the listening skill properly and you don't upgrade your listening skills it will not work.

How do you practice the listening skill?  

There are steps to it. 

Step number 1 : Silence internally and externally: When others are talking if you're constantly saying yeah ,yeah I know yeah I understand what you are saying oh yes, yes I understand the more you are talking, talking, talking not listening your brain cannot listen by the time you are agreeing with the person and talking with the person we are in so much of a hurry to agree we are so so much in a hurry to say yes, yes, our brain is constantly talking and then what happens is we miss some words from the other person and because of which when we respond back to that person the person says i am not saying this I am saying other things. you missed the words because you were not silent but that silence has to be internally and externally both. You have to be completely silent. Just wait just let the other person complete okay once the other person then you can go to step 2 , otherwise step 2 will not work for you.

Practice this skill every day by being silent when people are talking. 

Step number 2 : Repeat: Repeat to the other person what they said. When you repeat to them they are words back to them they will confirm to you yes this what I am saying. If you don't repeat to them there is a chance that you may say something that they may not agree and when you are repeating here is the thumb rule. Repeat in their words not in your words. for example : If the other person says okay i want a workshop on team building and I say oh you need team work  workshop the person will say no no teamwork I need team building workshop. If you see both are similar word but other person think that you didn't listen team building workshop. If you want to convince the other person that you heard the other person correctly then the very important part is first silence listen to the words that they are saying ,repeat the same word back to them and say is this what you said, ask is this what you said and the person says yes, once you have a confirmation and the other person says yes i speak same then you know that you are a good listener. Listening skill is not about only just listening and saying it's first complete silence repeating their words back to them this is called as listening skills.

Step number 3: Talking: How do you do communication skills which are powerful which any person can connect to really really fast. Talk to create comfort not to impress. Comfort automatically gives a person impression. While talking you should be assure how much person is comfortable with me rather than making him impress. To make people comfortable you should take care of these things.

Match body language - If you match your body language with whom you are talking then he become comfortable reason behind this is in our brain their is a physical part called 'RAS' (reticular activities system).This part always scan and during scanning if my 'RAS'  find that the other person is like me then RAS says wow I like this person. If the RAS while scanning the person feels this person is not like me RAS will tell uncomfortable I don't like this person. How many of you met people sometimes in your life where instantly you felt comfort and sometimes you met people and feel un comfortable. This is because comfort comes from similarity and discomfort comes from differences. To create comfort, its not important to talk in a very impressive language that's not important, what is important is if you could simply match the other person's body language they will feel very comfortable with you. for example -  if you are wanting to make a child comfortable and you want that child to be convinced by you obviously you have to communicate properly to the child. So make comfortable to the child, how do you do that, go down to your knees communicate with  the body language of the child rather than standing up looking down to the child there is no  comfort in the child's experience so the child is going to be very discomfort, uncomfortable with you because of that discomfort the child is not listening to you not taking of your conversation. How many of you have this experience where your children don't listen to you sometimes why because they are uncomfortable with us. Now, how do you improve your communication there when you are talking to your children next time match their body language see what happens. Haven't you seen if you ever talk to the children the way they talk they find it very amusing like if you find very small children and if you talk to them totally in their language they get very comfortable they start smiling. Same thing with any culture, if you go to US and match their body language they will be very comfortable with you but if you are going to be very different that'll create discomfort for them.

Match tone and words - If the other person is speaking in english and you speak in hindi obviously there will be no comfort. So, match tone, words, and language. If the other person is speaking soft and I am very loud no comfort , if no comfort even if I am the best impressive speaker in the world if the other person doesn't find matching in my tone the other person will say why he/she  is shouting discomfort is that. Why you'll observe that there are some people who like you and some people who will not because in a large audience there will be a category of people whose tone and body language will match you but there will always be a category of people who will not connect with you that's reality. If I have 100 people in front of me right now I can't match my body language and my tone to 100 people but if it's a small group of people I can do it. Let's say there's a group of 10  people in front of me in a boardroom in the office if I  turn to my boss I can immediately match my body language with my boss , I can match my tone ,words, and language with my boss suddenly I turn towards my colleague or a lady or a gentleman who's from my team , let's say there's a lady and if she is speaking the moment I turn towards her I'll speak softly, I'll use if  she's comfortable in hindi I'll switch to hindi so, match tone,  body language, words and language. 

Agreement frame - Every body has a frame of mind. If somebody is in the wrong frame of mind and you talk to them will they listen to you. If somebody is in the negative frame of mind no matter how good I speak will I be able to communicate with them and convey my point ,no . So, what do I need to do. I need to get them into the right frame of mind. There is one technique which is the best technique in the world to get any person in the right frame of mind immediately. How do you put the people in the right frame of mind so that they listen to you. It is the most powerful way in the world, the simplest way in the world most people don't use it. It's called as I agree frame , it's sounds very simple but it's the most powerful frame in the world. For example; If a person in a group says I disagree with you communication doesn't work like that now most people would start by saying why do you say that ,why are you disagreeing with me now I got into the disagreement frame with the person the moment I said that to that person. If I want to get into the agreement frame all I have to do is say I agree. for example: if the person says I don't agree with you about what you're saying about communication then say okay I agree with you I'm sure you have a particular point of view can you tell me more about your point of view please now I switch into the listening mode silence and repetition so I'm going to start by saying you know I actually agree with you I'm sure there is a reason you're saying that can you tell me more about it. Suddenly the person goes into the agreement frame because they were expecting you to get into disagreement with you because they started with a disagreement frame and they were expecting you also to get into a disagreement frame. They started a fight they thought you will also fight. You always need two people to fight. If other person started with disagreement frame and if I got into the agreement frame with them they have nothing to fight. Every time you are out of the agreement frame the other person is not going to listen to you ,there's not going to be any communication there's going to be argument. If you are in the right frame of mind with that person you'll always be in the right page same page. Another example If your wife comes to you and say nowadays you don't listen to me then come to agreement frame I think you're right may be I'm not listening nowadays can you give me a couple of examples. If you started by saying I don't agree give me an example where I don't listen . Disagreement frame  person will give you example but in disagreement frame , two people can only argue they cannot communicate. 

Conclusion: Never try to talk to create impression talk to create comfort. how do you do that in three steps. Match your body language, Match your tone, words, and language and get into the agreement frame say yes I agree.  Remember skills part comes later first part comes  the mindset communication. You can use this in every area of your life. Quality of your life depends on the quality of your communication skills. If you keep trying to match with people's body language you will not have one particular personality only that's amazing you can have so many personalities within you that you can get along with all kind of personality in the world. If you have only one personality you don't have many option in life if you have multiple personalities within you which you are in control of . Sometimes if not done then take one of the things that they are already convinced by and then communicate your point using that point. 

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