The first step in understanding how to do something is to understand its goal. Communication is about the transferring of ideas to and from one entity to another. The entities involved can be businesses, specific people, a subset of people, or the world as a whole. A successful one-way communication involves the sender deciding on a message to send, encoding the message, and sending the message through some medium, followed by the listener receiving the message and decoding it for understanding.
Why Is Communication Important?
Whatever business you are involved with and whatever your position, you will be communicating with someone, whether it is your boss, your staff, your customers, or your partners. This means that having your employees perform a task the way you want, successfully making a deal with a potential business partner, marketing a product to consumers, or pitching an idea to corporate all rely on your communication skills.
How Can Communication Skills Be Improved?
A good foundation of knowledge about proper communication and techniques can help as a base to start from or to refine your communicating later, but the majority of communication skills are developed through practice and experience. You can also gain a fair amount of knowledge by analyzing real world examples of communication skills in practice. Observing successful communication can point to ideas to try, and observing failures can steer you away from your own mishaps.
Quick Tips for Improved Communication
While there is no substitute for practice and reading through extensive research and manuals, there are a few general tips that can be helpful when kept in mind.
- Always keep your communication partners in mind.
- If you are unsure of what level of formality to use, err on the side of politeness.
- Just because someone is under your management is not an excuse to ignore good communication skills. Speak clearly and loud enough to be heard if communication is vocal.
- Eye contact is important, but staring into someone’s eyes can make them uncomfortable.
- Pay attention to the reactions of those you communicate with to judge if your communications are having the intended effect.
- Show as much attention to ideas communicated to you as you do to the ones you share.
In this series of blog posts, you will learn tips for business success that will take you 5 minutes to achieve. These 5 minute tips will help you find success as an employee, manager, or business owner.
