Effective Communication Skills

Best Communication Strategies

Best communication strategies relay information on five Ws and one H - Why, What, Who, When, Where and How, and help you plan communication with audience, other stakeholders and your colleagues. They improve the interactive communication, provide structure for identifying events that require outreach, consider potential messages and audiences, and develop vehicles to deliver information.

Best Communication Strategies are designed to maximize the shared information and minimize misinterpretations. Communication strategies must take into account message, audience, potential vehicles, resources required and feedback mechanisms as the best communication strategies are the blueprints for building a campaign to inform and to be informed by the others. They can also prove to be quite useful in expediting quick information dissemination in sudden unfolding events.

In situations, when issues are complex or sensitive, best communication strategies help you to systematize information and deal with the concerns that may arise out of these issues. Best communication strategies let you avoid potential misunderstandings about difficult issues, as you plan ahead.

While formulating the best communication strategies, it is essential to factor in the Freedom of Information Act available to people. Also, ‘time’ is of critical essence in best communication strategies. During emergencies, it is imperative to ensure rapid information exchange, a fact the best communication strategies cannot afford to miss.

Best communication strategies ensure communication needs to be fulfilled throughout an event or project. This requires an early analysis of participants and their roles. A successful communication strategy is often a part of the larger community, activity or plan.

Best communication strategies are known to address the question, why the communication is necessary. A single focused message that requires to be communicated must be identified. Next, what is to be achieved with the communication must also be deliberated upon. Is the goal simply providing information or increasing awareness or encouraging action or building consensus or changing behavior or promoting community participation or resolving conflict or asking for a response or one or more of these or something else? Once communication goal is developed, it can be incorporated as part of the message.

Messages to be communicated can be listed, discussed, stated more completely and ranked according to priority, before they are narrowed down to two or three key messages. Similarly, all potential audiences can be identified and questions addressing them can be raised so as to increase the effectiveness of message and develop an efficient delivery mechanism.

Corporate Learning Institute offering Best Communication Strategies
by CorpLearning Institute

The Corporate Learning Institute is a boutique team building organization founded in 1992. We work with small and large profit, non-profit and government organizations.

Maintaining a good relationship is part of living healthy. Your communication skills are important to maintaining those relationships that help you be healthy. How do you communicate? How often do you communicate? Do you initiate conversation?

The people we interact with on a regular basis see you at your best and at your worst. You probably want a healthy overflow of those best moments. Communicating wisely and effectively can help you.

No one likes to be offended and no one likes to be insulted. These are common sense statements, but it is amazing how often this is ignored. The usage of profanities in any conversation can be taken as insults at anytime. One of the best ways to avoid this mistake is to make a conscious choice to not use profanity.

Insults can come in two forms, words and/or gestures. You can avoid a lot of problems by thinking before you speak. Choosing your words before sharing them may be all you need to bring a smile to someone’s face rather than a frown.

Think about how you communicate. Sometimes the way you say something can mean the exact opposite of what you intended. Think about the message your body communicates to others.

Crossing your arms can send the message that you don’t care or you can’t be bothered with the message being communicated to you.

When was the last time you called that “best friend?” Part of communicating is taking the time to say I care by starting conversation and initiating the contact whether it be by phone, email or in person.

Do you initiate contact with your friends and family? Do you call and share your thoughts and concerns? Sometimes it’s up to you to make the contact and this is a healthy way of communicating to others that you care about them. Take the initiative to say that you care.

Every part of our business and life requires negotiation skills. The ability to negotiate will increase our successes, open up opportunities, and improve relationships.

Negotiating skills are not part of this country’s formal education, though negotiation is used more often than math skills, every day. These skills create the core of our professional and personal lives.

The importance of negotiation is drastically underestimated in today’s work world. Strong negotiation skills are needed to succeed in life.

What is Negotiation?

There are three parts to negotiation: communication style, personality type, goals. Each of these elements need to be balanced between the two people negotiating before anyone can manipulate a desirable outcome.

Negotiating is simply “working with other to achieve some beneficial result.” It is one of those skills that takes a few hours to learn and a lifetime to master. It is not a genetic trait we’re born with, like athletic or artistic ability. No matter what education level or social position, the negotiation skills are not beyond your capabilities.

It just takes time, a little education, attention to honing our skills, and your life will be better.

Negotiation is not the art of manipulating another person. Negotiation is a type of collaboration, even if you need to convince the other person that it is in their best interest to work together. Manipulation is forcing your goals and opinions on another person.

Communication Styles

There are four communication styles. Each of these are combined with four personality groups. The communication style is their ability to articulate their wants and needs.

A good communicator can identify a person’s personality type and communication style. The communication style a negotiator uses does not necessarily match the audience’s, but the audience will find it familiar and be comfortable using it.

Some communication styles are directly to the point, void of facts. Others layout the facts, letting the audience come to their own opinion before the negotiator offers their opinion or goal. Using the wrong communication style can make the audience feel like they are being ’sold’ or coerced.

Personality Type

The personality type determines what the audience considers a strong enough motivation to change their plans work with you. The negotiator will use the audience’s values and goals to speak using a language, motives, goals, and values their audience will find appealing.

The audience’s personality type will also determine how long the presentation is, and what props the negotiator uses. An artistic person will like to see slides. A driver personality will want facts and figures they can take away with them.

Goals
The expert negotiator does not focus on their goals, but the audience’s goals. The art of negotiating is making the audience believe that they are coming out on top of the agreement, without the negotiator begging or selling.

Goals are often motivated by people’s desire for relationships, building wealth, improving security, feeling good about yourself, and achieving a socially ‘higher’ goal. A negotiator will use these goals to ’speak’ to the audience and help them reach their goals by reaching their own goals.

Objective

Negotiating is not a forceful encounter. Act collaboratively, not competitively. It is not “me against you.” The other person is a bargaining partner. Everyone must come away with a benefit, or the party who has nothing to loose will leave. This is seen when men fall in love. The court a woman until she marries them, treating her as the object of their love, instead of an equal partner who must continually be courted. We see this in business when one company merges with another, and then guts the minor company, leaving the remaining workers feeling wounded.

It is a big mistake to think you can use negotiations to get something for nothing. When negotiating, present your case as if both parties are on equal ground. Everyone can succeed at negotiating if they make “Mutual Benefit” their mantra.

Summary

There are many places to learn how to negotiate, about communication styles, and personality styles. Learning to listen can also give you an edge. Pro negotiators spend more time listening instead of talking. They do not cut-their-own-throats by cutting off the audience why their ideas and goals are wrong, or poorly motivated. They do not finish the audience’s sentences. And, in the end, they earn the audience’s trust, the first goal of any pro negotiator.
by Mark Walters

Mark Walters is a third generation entrepreneur and author. He offers free training and investing videos designed to speed you towards financial independence at http://www.cashflowinstitute1.com/Articles.html

To communicate means to tell about our feelings, and our thoughts. When we communicate, our words may not say precisely what is in our mind, but when somebody takes our body language and words together, he/she can probably find out what we really want to communicate. Understanding communication and making communication is both an art and a science. But it is not very difficult to learn.

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There are 3 behaviors that can upset any Family Meeting. As a kid, I had all three. In fact, my grandmother called me a ‘Butinski’. I’ve never seen it spelled but it sounds like: But-in-ski. I was always butting in on the conversations between my mother and grandmother. I thought I’d have to wait forever if I didn’t speak up. Of course, I didn’t care for my cranky grandma and she didn’t care for my interrupting.
How about your family, do these 3 behaviors get in the way of your communication?
1. Do your kids interrupt you? Do you interrupt them?
2. Do any of your kids talk too much? Do you talk too much?
3. Do your kids all talk at the same time? Do you talk when your kids have the floor?
If any of the above behaviors interfere with your family communication, your family needs to change. Discuss speaking skills at the next Family Meeting. You might consider these:
3 Speaking Skills to Choose:
1.Interrupters have to wait.
2.Only one person gets to speaks at a time.
3.Set a time limit on speaking so that no one ‘over-talks’ and everyone gets a turn.
As the parent, you are the leader. You have the privilege and the responsibility to model good communication. You have the privilege to teach your interrupters and ‘over-talkers’ to wait their turn. You have the privilege and the responsibility to make sure your quiet children speak up too.
Good communication considers others feelings. This is not natural to most children yet all children can learn to communicate well. Just think how pleasant the family meetings will become. You’ll be teaching your children speaking tools
that work and your children will be learning skills for life. How’s that for building character in kids?
by Jean Tracy. MSS
Jean Tracy, MSS, Edmonds, WA, USA
Jean’s Award Winning Newsletter!
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It can be challenging to find the right words to express what we really want to say. We often think that good communication is only about being heard, but is it not also about being a good listener? It may be difficult to identify our
communication problems. Having someone to offer fresh perspective can help you to clarify specific communication issues and improve your skills. Working with a coach can help you focus on the message you want to communicate and to put
language around the thoughts and feelings you want to express.

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Develop Your Interpersonal communication skills for Success at Work and at Home

As a college professor of communication, I am often asked by students why the skills I teach are important. A lot of what I present in the classroom relates to interpersonal skills in the lives of the college student: with friends and family. However, many students are taking college coursework to prepare them for a professional career. It’s important to realize that communication skills are easily transferable. Just how are the interpersonal skills someone learns useful at both home and work? It’s not that big of a stretch, really.

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communication skills: A Quick start

Here is the easy way to learn about communication skills without going through a 300+ pages book which, one can forget about before he finishes it

Always start with an Intention:

Anything we start, including communication skills, usually has reason and a starting point. While we become conscious about this fact for the obvious things like brushing our teeth to avoid tooth decay, we forget to give the same importance to our communication. We start talking, go through all the niceties and then some how stumble upon the reason for conversation or make it up by that time.

The problem with this approach is that the message looses its power. If you keep doing this often, you loose the power to bring it to work when needed. As a soldier polishes and keeps his guns fit even during peacetime, we have to keep our arsenal of communication skills handy to use, when required.

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Communication and Teenagers

Parents, when you were a teenager growing up, didn’t you wish your parents would have listened to you more? And didn’t you wish you would have been allowed to talk more about your feelings?

Well, guess what? The same exact things that frustrated you as a teenager also frustrates your teenager.

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Child communication skills: Do You Really Know What Your Child Is Saying To You?
Here’s the scene of communication with your child: your three-year-old boy is
bawling his eyes out. Hurriedly, you run over, and ask “What’s wrong?”. But no
answer is spoken, the tears just keep coming out, and the vocal cords just keep
on saying “waaaaaaah!”.
You start talking to him in that sweet and soft voice of yours to cajole him
to tell you what his problem is. You really want him to calm down now. But when
he’s asked questions like “Is something hurting you?” or “Are you hungry?’ he
doesn’t answer. He just keeps on crying.

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