Facts About Communication, Tips, Insights and Ideas

• Evaluate: We judge what someone is saying and agree or disagree.
• Probe: We ask questions from our own frame of reference.
• Advise: We give counsel, advice, and solutions to problems.
• Interpret: We analyze others' motives and behaviors based on our own experiences.

It lets us reframe how we express ourselves and hear others. 

It allows us to speak in terms of what we observe, how we’re feeling, what our needs are, and how we respond to others’ requests.

Leaders are clear and articulate with their words and ensure that each statement has a purpose.

Leaders are also aware of their body language. They have good posture and maintain eye contact with the people they are talking to. They are comfortable speaking in front of large groups as well as one on one. No matter what the situation, they articulate their goals and vision.

The best way to keep an argument calm is to be as kind as possible. Respectfully acknowledge the other person's viewpoint, even if you don't agree with it.

Say things like "I see what you're saying there," or "That's a good point." 

It empowers you to draw necessary boundaries with people that will allow you to get your needs met in relationships without alienating others and without letting resentment and anger creep in.

Many people mistake assertiveness for aggressiveness, but assertiveness is actually the balanced middle ground between aggressiveness and passivity. 

Effective communication is an attainable and deliberately acquired skill set, one that can be learned and practiced over time.

While it’s true that individual attributes can make these abilities easier to acquire, there is nothing that the world’s best communicators have that you can’t acquire through hard work.

Speak with each party separately to gain their perspective on what the tension is all about. 

Make sure that along with any emotional information, you discuss specific facts or events that led up to or inflamed the situation.

There’s a simple curve to how email usage affects our productivity. No email = OK productivity. But as we start to use more email, we become more productive thanks to more access to information and collaboration. But this only works to a point.

Once you cross that threshold, more email usage drops productivity to a point where nothing gets done.

Research found that only 7 percent of communication comes from the words you use; the rest of what you communicate comes from your voice and tone (38 percent) and your body language (55 percent).

So that means when you send a virtual message, 93 percent of what you’re trying to communicate may be lost.

• Set clear expectations and make an effort to be a good listener.
• Set clear boundaries. Establish a preferred time for communications so you feel respected and acknowledged.
• Get to know others. Remote workers often have purely transactional interactions. Listen to people and get to know them.
• Update people on what you’re working on and your availability. 

We communicate with each other as a habit but miss a lot in what a conversation really holds.

Our lack of listening skills, our inner chatter, and the urge to speak about ourselves is clouding any real, worthwhile exchange of words.

In a social gathering or a serious discussion:

• Have control over what you say. 
• Slow down.
• Instead of blurting out whatever comes to your mind, take a pause and evaluate.

• It is very easy to misinterpret emails and chats, so do not make any assumptions and be empathic.
• Follow meeting protocol like preparing the agenda and providing the meeting summary to everyone.
• Do not disturb people by requesting them to pick up the phone unless really needed. Do not expect an immediate response to chat and email.
• Repetitive tasks can be documented to ensure that they can be done by whoever is available.
• Do not rely on knowledge inside one person's head, ensuring it is written down and shared.
• Use a checklist to track the team’s progress, sharing it with others.

The essence of communication is to inform, influence, inspire, motivate, learn, socialize and build relationships. Communication makes possible persuasion, negotiation, and improved work delivery.

Your style of speaking, or writing, choice of words while conveying your idea, or point of view are very powerful components in communicating with effectiveness and purpose.

The right word said the right way can make all the difference.

Our bias, personal feelings, prejudice, and interpretations wreak havoc on our communication.

Being objective means having an open mind and communicating with facts and figures.

If part of a team, ensure that the team communication is promoting productivity and togetherness, forging a sense of community and harmony.

• Asynchronous communication is when we send a message (such as emails) without expecting an immediate response. The recipient can take hours to answer it.

• Synchronous (or real-time) communication is when you and the other person are engaged in a face-to-face audio or video conversation, like a video call or a phone call. The information discussed is responded immediately.

Instant messaging tools like Slack or Teams are synchronous, and in some companies, email is also used as a real-time communication tool.

The overhead of real-time communication leads to:

1. An inability to focus and make any meaningful progress in work.
2. The constant interruptions, and context-switching draining mental resources.
3. A constant FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) due to connectivity being made a priority over productivity.
4. More stress, high frustration and time pressure, which can lead to burnout
5. Lower quality discussions due to lack of time to think and reflect.
6. No offline time, which leads to a constant connection with work, disrupting the work-life balance.

1. More control over the workday, and on how we structure our lifestyle due to flexible work hours.
2. High-quality responses due to workers having the time to think, reflect, and provide insightful ideas.
3. Better coordination and planning, leading to less stressful teamwork.
4. Employees can block their hours for uninterrupted ‘Deep Work’ time.
5. All conversations are automatically documented in email and chat.
6. Easy to disconnect at the end of the day, leading to better work-life balance.

Being a good listener is timeless advice, and it has been eighty years since Dale Carnegie mentioned being a good listener in his classic ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People’.

The advice is still rock solid, telling us to listen with intent while asking interesting questions that the other person would love to answer.

Discord has worked hard on ensuring the lowest latency possible during a voice call, and that hard work is now paying off when they realize that it’s not just gamers who want sub-millisecond latency.

With so many communication tools available in various online platforms, Discord offers nothing new on the surface and feels like a mashup of Slack, Reddit, Zoom and similar tools. However, the way the tools are offered feels like people are hanging around and enjoying being connected passively, and are not working. The USP of Discord is the sense of play.

Different styles of communication are appropriate in different situations. To make the best use of your communication skills, it’s important to consider your audience and the most effective format to communicate with them.

For example, if you are communicating with a potential employer, it’s better to send a formal email or call them on the phone. Depending on the situation, you may even need to send a formal, typed letter over other forms of communication.

Aristotle identified the 3 elements of great communication as:

• Ethos
• Pathos
• Logos

It is an emotional connection with your audience.

• It is the reason why people will believe that what you are telling them will matter to them. It will be relevant to them.

• Communication skills are a set of activities that ultimately make a quality public performance.
• Communication today is very important both in the business world and in private life.
• By acquiring strong communication skills, you can better connect with your friends, colleagues, boss... all while improving communication in the workplace.

WHY IS CLEAR COMMUNICATION IMPORTANT?

Effective communication is really important for an organized life and it is far too important to ignore or leave to fate.

When you strengthen your communication skills you eliminate unnecessary rework and wasted time from misunderstandings.

Poor communication or bad communication skills will just make life harder for you. It will be the root cause for various misunderstandings, conflicts and confusions which can go on to affect your productivity as well as relationships.

During difficult times under communication can cause troublesome situations.

• When communicating, especially about important things, stick to the topic and try not to add too much unnecessary information since it might confuse the recipient.

• Know the objective of the conversation and be clear about the message.

• Don’t rush into conversations, take a few minutes to collect your thoughts and calm your mind and deliver the message in a straightforward way.

• Keep in mind the type of people you are communicating with and frame your message according to it.

• Make sure that the recipient has understood the message clearly.

• Communicating with everyone the same way. (Realise that different audiences require different communication styles.)

• Less questions, more assumptions.

• Less listening, more talking.

• Small minded thoughts. (Try to keep an open mind for everyone’s opinions and views.)

• Negative approach towards the conversation. (Using negative tones and words creates an emotional distance between you and the recipient.)

• Challenge yourself and move out of your comfort zone.

• Be the first to start a new conversation. Many people around you may feel the same way. So forget about your worries and reach out to new people.

• Take a minute to think about the things you want to talk about. Have questions ready that will help you begin new conversations.

• Once you start a new conversation, try to ask as many questions as possible and practice listening.

• Try to relax and enjoy the conversation and don’t stress out too much.

• Ask questions and get feedback from people around you.

• If you make mistakes, communicate with the people around you and try to understand where you went wrong.

• Whenever a bad situation comes up, try not to point the blame at the other person/people.

• During problematic situations, once you explain your point of view, take time to hear out the other person and try to understand the situation from their point of view as well.

Listening is the other half of communication and is overlooked most of the time.

The true benefit of listening is not for the speaker but for the listener.

Being able to listen and understand to other people and their ideas and implementing those to our own is a very great trait to have.

Make effort to be a good listener. When you can listen to someone and understand them properly, you will be able to explain yourself better as well.

Make the effort to try and inspire others through your communication.

Try to spread important messages through your words and make a difference to the world around you.

Make conversations less about you and more about the people around you and the things that matter to you.

Instead of communicating about things that are negative and hateful, try communicating about kindness, truth, humanity or anything and everything else that you are passionate about.

Try to spread positivity through your words and through your influence.

The ability to distill data and make process recommendations will test the communication skills of even the most eloquent leaders.  

• Support is a part of the communication loop. Aligning with the Support team guides the resolution of major cases that keep customers satisfied. You also can report bugs to the Engineering team that may prove a more significant impediment in the future.
• Feedback is a form of communication. Any customer data that can be delivered to the Product team aids in improving the product, which in turn creates a better customer experience and engagement.

Here are the ways to improve Communication Skills:

1. Motivate yourself to initiate the conversation

To improve Communication Skills in yourself as student; it is essential to tell yourself to start and take part in discussion. The majority of us probably shouldn't want to talk to anyone. This makes tough for you to show your feelings when you get stressed. So motivate yourself to do such activities which make your communication skill effective. In the classroom examine feelings about situations happening in the mind of students to talk with them.

The most important thing which we forget that is our body language. The hands in our pocket, legs shrinking shows that you are not confident. Straight your hand downside and make eye-to-eye contact to make the communication effective. Learn the body gestures and postures to maintain the personality. While going for interviews or presentations, dress yourself in such a formal way. Sit comfortably and talk nicely with them to maintain personality.

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1. Be a Good Listener

2. Improve Non-verbal communication

3. Improve verbal communication

4. Improve written communication

5. Improve visual communication

We’re not just talking about hearing the words that a person is saying; rather you should be tuned in to their non-verbal communication also.

Is the person avoiding eye contact?

Is their posture open or closed?

Are they fidgeting with their hands?

All of these actions convey a lot of information.

How to be a good listener:

When you are listening, give your full attention to the speaker.

Set your phone face down.

Look at their non-verbal signals, and listen to their words.

Use clarification questions to follow up on key points and then sum up your understanding to them.

• Don’t fidget! Be still, and calm
• Use eye contact intelligently.
• Be confident in your use of space. Don’t minimize yourself, instead relax into your space.
• Strive to be non-reactive during stressful situations.

The first step to improve is to make sure that your spelling and grammar are perfect.

There are plenty of online tools that can help you with this.

Now, this is not a perfect solution, if you are not the world’s strongest writer you can use it.

Less is more! Pare back your design and resist the urge to stuff every fact, figure, font etc..

Utilize typography. If in doubt, ask for the brand guidelines for your company and follow those.

Pay attention to balance and harmony. You can achieve this by using similar, rather than disparate, elements in your communication. The same style of clip art, the same font family, or the same pastel shades.

If you want to become a great leader or make a lot of money you absolutely need to learn how to communicate more efficiently.

• You need Energy
• You Clarity 
• You need Empathy

Improving your social skills can benefit you in every area of life. Social skills are important because they can help you communicate more effectively and efficiently. As a result, you’re able to build, maintain and grow more meaningful relationships with colleagues, clients and new contacts alike.

Here are 10 ways to develop your social skills:

Find ways to further conversations with friends, family and close coworkers or practice your conversation skills by asking open-ended questions. Similarly, set a small goal for yourself to offer at least one project or business strategy at your next board meeting.

Master verbal and nonverbal communication.

The greater your attraction and popularity, the greater will be your perceived competence. Project tact, authenticity and self-confidence.

Use the “power of symbols” to build the most reliable measure of your competence: your habitus – the way you look and act.

Judging other people’s competence is hard; recognizing their incompetence is easier.

Effective communication plays a vital role in building and maintaining a healthy relationship. Recognizing the differences in communication styles between genders is essential. Learn to be a good listener, offering emotional support without always providing solutions. Similarly, share your thoughts and suggestions with your partner to create a positive impact. Honesty and openness are also fundamental, encouraging trust and understanding.

 Engage in active listening to understand others’ viewpoints and perspectives. Practice expressing your thoughts clearly, constructively, and logically, fostering productive discussions and debates.

Master the art of effective communication to build strong relationships. "Effective communication is the bridge that connects individuals and fosters understanding."

Language is a powerful tool for signaling social and intellectual prowess.

"Our choice of words, vocabulary, and eloquence in communication can be used to signal our intelligence and social status."