How to Develop Communication Skills?

Communication skills are essential to learn to have a progressive life. In education, career, and social setups, effective communication is a key to success. Therefore, the sooner we learn about communication, its effectiveness, the better we can navigate through the complexities of life. CUST shares a smart way comprehensively with you to help our readers develop communication skills. 

What are Communication Skills Exactly? 

Communication is a way to exchange ideas with others. Oxford describes it as an act to exchange information by speaking or writing, or by using any medium. However, communication is a subjective term. There is a question about how well we communicate. Depends on whether we have shared the information with the other party in an effective way? In complete form? This phenomenon is known as effective communication.  

Effective communication must fulfil these five Cs of communication.  

1. It must be clear 
2. Communication must be correct through medium, tone, and effort 
3. The message must be complete 
4. It must be concise and brief enough to understand 
5. The sender must be compassionate enough towards the receiver 

However, if one of the Cs is missed, the communication is not effective enough to be relied upon. When communication is incomplete and ineffective, the essence to communicate dies and results in miscommunication or weak communication skills. That’s why communication skills are the top soft skills employers look for when searching for employees to join. The trend is also the same in 2024.  

How to Know if Our Communication is Weak? 

When we are unable to communicate effectively, we often face issues in personal, professional, and social interactions. While our message must fulfil the five Cs of communication, we also align the verbal and non-verbal communication. The non-verbal communication impacts 95% of the message in communication.  

There are nine factors of non-verbal communication. Therefore, it is essential to manage the non-verbal communication for an effective communication.  

Can We Develop the Communication Skills? 

Many of us are born stars in communication. But not all people are blessed in this way! However, the good news is that communication skills can be learned and developed with some strategic efforts and learning.  

Let’s discuss the simplest way to develop communication skills. You can do this development on your own, with online courses, and through feedback you may take from others. However, the independent way-out to avoid the nuisance of bad communication is drafted below.  

Simplest Way to Polish the Communication Skills 

First things first—to ensure you communicate in an effective manner in every setting, it is important to know what your setting is and who your audience is. The starting point of effective and powerful communication is to know where you are going to communicate.  

Know You Audience 

It is essential to know your audience and setting for effective communication. We all communicate in diverse settings, and with various people in different capacities and relations to us. For instance, as a student, you have your family, mentors, friends, class fellows, batch fellows, and strangers in your day-to-day life. When you complete your degree and start internships, then you have your work setting added to your list of people.  

Now imagine what the outcome would be if you talk to your immediate boss in the same way to talk to your younger siblings! Or talk to your extended family the way you follow your teachers! 

Therefore, an intentional effort is always required to use the appropriate medium, tone, and verbal and non-verbal elements to ensure you have conveyed your message in the most suitable way!    

Make the Right Choice  

Next on the list is to make the right choice! Wondering what the right choice means here? It means to choose the right medium to communicate, to get your tone, vocabulary, and verbal and non-verbal cues at one point to get your message straight to the mind of the receiver.  

Let’s break it down!  

We all have a diverse range of media available to communicate. However, the best results are those one which are received timely, in a reasonable way, and are easy to understand. These are the essential elements of effective communication.  For instance, if you are in a professional setup and you have to communicate with your boss, or some other person in your organisation, sitting in an office miles away. How will you communicate? Orally, over lunch, or through a text message?  

None of them would fit if the nature of communication is official. Therefore, you will communicate over the official email or any other instant message (IM) service that is generally used in the organisation for such communications!  

In the same way, if you are at the supermarket just to buy groceries and you see an item placed on a counter, now you want to ask your mother if you should buy it or not, what will you do? Would you go back home and ask her? Or would you leave a text message for her to see and reply? Or you ask your siblings to ask her about the same?  

The answer is none of them would work! Simply dial her number on the phone, she picks up easily and asks her over the call. Simply, your effective communication has been done on time, through the right medium, and now you can decide whether you should buy it or not!  

Hence, remaining mindful, being respectful and open to seeing which option may work will help you develop your communications easily. For more, you can explore online sources available.  

Conclusion 

Communication skills are the most sought-after skills from employers in the past decade. With emerging technology, like AI, the modes of communication are multiplying. With the advancements of the internet and tools, fast communications are made easy. Therefore, to keep your life in peace, it is essential to develop effective communication skills. You can learn through books, online courses, you can learn diverse elements. However, by knowing your audience and making the right choices of medium, words, and tones, you can attain your goals quickly.