Communication is an integral part of everyone’s daily activities. Whether you are talking with co-workers, your family members, or by phone or e-mail, effective communication benefits everyone. The problem is, we are usually in such a hurry we don’t think about how what we are saying is being interpreted by the recipient. In fact, there may be times when what we intend is not what the person receiving the message hears. This is even more prevalent with e-mail.

Here are some areas to consider as you evaluate your communication style.

1. Be respectful to everyone: The best way to stop the communication flow is to be disrespectful to the person you are talking to. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, whether it is your boss, your kids, co-workers, the cleaning crew, etc. No one is better than anyone else – treat everyone as you would like to be treated. There is a side benefit here as well; you never know when you might need help, and you will be much more likely to receive it from people you were nice to in the past.
2. Listen: You have something you want to say and you know you are right. That may be, but you will destroy any chance you have for the other party to accept your viewpoint if you are rude and talk over them. You will gain much more cooperation from people if you listen to them and let them participate during your conversation.
3. Don’t be condescending: You may have a larger vocabulary than the person you are talking to or you may be an expert in a field, but you will gain no ground by talking over the person you are communicating with to make yourself feel more important. Again, the goal of communicating is to successfully convey your thoughts and ideas, that is pretty tough if the person you are talking to has no idea what you are talking about. It’s even worse if you are doing it just to make them feel stupid.
4. Make sure everyone is clear: At the end of the conversion do a quick recap to make sure everyone is on the same page regarding what was decided. If this is a work environment, you may want to summarize the conversation in a memo or e-mail afterwards and send it to all participants. That way no one can argue later that they didn’t understand. Be sure to keep all e-mails or memos you send out for your own records.
5. Be approachable: You may be the boss or the parent, but that doesn’t mean you have to be unapproachable. There may be times when one of your employees or children needs to initiate a conversation. Don’t make it a scary or stressful situation because they will be less likely to be forthcoming with information you need to know.

Remember, we are all trying to work together to come to understandings, which means our communication skills are very important. Take the time to assess your current communication skills and their affects on the people you interact with. It may be time for a little tweaking!

Tags: communication, conversation, Effective communication, speaking