Do you feel like you're misunderstood? Well watch this video, and I'll share
with you how you can improve your communication skills, and stick around to
the end of this video, and I will show you how to improve some other skills too
with my master hack productivity list. Hi if you're new here welcome, for more
videos on how to excel in your career, and slay your projects, subscribe to my
channel and hit that button, and you'll get a new video every Wednesday, I've
been in the professional world for twenty plus years, and I can attest to
how important good communication skills are, I've seen my fair share of really
great communication, and poor communication, so I want to share with
you some really simple things that can help you improve your communication
skills, so let's get to it, tip one, listen, but wait a minute, I'm
the one talking, shouldn't they be listening to me,
whoa, whoa, whoa, that really is the first key to great communication skills, and
that is to listen, conversations are a two-way street, so if we're constantly
talking at people, guess what, we're not gonna really get to hear what they're
saying if we're constantly the ones talking, so listen, listen as much as you
can in order to understand what the other person is saying to you, too often
we're not listening, why, because we're formulating thoughts in our head to make
sure that we get a really good answer out to that person, well that loses the
essence of the two-way conversation, of really understanding what the person is
trying to say to you, because you're not even paying attention, it's really, really
important to take that time, and listen to what that other person is saying, as
Sir Richard Branson says, listen more than you talk, so we even make this like
a game for yourself, take note when you're listening to someone, are you
really listening, and maybe a little scorecard for yourself, believe you me, this
is something I'm still working on today, number two, ask questions, asking
questions is a really powerful way to improve your communication skills, you
want to be ensuring that the person that you're speaking to knows that you're
actually speaking to them, yes you're listening, as I told you with tip one
but on tip two, you're gonna be asking questions, you're going to be getting
that conversation going back and forth, when you ask the questions, it
shows that you're paying attention, now if for some, whatever reason, you really
can't ask questions in the conversations, another technique you can do is to
summarize what was said in a form of a question, so you can say, so if I'm
hearing you correctly, you're saying that we have to take two paths, path A, and
path B, did I put that correctly, amazing way to get connected to the person that
you're speaking with, and to improve your communication skills, tip three, watch for
body language, and for nonverbal signals, it is said that you can actually read
the room by just looking at people, and seeing their body language, and their
nonverbal cues, in fact, statistically, they say about 55 to 93 percent of our
communication is through our body language, so that being said, wow is that
powerful, don't ignore it, this is why for conference calls I really prefer video
on, so I can see my people, and if it's just audio it's really difficult to pick
up on new nuances, but particularly when you're in a meeting, watch out for how
people are actually sitting, facing, you know some of the techniques are, is if
everyone's in the front of the room, but one person is like this, I can promise
you they're closed off, and they're not part of the conversation, they're just
giving you tons of information that you would not have known otherwise, because
you're not verbally cueing it up to you, also take a look at to, what else that
they're doing, crossing their legs, are they open, so that's why sometimes hands
in the pocket, or like this crossing, even though we may be insecure, or maybe
we're talking to someone really important, get into the habit of
uncrossing them, and really be open, because that in itself can be
interpreted in ways that perhaps, you did not want to be interpreted, so really
take note of body language, and nonverbal cues, tip 4, lose the distractions, so our
biggest distraction is technology, computers, phones, social media, the bings,
the dings that notify us that something came through, the vibration, oh
hold on, I just got a text, how often does that happen, you're actually talking to
someone, and you're in a conversation, and then all of a sudden, they pull out their
phone, and they're just quickly looking, glancing,
how does that make you feel, right away you're going, wait a minute, you're not
even paying attention to what I'm saying, and that person may not even
realize that they're actually doing it, and that's the message
that's coming across, why we're so trained with our devices, these amazing
devices, as great as they are, it is a big distraction, and can take away from
communication, so turn it all off, if you're in a meeting, or you're talking to
someone, or you're in front of your computer, and someone comes up to you, put
the screen down, or move the screen, if it's a standing screen, really focus your
attention on them, give them eye contact, same with the phone, don't pick it up, and
if you have to, because listen, you have an emergency that may come through, tell
people in advance, hey, if I pick up my phone it's because I'm having an
emergency, people totally understand, but just don't go to it, because it's
habit-forming, and you built it into your daily routine, ah there's a vibration,
ding, let me get that, I promise you, it's not that important, stick to your
conversation with the person that you're having, tip number 5, over communicate to
communicate, if you've seen my other videos, I say this over, and over again,
and I'm going to say it over again here, why, because you have to over communicate,
in order to communicate, listen, with all the tips I just told you, there's tons of
distractions in front of us, so when we're trying to pay attention to people,
we can get really sidetracked, so if you're in a conversation, you need to sometimes
over communicate, perhaps you need to repeat things a few times, particularly
if it's instructions, so just take note, over communicate to communicate, there's
nothing wrong with it, don't make the assumptions because you said it once
it's okay, take note of your surrounding, was someone paying attention, or did they
have the phone out when you were actually giving them some really
important information, say it again, it does not hurt, very, very helpful, so over
communicate to communicate, tip six, commit to improving your communication
skills, all right, now that you know the importance of communication skills, I've
just given you some tips on how to go about doing it, don't just listen and
walk away, do something with it, commit to it, make a
habit of trying to do one thing every day, as to, how to improve that
communication skills, in fact here at my company cornerstone dynamics, we do that,
we actually pick things that we're gonna personally work
on, and my list, I actually, this is a running activity that I keep on
doing over and over again is listening, I'm constantly trying to focus on that,
so in order to get better you have to practice, in order to make those
improvements and get better at your career, this is a really important thing,
because as you grow you're gonna be in management positions, leadership
positions, and that's all about people, and if you're gonna really lead people
well, you got to know how to communicate, now that you've mastered communication
skills it is time to hit productivity out of the park by picking out, from the link
below, this master's hack on productivity tips, if you're looking to improve your
skills this is also some other really cool stuff that's just gonna enhance
your communication skills, please subscribe to my channel, like this video,
and share with all the professionals that you know, I would love to hear from
you, let me know which communication skills tip you are gonna practice today.