Improving communication in the workplace-Summary

As we have been discussing for the last 20 weeks about improving communication in the workplace from an individual or personal effort perspective, now let us pause on this topic by summarising the key learnings.

Key learnings:
 

• Effective communication is all about meeting the purpose of your intent with others. It is not about language proficiency.
• As people are from different backgrounds in the workplace, each needs different levels of the communication process, and it is an individual 's responsibility to develop the skill rather than pointing others for poor communication results.
• People will listen to you only when your communication contains ALL  the below elements.

• Expertise in the subject or creditability proof 
• Connecting emotionally with the person
• Logically connecting with facts

• You can connect emotionally with others by consistently displaying. 

Respect to others and feeling good with you
Listening  and undivided attention to others
Prompting others and fulfilling the need of “what is in it for me “
Your friendly  posture, tone, facial expression
Knowing the difference between criticism and feedback
Being approachable to others
 

• In the workplace, we can not avoid conflict due to differences in the thought processes of each person. The only way to manage the conflict is through appropriate usage of assertiveness, proactive communication, and sometimes to ignore the battle for the interest of higher purpose.

• Going forward, to manage the new generation, Influencing skill is mostly expected expertise in the workplace rather than the conventional way of commanding and directing. Influencing skills can be learned and developed with awareness and practice.

Developing communication skills is a lifetime learning process, and you need to invest in it to progress in the career path!