Success through communication

SUCCESS THROUGH COMMUNICATION The Success Through Communication Course Honest relationships are built on trust and the ability to communicate effectively. Yet communication can be difficult, especially when you face tough situations at home, at work or with others. The Success Through Communication Course gives you the edge you need to really get your ideas across. Learn effective communication skills to improve your life right now! You’ll learn eighteen simple yet powerful techniques that will show you how to: * Handle any upset in communication and restore happiness to your relationship * Strike up a conversation with anyone – even an angry, shy or silent person * Be there comfortably and communicate in any situation * Become an effective listener * Divert a conversation smoothly off a subject when you don’t want to continue talking about it * Direct the attention back onto a subject that you want to discuss * End any conversation when you want to – without creating an upset. | “ The success level of a person is his communication level. ” L. Ron Hubbard from Ability® magazine, Issue 51 | Achieving success through effective business communication typically involves acquiring skills and experience. Learn to express your ideas clearly and succinctly. Take steps to understand your audience. Target your message to meet their needs. Using effective communication helps your message get interpreted correctly. Avoid conflicts with co-workers, managers and customers by using effective communication techniques. Practice using techniques, such as active listening and paraphrasing to ensure your success. Step 1 Analyze your audience before you make a presentation or conduct a meeting. Anticipate possible causes of confusion and prepare clarifying statements. As you prepare, try to see the situation from your audience’s perspective. Step 2 Give all the background necessary for people who receive your email, presentation or lecture to take action, such as make a decision based on the information you provide. If your topic requires a comprehensive understanding of complex underlying concepts, state so early in your discussion. Set clear expectations about what you hope your business communication can achieve. Step 3 Keep track of the questions people ask you and learn how to respond to common inquiries. Use active listening techniques, such as paraphrasing what you have heard or nodding in acknowledgment. Ask clarifying questions yourself to ensure you truly understand what your audience does not comprehend. Ask open-ended questions to start a conversation, get more details or get input on issues. Ask closed questions that require a simple “ yes” or “ no” answer to confirm your understanding, get agreement or conclude a meeting. Step 4 Choose the right communication format for each situation. For example, avoid using email to communicate emotional issues, such as bad news. Use written communication to convey lists of information, such as policies and procedures. Use diagrams and charts to summarize complicated financial data. Step 5 Proofread your written communication, such as email, reports or other documents. Check for spelling and grammar mistakes so that you fix them before distributing your information. For email messages, include an effective subject line, discuss only one topic and specify the type of response you want. Step 6 Pay attention to body language when communicating in person. A person who does not look at you or appears distracted in other ways may not be able grasp your message. Use physical cues to tailor your message or know when it might be appropriate to discuss the subject at another time. Step 7 Defer judgment until the conversation concludes. Avoid interrupting the speaker with counter arguments. It limits your understanding of the situation. Step 8 Recognize cultural differences in communication styles. Before you work with people from another country, take the time to investigate business practices in that area of the world. What is communication to you? Dictionary has rightly defined communication as a connection allowing access between persons, places or souls with purpose. This somehow defies with our day-to-day common understanding of communication, which over focuses on ” Verbal communication” experience through ear, and brain only. This has limited our understanding and skills to communicate well. We always thought of improving our communication by following certain format, or external procedures and failed to understand what communication actually is? Communication is not always what we say, or do, but it is also what or who we are? How can we learn to improve communication? In order to improve our communication skills including the formal ones that we need in our professions, we must address them at all the following 3 levels in order to achieve complete success. I have seen many great speakers, who mastered the art of public speaking by following certain format. But I hardly see any behavioral change they were able to bring in audience through their speech. Sometimes it is like say, ” Surgery was successful but patient died”. It is also like formal degree/s people obtain from Nepalese universities with their hard earned money, just to discover that what they learned were of no use in achieving success in the real world Mental Level Understanding our mental factors that affect our communications to a great extend that people do not choose to accept. You cannot communicate well if you are angry, sorry, excited, or mentally disturbed by some events however small it may look to other people. You can talk well in the afternoon, if you feel badly affected by a quarrel with your friend or spouse in the morning. So you need to stay cool and relatively at peace in order to be able to communicate well whether in a meeting with your colleagues, or in the presentation to your donors. Your mental state of mind affects your physical capacities of communications such as your body language, expressions, tones, convictions, and others, which are the manifestation of your mental state of mind. What affects our mental capacity to communicate well? 1) Experience at Conscious level: Your memory Your physical memory, which occupies a very small part of your overall ” Memory Iceberg”, plays a great role in determining your quality of communication. What you think at the time of communication directly affects your voice, reaction, expressions and final reflection on personality. If you feel lousy or deceived, or inferior about yourself, there is no way that your audience will feel any better about you. Your audience will see the same picture of you as you mentally see the picture of yourself at the time of presentation. So it is important also review and correct, communication at the mental level in order to be successful communicator. Otherwise there will be conflict between what you say and what you communicate through your expressions and body language, which responds to the command of your mind, not what you say. 2) Self Esteem: Acknowledging your own worth: How you feel about yourself? As a result of or depending upon state of your mind, and your internal dialogues about yourself, you will form an internal opinion of your own worth: whether you are valuable to this world from your perspective. It is called ” Self Esteem” level of which determines the quality of what you express through your voice, body language, and expressions. It is one thing that is so clear and transparent to everyone except to you and is perhaps the most important factors for success in life. Relatively, we Nepalese have very low self-esteem as nation as well as individual citizen that reflects everywhere- media, politics, and at home when we are yelling at our wives, children, and our dependents. It needs to be corrected. When we feel low and inferior, we tend to show more high and superior and that affects how we treat others, which in turn affects our relationship and finally our desire to be successful. 3) Self confidence: having confidence in yourself We hurt others when we hurt ourselves. We trust others when we trust ourselves. When we are wondering why we cannot trust other people, at the mental level, what we are saying is we do not trust ourselves. Every character and quality that we see in other people is actually our own reflection of how we feel, and think of ourselves. So the state of having or not having confidence on us, which is described as having nor not having ” self confidence” greatly influence our communication skill. So we need to correct communication at the confidence level also. 4) Assertiveness: Don’t say YES when you want to say NO Sometimes we accept to do things out of obligation or to avoiding displeasing others or to gain approval, even when we do no like it. For example- sometimes our spouse asks us to buy something that we cannot afford. To avoid confrontation, we unwillingly give in to her/his demand and resent so strongly that we take every opportunity to yell at her or insult her in some other way for the fault she never committed. A simple No, and little confrontation could prevent big quarrel later. Similarly, female employees should frankly say NO to any unreasonable request of her male colleagues, however small or un-harmful it looks at the initial stage. Assertiveness on her part to say NO to indication of indecent advancement at the initial stage can save a whole relation and unpleasant situation. Don’t say YES when you want to say NO. 5) Forgiving yourself: There is no such thing as mistake. When one is not confident and assertive, it eats up internally. One feels hurt, and guilty. That will create a vicious cycle of low self-esteem, low self-confidence and unassertiveness. This is disastrous to your communication ability. That is when people choose to suicide rather than to speak to mass, if given chance. Only way to break this vicious cycle is forgiving one’s Self. We must learn to be gentle and kind towards ourselves. Our ability to forgive ourselves creates ability to forgive others. Spiritual level/abstract level: 1) Acknowledging the abstract/ Unmanifest level Some times we like something or hate other things for no reason. There is no clear reason. We simply feel the way we feel. However best we try to ignore that such feeling, we cannot ignore. We fall in love with one person, like other person; hate another person, seemingly for no reason. Sometimes we have special obsessions or phobia for things for no apparent reasons. When we experience such things, it is at abstract or unmanifest level that is not seen but sensed with feeling. Although they are hard to explain, they are as real as you and me. We will not satisfied if we do not feel something ” right” in our heart. Sometimes, such internal feeling guides us and saves us from disaster. The quality of our communication also depends upon our ability to listen, and hear our inner voices, that are so clear but provide us feeling or sense of whether we are in right path or not. 4) Is REALITY real? No it is not. When a jealous boy friend sees his girl friend with another man, his only reality is that his girl friend has deceived him. At that time and place that looks like an absolute reality to him. But his girl friend might have another reality. The boy she walked with might just be her brother, cousin or a friend. So there is no absolute reality. Yes, there is shared reality, which comes from shared beliefs of many people within a community. So just because, many people believe something, it does not mean it is an absolute reality. It simply means that many people share this particular reality, but it does not necessarily represent Correctness. Now can we change ” reality”? Yes, at different level, again. Our reality changes with our value systems, which changes with change of our thoughts and beliefs. The reality is manifestation of our thoughts and beliefs. 5) Visualization: We can change our reality by changing our internal vision of our world. We can deliberately do it through visualization process. But the problem I see now days in the corporate sector is that they take it more or less as a fashion to show off. People first need to understand how visualization works and to follow the correct steps. Some tools to improve communication at mental and spiritual level 1) New God that I found: ” My own higher self” I found new god whom if we worship would help us improve our communication, through improved self esteem, confidence and assertiveness. – Close your eyes – Take 21 times breath – Scan your body from toe to head – Imagine an image of ” your higher self” coming out of your body and wish that image respectfully. Say, ” Please help me improve my self image”. – Then imagine your higher self hugging you and showing respect. Do this everyday and for at least 21 days. If you do that honestly and with full commitment, you will find the positive changes in your lives. 3) Improving confidence to improve your communication skills – Close your eyes – Take 21 times breath – Scan your body from toe to head – Imagine yourself speaking in front of a large audience. – Imagine that your audience is enjoying your presentation. – Imagine a beautiful lady (a handsome man if you are female), among the audience looking and listening your speech admiringly. – Finally imagine that at the end of your speech, there were clapping and admiration from the audience and also imagine, that beautiful lady coming and giving you a red rose. – Repeat this process before presentations, or public speech. This will definitely improve your confidence. – Believe in what you aspire. Trust yourself.