Communication skills are a set of activities that ultimately make a quality public performance.

Communication today is very important both in the business world and in private life.

🔎 With strong communication skills, you can easily improve communication in the workplace. Download our eBook “10 Principles of Modern Employee Communications” and learn how to communicate with the modern employee in today’s digital age.

Successful communication helps us better understand people and situations. It helps us overcome diversities, build trust and respect, and create conditions for sharing creative ideas and solving problems.

In the business world, many employers believe that proper internal communications can significantly increase employees’ productivity.

Although communication itself seems simple, often when we try to establish communication with others or others with us, there is always a chance for a lack of understanding that can cause conflicts and frustrations in personal or professional life in relations with other people.

By acquiring strong communication skills, you can better connect with your friends, colleagues, boss… all while improving communication in the workplace.

Why Developing Strong Communication Skills Is the Key

In this modern time we live in, we are receiving, sending and processing a large number of messages every day.

But successful communication is far more than sharing information, it is also an understanding of the feelings behind this information.

Successful communication can deepen relations in personal life or professional life. In personal life, they can help us understand better people and situations that happen on a daily basis.

Developing communication skills can help us avoid conflicts, compromise and help in better decision making.

Here is a great overview of why communication skills are important.

The Power of Strong Communication Skills in the Workplace

With strong communication skills, you can clearly impact your business. Great communicators are the ones who bring solutions, drive change, motivate and inspire their colleagues.

By improving communication skills, we can improve  employee engagement, teamwork, decision-making, and interdepartmental communication in the workplace.

For that reason, communication skills are the most demanded soft skills that employers are looking for in their employees.

Good communication skills enable managers to receive and send negative or heavy messages without creating frustration and disruption of trust. This is important to keep employees motivated and engaged.

Employees today expect to be informed about every aspect of the business and not to miss any important information.

They expect from the leaders to communicate regularly their role and goals. They expect continuous feedback on their work, and they expect to be able to find information that they need in seconds.

Employers who manage to successfully communicate with their employees have much lover turnover rates.

Therefore, employers need to have a well-set strategy about how to keep their employees informed and engaged.

Although we can develop certain communication skills, communication is more effective if it is spontaneous than when it follows certain formulas. The spoken word has a different echo of spontaneous spoken speech.

Of course, it takes time and effort to develop these skills and become a successful speaker. The more effort and practice, the communication skills will be more spontaneous and more instinctive.

Top 5 Communication Skills You Can’t Ignore

There are dozens of different communication skills to possess, there are top 5 communication skills we will focus on in this blog.

These 5 skills are absolutely necessary for successful communication in the workplace or private life.

1. Listening

Listening is one of the most important aspects of communication. Successful listening is not just and understanding of spoken or written information, but also an understanding of how the speaker feels during communication.

If a speaker can see and feel that someone is listening and understanding that can help build a stronger, deeper relationship between interlocutors.

Careful listening can also create an environment in which everyone feels safe to express ideas, opinions and feelings, or plan and solve problems in a creative way.

2. Straight talking

Conversation is the basis of communication, and one must not neglect its importance. Even a simple, friendly conversation with colleagues can build mutual trust and even detect problems before they become serious.

A healthy dose of chatting with and unknown person can lead to a business opportunity. Be accessible and friendly  because then you will be able to talk to almost anyone.

3. Non-verbal communication

When we talk about things that matter to us then we send a lot of nonverbal messages.

Non-verbal signals are wordless communication, body position, facial expression, hand movements, gestures, eye contact, attitude and tone of your voice, muscle tension and the way you/we breathe.

The way you look, listen, create, react, gesture, speaks far more about feelings than words will ever be able to.

Why non-verbal communication skills are important?

Because, according to Salesforce’s research on interpersonal communication, 93 percent of communication is non-verbal.

Developing the ability to understand others and use nonverbal signals will help you connect with others, express what you think, meet challenging situations, and build better relationships at home and at work.

4. Stress management

In small quantities, stress can be very useful and encouraging for work. However, when the stress becomes constant and completely begins to take effect, it can affect communication, clarity of opinion, and appropriate behavior and action.

When you are under stress you may misunderstand other people, send confusing nonverbal signals, and use funny patterns of behavior.

How often did you feel stressed during discussion with your friends or colleagues and then said or did something you regretted later?

If you improve stress management skills, not only will you avoid these subsequent regrets, but you will also be able to influence the other person you are entering into a conflict.

5. Emotion control

In communication, feelings play an important role. Making decisions more often affects the way you feel than the way you think.

Guided by emotions, your nonverbal behavior affects the understanding of other people and how others understand and perceive you.

If you are not aware of your feelings you are guided, you will not be able to express your needs and experiences. This can result in frustration, misunderstanding and conflict.

Control of emotions provides you with tools to understand others, yourself and the messages you send.

Though recognizing feelings makes it simple, many people have strong feeling like anger, sorrow, or fear being pushed under the carpet.

4 Smart Ways to Improve Communication Skills

Communication experts have many advice on how to improve communication skills.

To help you get started with thought leadership, we share below 4 of the most productive ways to quickly and efficiently improve your communication skills:

1. Listen with empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs of another person. Exactly this is the reason why organizations have started developing empathy in the workplace.

Emotional acceptance, closely related to empathy, means that, after empathizing and understanding how other person feels, we can accept the reasons why somebody feels or thinks the way they do, regardless of whether we agree with it or not.

Try to see things from others’ perspectives by accepting what you hear instead of trying to „fix things and solve the problem“.

2. Speak up

Communication begins with you. Take responsibility and start communication, do not wait and expect another person to do so and don’t hide behind various forms of online communication.

Good communication, especially on important topics, requires far more than what we can express in a written message.

We often misunderstand this kind of communication because we do not see the person’s face, its nonverbal communication, and in what circumstances communication starts.

3. Prepare what you’re going to say

Think before you speak. Most of us work best when we have time to process our own thoughts before we share them.

If the conversation or meeting is worth your precious time, take a few minutes to prepare the speech draft.

For a very important conversation, try a mock-up conversation with a trusted person so you can get rid of any potential mistakes.

4. Be ready for different answers

As you formulate a speech strategy, put yourself in the position of a person who will listen to you.

This will ensure balanced approach and you will be prepared to learn and defend potential disagreements and it will be easier for you to defend your standpoint.

No one can predict with certainty how other people will react.

Improve chances of a successful conversation by expecting negative answers and queries. So it is harder for your listeners to catch you unprepared.

Help Your Employees Improve their Communication Skills with Strategists’ World

Leaders and employees need to have strong communication skills to support the business’s growth.

Think about it: communication is actually the glue that holds the business together. Without effective communication, employees don’t have a clear understanding of the company’s vision and priorities. Managers struggle to motivate and inspire their teams.

At the end of the day, it’s the company’s success that may suffer from poor communication.

That’s the reason why Strategists’ World has built many courses on SMART Communication. We want to make it easy for employees and leaders to become great communicators. And to do so, you need to make sure that each employee gets the information they need when they need it without having to search for it.

Remember, employees spend on average 2.5 hours per day searching for the information they need to do their jobs!

What’s more, you need to communicate with your employees through their favorite channels, so they engage with your content and keep developing communication skills.

Strategists’ World can help you encourage your employees develop strong communication skills through:

• Relevant messages shared with your employees
• An internal communication strategy adapted to your employees’ needs
• Content creation. Yes, your employees can become great content creators and they don’t need to become motion designers to do so! The Content Booster by Strategists’ World makes it easy for your employees to create their own content!
• Employee advocacy. The Advocacy Amplifier makes it easy for your employees to share insights with their personal networks so they position themselves as industry experts.
• Strong Analytics that make it easy for your employees to measure the engagement they’re generating through their posts and shares

Don’t forget that your employees can be great communicators inside and outside the organization!

Employees with strong personal brands and communication skills can become your best ambassadors. With our best programs, you make it easy for your employees to share your company news and achievements with their personal networks.

As a result, not only your employees do feel well-informed about what’s going on in the company, they also feel engaged and proud to be part of the company!