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The worst feeling when in a social gathering you ask? When you speak but no one listens. But, with the essential 3 keys to good communication, healthy and effective communication is the way to a successful life and career.
The aim is to be heard with your communicative skills and your views get acknowledged as well.
Through effective communication, you can do much more than just exchange information. Effective communication stands for the ability to realize the intentions and the emotions behind certain information that has been.
3 Keys to Good Communication
For an effective way to develop good communication with your peers, you need to be very clear about your ideas. It is essential to make sure that you are not only heard clearly but are also well understood.
Also, being a good listener is important to develop strong communication.
This makes it essential for us to learn some essential skills to communicate clearly and effectively. With effective communication, any confusion can be avoided and you can improve your work effectively.
Now, there are several ways that you improve your communication skills by improving clarity, coherence, and conciseness between all parties. Here are 3 keys to good communication that you must keep in mind:
One of the most important skills that people often overlook is listening. Therefore, listening is an active communication skill that one must have for a fruitful outcome. With active listening abilities, understanding is established between both parties.
This helps in creating the foundation of a firm interpersonal relationship. Moreover, it also creates a ground for you to know the person in front of you. Read on to know more!
What are the 3 Keys to Good Communication?
Good communication is established only when some important factors are kept in mind. The most important factors are as follows:
1. Listening Skills Make Communication Strong
The skill of listening plays an essential role in understanding how a person wants to convey their message. Thus, you need to ensure the speaker that you are invested in the conversation.
There are 5 basic techniques through which the speaker achieves explanation, and they are:
- The listener creates a compact idea of the facts and the feeling that has been conveyed to him.
- The listener breaks down the actual meaning of the speaker’s message into distinct words.
- The listener sorts the message into different ideas, feelings, or thoughts.
- The listener requests more information from the speaker for a better understanding.
- The speaker is asked to point out an example or illustrate a certain scenario. This illustration is related to the information given to the listener.
Therefore, it is essential that both parties can attain a good understanding and can convey their messages. You should be open-minded when asking questions to avoid any confusion or mix-up.
It only paves the way for good communication; it also makes the speaker feel listened to. This helps create an environment of empathy and aids better understanding.
Thus, it is always important to pay close attention to what the speaker is saying while maintaining eye contact. Paying close attention avoids confusion or misconception and establishes effective communication.
More importantly, good listening skills can make the person talking feel included and heard. These minute factors are essential in ensuring a smooth flow of communication without any undesired disruptions.
2. Being Precise and Clear is Important
Making a clear and precise statement is essential while developing a communicative relationship. Therefore, as per the 3 keys to good communication, it is best to maintain short sentences which are to the point.
This is necessary as you would want to emphasize a key idea rather than ponder unrelated topics. You should wait and check if the listener or the concerned has understood you.
- Only if they have understood can you then move on to the next trail of words. It is extremely necessary clear about your words and idea while communicating with someone. If you are not clear about what you want to convey, it can lead to a lot of confusion. This would, in turn, lead to a bad communicative relationship.
- Thus to follow the 3 keys to good communication, state your ideas and thoughts in a very clear and simple way. This effectively increases your chance of being understood and having good communication. Although following all these measures does not ensure that the listener has been able to follow you.
Therefore, you should also follow the listener’s facial expression along with their body language. This helps to ensure that they are following your words and are on the same page as you are.
If they do not seem to follow or feel confused under any scenario, ensure to state and explain your instructions again. It would be preferable to be done in a language that would be easier for them to understand.
Speaking in their language essentially means using the words that they would understand and pay attention to. To gain effective communication skills, it is essential to make sure that you are heard and understood.
To conduct effective communication in your professional or business life, you must have the right skills, knowledge, and experience.
The key idea behind a dynamic and sophisticated communication process is powered by applying both art and science efficiently. Following the 3 keys to good communication enables you to be a successful leader.
3. Making Sure that you are Heard and Understood
It is through effective communication that you can evolve to be a great leader. And through effective leadership, you efficiently accomplish all your goals every single day.
Therefore, you need to ensure that you are a good communicator and make yourself very clearly understood. This would enable you to be a good leader by following the 3 keys to good communication.
This calls for effective measures to be taken to ensure that your messages and instructions are clear. It takes a considerable amount of time for a new message or an idea to be internalized by the targeted listener.
Only when that happens are they able to remember the message properly? Therefore being the leader, you need to chalk out an effective regime for communication.
This regime should aim to consistently communicate the business’s goals and aims at regular intervals until they are fulfilled. This keeps your subordinates with a progressive mind toward the goals and keeps them updated on where they might lag.
Practicing effective communication also ensures that the concerned audience is well aware of the agendas. It also gives them a good understanding of their roles and their duties.
Among the 3 keys to good communication, the idea of leadership is firmly dominated by communication clarity. It is essential to maintain the habit of making your ideas clear.
Once you have ensured, it is necessary to confirm if the listener has understood them or not. Obtaining complete mutual understanding with the respective person is of utmost importance.
A major problem that persists while communicating is that often the listeners fail to understand the meaning of your message. If you do not follow up to clarify the idea to them, they will not pay attention to your message.
Furthermore, they may not even ask for further explanation later on. This would eventually lead to multiple issues and depicts a sign of weakness within the work culture.
Such poor communication can cause face loss and eventually affect the goals. Some effective ways to avoid such a scenario are as follows:
- Summarizing your point: This is an effective way of ensuring that the idea remains crisp and clear. Especially while communicating, summarizing the major points of the idea makes understanding a lot simpler.
- Asking For Confirmation: Follow a simple yet effective process. This process only calls for you to ensure that your subjects have understood the idea well. A written summary of the meeting or the message can be an efficient way to ensure the same. Thus, good communication needs to make sure that all your points are made clear.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is effective communication a soft skill?
Soft skills are capabilities that have to do with how you engage and relate to others. Communication, cooperation, and other interpersonal abilities are examples of commonly mentioned soft skills.
2. Is effective communication a hard skill?
Hard skills include the ones that can only be learned by practical training, schooling or practice, hence, this does not include communication.
3. Why is communication a skill?
Effective communication aids in our understanding of others and our environment. It aids in overcoming differences, fostering mutual respect and trust, and establishing optimal conditions for exchanging creative ideas at the workplace and resolving issues.
Closing Thoughts
Simple yet effective, the 3 keys to good communication are often forgotten in the haste of moving over on. Unless these keys are followed effectively, good communication cannot be done. This is also a reason why paying close attention to the fundamentals of communication is very important.
Effective communication cannot be exercised until the message you have delivered is not heard or seen by the targeted people. Once you have pitched your message to them, they must understand it clearly and believe in the message.
They also need to realize that you hold to the message and eventually internalize it to begin using it regularly.
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Last Updated on by Sathi Chakraborty, MSc Biology
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