Definition Of Communication Skills

Every individual needs to be well equipped with the tools to communicate effectively, whether it is on the personal front, or at work. In fact, according to the management gurus, being a good communicator is half the battle won. After all, if one speaks and listens well, then there is little or no scope for misunderstanding. Thus, keeping this fact in mind, the primary reasons for misunderstanding is due to inability to speak well, or listen effectively.

According to the various dictionaries the definition of communication skills is as follows :

Communication skills includes lip reading, finger-spelling, sign language; for interpersonal skills use, interpersonal relations.

Communication skills is the ability to use language (receptive) and express (expressive) information.

Communication skills is the set of skills that enables a person to convey information so that it is received and understood. Communication skills refer to the repertoire of behaviors that serve to convey information for the individual.

Communication skills is the ability an individual displays in consistently demonstrates the ability to effectively communicate with clients, colleagues, subordinates, and supervisors in professional manner and in the personal department.

Communication skills is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral language and written language. To understand the basic of communication skills, one needs to understand that communication is one of those words that is most hyped in contemporary culture. It includes a large number of experiences, actions and events; also a variety of happening and meanings, as well as technologies.

This, means that every platform for communicating is a communication event. This includes formal meeting, seminars, workshops, trade fairs, etc. Then there are the communication media such as radio, TV, newspapers, etc. The communication technologies include pagers, phones, etc. The communication professionals include advertisers, journalists, camera crew, etc.

English Speaking

The basic underlying factor for learning any language - written or spoken - is its grammar. Thus, any trainer involved in teaching English speaking prepares are module, wherein grammar is the larger chunk of learning. What follows here, is a typical English speaking learning module...

Basic Grammar: Under basic grammar the participant is taught the Parts of speech, which includes the following:
Noun - a word used as the name of person, place, animal, bird, object, etc.
Pronoun - is a word used instead of a noun.
Verb - is a word which expresses action or state of being.
Adjective - is a word used to add something to the meaning of a noun or pronoun.
Adverb - is a word used to add something to the meaning of a verb, an adjective
or another adverb.
Preposition - is a word used with a noun or a pronoun to show how the person or object denoted by the noun or pronoun stands in relation to something else.
Conjunction - is a word used to join words or sentences
Interjection - is a word that expresses some sudden feeling

Body Language

Body language is fascinating. People rarely recognize how much information they give off and how noticeable it is to the human eye. Even to the untrained human eye.

I can remember coming home from school as a child after having a tough day and seeing my mother. Instantly she would look at me and ask what is a matter. I know for a fact the majority of the time, I would answer “nothing.” However, her keen exploration would soon make me realize that I had a negative attitude.

In sales, it is vitally important to read body language. There are four major areas of body language you need to observe.

1. Eye Contact and Brow Movement
2. Facial Gestures
3. Torso and Arm Behavior
4. Leg Activity

Eye Contact and Brow Movement
Let’s look at Eye Contact and Brow Movement closely. No pun intended of course. While in a seminar a few weeks ago, a participant asked me a question regarding a point I made. After I answered her, I asked the clarifying question, “Does that answer your question?” She answered me with a stuttering “Yes,” however, as she answered me her brows were scrunched together demonstrating negative energy. She also glanced away several times rapidly. By noticing her gestures it was obvious she did not understand me.

1) When You're Talking - He may not agree with what you said, and may be doubting or suspecting you. He may have a bad impression on you and may not wish to continue talking with you. It may also depict arrogance or defensiveness.

2) When He's Talking - He may be hiding something from you, or may even be lying. A person engages in this protective posture when he feels anxious or nervous.

3) He may be protecting himself from verbal attack to maintain his composure.

4) He might just be feeling cold.

When reading body language, it is important to take note of other body language signals in order to more accurately single out other people's feelings or thoughts.

If you think this information is helpful, you'll be blown away by the incredible body language secrets revealed in Chapter 3 of "How To Be An Expert Persuader".

Getting Into Professional Speaking

If you have a love for public speaking and you can’t really find a career that fulfills that need without bogging you down with a variety of other responsibilities, perhaps it’s time to get into professional speaking. Professional speaking entails a lot of different unique professions which really concentrate on public speaking without many other duties. This career can be perfect for those who love to speak to others and can really drive home a message. While it might not seem like a marketable skill that is in great demand, it often surprises people to hear almost all companies are in desperate need of good professional speakers. With a little research and some luck anyone with good speaking abilities can get into the field of professional speaking.

A good place to begin is to list every single job that involves professional speaking, regardless of how interested you are in it. Simply having the list will prepare you for the next few steps and while you might not want to work speaking on behalf of coal miners, taking the job could get you necessary experience to move up to a position you truly want. In the corporate world rarely does anyone start in a position they love and this holds especially true for professional speaking. The next step is to take the list of careers and open a phone book or perform an Internet search to find every organization that is linked to the various subjects. Write them all down beneath their respective subjects and begin to rank each subject depending on how badly you would like to work there. Once that is done go through each subject and rank each respective organization based on your interest. This preparation is the first step to gaining access to the professional speaking world.

Assuming you have the proper skills and the proper experience to get a job the next step will be calling. If you don’t have the experience there is a handful of different ways to get it, either by speaking publicly at meetings or on behalf of volunteer groups. The work only has to be in front of a permanent organization which you can list as a reference on behalf of your speaking abilities and experience. With the proper experience necessary it is time to call every single organization on the list you compiled earlier. The trick however is not to start from the top. Call the lowest organization in the lowest ranked group first and work your way up to the highest rank organization in the highest ranked group. This will give you time to refine how you interact with each organization and your pitch and it will drive down nerves and boost confidence. Starting with the lowest of the low will allow all the mistakes to occur in the pitch for the job you value least, which in turn keeps the pitches for your most valuable jobs error free and hopefully catapult you into the professional speaking business.

Professional speaking is not a hard career to get into. The fact is a lot of companies are constantly looking for great speakers to talk to not only their employees but to the general public on their behalf. In conjunction with a high demand, there are hundreds of careers that involve professional speaking. Whether it’s lobbying or preaching for a church they all involve a great deal of professional speaking. Being determined and organized is the only key to becoming a professional speaker. Ditch the jobs that don’t fulfill your life and turn towards a life of professional speaking if that is what would make you happy. In the end the only thing to lose is a little bit of time and there are more things to gain than is even possible to list.

Presentation Skills

The following is a summary of presentation skills hints and tips for managers and others. For best effect they should be used in conjunction with a good quality presentation or public speaking training course.

Preparation
Practise

Practise on a colleague or friend. Think about who your audience is and what you want them to get out of an effective presentation. Think about content and style. If you video yourself get someone else to evaluate your performance; you will find it very difficult to be objective about yourself. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

For living in a society so social, the vast majority of our population seems to be quite the opposite when they get in front of even the most modest audiences. Low self-esteem and the proper experiences have seemingly crippled many of our current generations presentation skills. Some were never given the chance to practice, while others had poor experiences in the past due to being uninformed on how to properly give a presentation. Bad experiences live with us for a long time and it can be incredibly difficult to outgrow them and move on, however the best way to shut out those seemingly uncontrollable fears of embarrassment, is to be properly equipped with knowledge of good presentation skills and believing that you have what it takes to wow that audience.

All too often, people sit dumbfounded in front of audiences mumbling, looking at the ground and just generally trying to live through what can feel like a horrible experience. The real secret is to remember the audience doesn’t see it that way. They don’t judge you or even give more thought to you as a person than you would a TV personality. The personal aspect of giving a presentation is transparent and as long as you keep talking, the audience will be focused on what you’re saying and not you personally. A key presentation skill is fear control. It can be a difficult skill to master and even the best presenters get nervous, the trick is to not panic and not let it rattle you. Fear is a good motivator, take the intense emotions it causes and focus that into a calm concentration. If necessary, take a short pause to calmly collect yourself and continue on.

If the unbearable feeling of failure isn’t tugging at your heart and you’re still finding your presentations going horribly awry, then it’s time to learn organizational skills. There are a number of different key presentation skills and they all focus on different aspects of the presentation. Some involve the emotional side such as fear and anxiety, which can often times be conquered by relating to your audience on a personal level, or using a number of different calming techniques. The other sector that has numerous different important presentation skills is the presentation itself. Being able to deliver a good presentation is only half the battle; if the presentation is unorganized or poorly written then no amount of self-confidence can salvage it. Preparing properly days ahead of the presentation is one of the many great presentation skills. Giving yourself days to practice the presentation will help you run through the entire process much smoother due to partial memorization. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

Personality Development

Personality is generally defined as the deeply ingrained and relatively enduring patterns of thought, feeling and behavior. In fact, when one refers to personality, it generally implies to all what is unique about an individual, the characteristics that makes one stand out in a crowd.

Basically, according to experts through the ages, a person's personality is developed through the intermingling of hereditary and environmental factors. As a child grows, hereditary tends to play a smaller role, and the environment with the experiences thrown in contributes to the continuous process of personality development. While classes and training programs can help one grow and develop each day, yet one can actually climb the personality ladder by being aware of the self.

In order to develop a healthy and popular personality one should delve deeper and deeper into positive thinking. One needs to understand that problems are a part and parcel of life; but it is the way in which one deals with the problems that determines whether one is going from strength to strength; or weakness to weakness.

Given here are some affirmations that will help one develop a positive personality. These can be used as mantras on a daily basis...

Call Center Training

The newest industry that seems to have provided employment to a large number of youth in the various cities is the call center industry, better known as the BPO industry. In fact, across the various levels, a company requires at least five thousand staff. This will would the be the smallest scale call center. The numbers increase with the largeness of the parents company. Today, there are call centers spread across the various cities of the country, with the promise of more companies coming to Indian shores.

One of the basic requirements for a call executive is effective communication skills, more so in the area of attending calls. Thus, while employing executives each company puts their new incumbents through rigorous training in the process, as well as in a subject known as voice and accent.

Some call centers demand specific accent training such as British, Australian or then American. Along with training the executives in these specific accents - speaking and understanding, they are also taught the cultures of these nations, so that they are more sensitive to the international locals while making or receiving calls.

Typically call center training comprises of voice and accent training, team building activities, other culture specific knowledge provision. Thus, when designing a training program for a call center, the trainer puts together program consisting of the following modules:

Broad-based the three primary modules are:

I. Accent Comprehension
II. Soft Skills
III. Culture specific knowledge

Accent comprehension consists of the followings sub-modules:
Phonetics:
Vowel sounds
Tense vowel sounds
Lax vowel sounds
Vowel shifts
Consonant sounds
Word list
Pronunciations
Intonation
Inflection
Syllable stress

Soft Skills consists of the following sub-modules:
Customer Service
Call opening
Mind you P's and Q's
Call closing
Hold and transfer procedure
Question tags
Why questions
Use of open ended questions
Use of closed questions
Listening Skills
Paraphrasing
Empathy

Culture:
History
Geography
Food and entertainment
Values and beliefs
Sports and adventure
States (cities) and capitals
Names - males and females
Phrases and idioms; jargons

Public Speaking

Speaking in public tends to become a rather stressful task for many. In fact, even the best of speakers tend to go through those few moments of anxiety and stage fright just before getting onto the stage or podium to address their audience. One of the main reasons can be language, which for instance could be lack of English speaking words. But then how to improve English speaking can be looked at, as a different subject, all together.

Yet, before going any further, one tip for improving English skills, one can practice grammar and vocabulary exercises, as often as possible. Also reading loudly in front of a mirror helps one improve their language skills. Exposure to the language is also important, which includes reading English newspapers and books, listening to English music and watching English movies.

Coming back to public speaking... here are 9 tips to speak successfully in a public situation...

Control stage fright
Select the subject well
Gather all ideas and information
Organize the material
Plan the beginning of the speech
Plan the body of the speech
Plan the conclusion of the speech
Practice the speech
Bring in humor, spontaneously

Here are the 6-key details to ensure smooth speaking at a public event, of any magnitude...

Check all arrangements
Be comfortable in venue
Know how to use the microphone
Conduct a microphone check before the function begins
Be ready to deal with distractions
Be prepared to answer questions, politely avoid irrelevant questions

Spoken English

In order to be able to learn any language whether spoken or written, one needs at least 60 hours to 72 hours teaching-learning time. This is the principle followed by every language trainer. Where spoken English is concerned, one needs to undergo an entire language learning course. This course is designed in such a way that one understands the essentials of grammar, sentence construction and vocabulary.

Some trainers go a step ahead and add modules for accent neutralization, so that the student can speak English without the mother tongue effect. This is important, as people in India have strong mother tongue effect where their accent is concerned, because of which it becomes all the more difficult to understand them when they speak basic, survival English.

Another additional module is that of written English. However, written English is taught in detail in advanced English language classes. In the basic class the student is taught basic written English, which will help them correspond basic written communication messages.

Given here is a typical spoken English training program:

Grammar:
Parts of Speech
Noun
Pronoun
Adjectives
Verbs
Adverbs
Conjunctions
Prepositions
Interjection
Articles
Tenses
Verb-Tense Consistency
Sentence Structure
Punctuation

Vocabulary:
Basic English Keywords
Vocabulary Builder
Abbreviations
Practical Vocabulary
Weather Vocabulary
Numbers
Time
The World
Phrasal Verb Vocabulary

Pronunciation:
Commonly Mispronounced Words
Sentence Stress
Pause Management

Conversation Skill:
Conversation as communication
Assertive/Aggressive/Submissive Communication
Non-verbal Communication Skill

Types Of Communication Skills

Intra-personal communication skills : This implies individual reflection, contemplation and meditation. One example of this is transcendental mediation. According to the experts this type of communication encompasses communicating with the divine and with spirits in the form of prayers and rites and rituals.

Interpersonal communication skills : This is direct, face-to-face communication that occurs between two persons. It is essentially a dialogue or a conversation between two or more people.

It is personal, direct, as well as intimate and permits maximum interaction through words and gestures. Interpersonal communications maybe:

Focused Interactions : This primarily results from an actual encounter between two persons. This implies that the two persons involved are completely aware of the communication happening between them.

Unfocused interactions : This occurs when one simply observes or listens to persons with whom one is not conversing. This usually occurs at stations and bus stops, as well as on the street, at restaurants, etc.

Non verbal communication skills : This includes aspects such as body language, gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, etc., which also become a part of the communicating process; as well as the written and typed modes of communications.

Improve Your Communication Skills

Regardless of the size of business you are in – whether a large corporation, a small company, or even a home-based business – effective communication skills are essential for success.

The articles in this section of Mind Tools help you to understand how to communicate your message in the best possible way. After completing this section, you should have a better understanding of how to communicate effectively – to individuals and groups, and using spoken, written and electronic communication.

These articles are further supported by the additional career development resources found elsewhere on the Mind Tools web site.

Take a look around this section of Mind Tools, and then visit these other sections, all researched and written by the Mind Tools team, who share a strong commitment to helping you achieve lifelong success and happiness in your career.