How to Improve Effective Communication 10 Practical Tips

The effective communication personal, in organizations and companies is very important to achieve goals and develop personal relationships- The most complex challenges in life, such as significant social relationships (mother / father-children, family, partner, work, etc.) or advancement in your professional career require the correct management of communication.

Be it oral as well as written, communication is not a simple matter. The good news is that the ability to communicate can be learned. By following these guidelines, you will learn to improve effective communication and you will soon notice changes in the level of acceptance, trust and professional development..

10 Steps to Developing Effective Communication

1-Don't take anything for granted

Many people, especially in the professional field, are convinced of their communicative superiority, holding beliefs such as:

"I am a good communicator ... everyone else has the problem".

"My way of communicating is not the problem, it is others who do not know how to listen".

Pointing out the mistakes of others as justification for our problems is the number one pastime of individualistic societies, a distinction proposed by the scientist Miller in 1984¹.

This communicational effect of which I speak is an attribution effect: interpretation or explanation that is made about the causes, motives and reasons of some event (including beliefs, attitudes and behaviors) either in others or in the individual who makes it.

The scientist Kelley proposed that if human beings acted as scientists, we could only incur an attribution of this type if in the concrete situation proposed^two:

• Whenever we are with that person, the same thing happens to us.
• That person has the same problem with more people.

However, due to cultural and learning reasons, we are neither scientific nor objective when we make attribution judgments..

Returning to the example, the simplest and fastest way is to blame the other for a certain problem, why?

• Confirmatory trend bias: we incur this attributional bias if we do not seek information that is beyond our personal perception or if we superimpose our judgment on those of others.

That is, if we act like humans rather than scientists, we probably take the other person's fault for granted even though only Kelley's first observation is true..

The greatest enemy of learning and personal development is our way of thinking. If we consider that we are perfect and others are bad communicators, we will never ask ourselves what we can improve.

The truth is that all of us have strengths and weaknesses in the different aspects of interpersonal communication. There is not a single person on the planet who does not need to work to improve their communication since it is a job for life, we must never let our guard down.

2-Get to know yourself

Before deciding to make changes in the way you communicate, you should know what your strengths are to try to maintain them and learn from them or what are your weaknesses, which you should work on..

Take some time to review the last communicative encounters you have had. Ask yourself questions and try to describe your communication style. Some of the questions that you could ask yourself in each communicative scene that you remember are the following:

• How have I communicated (behaviors, attitudes, type of arguments used, etc.)?
• What were the consequences for having communicated in this way?
• Which communication tools of those used have been more positive and which ones have been more negative??
• What tools could you use widely?
• And, among the negatives, how could I avoid incurring them?

3-Keep a global vision

Imagine that you are in a group context of work or study. Probably the most important thing for you and for the group is the task. However, this is a double-edged sword.

When there is a task to be done, we tend to focus on it and neglect to deal with people. When this is the case, try to keep a global vision of what is happening.

Since most job performance errors are due to poor communication, try to be the objective voice of the group. In addition, on many occasions you will be involved in group discussions. If you have been an observer, you will know how to identify the cause of the conflict in order to solve it.

4-Listen before you speak

Closely related to the previous point we find this phenomenon. Surely you will be able to identify several communicational situations in your life in which you have found yourself defending your position tooth and nail.

The more important the topic to be discussed in a conversation is for us, the more we will try to get our opinion taken into consideration..

This can lead us not to listen and monopolize the speech, or even to confront ourselves with others due to the prevalence of our point of view. However, on many occasions your point of view and that of others is not as opposite as it may seem at first..

Therefore, the best strategy to avoid finding ourselves in uncomfortable situations that make us remember the conversation as a failure, is to listen before speaking and try to provide short but highly informative arguments in an assertive way..

5-Work assertiveness

As a middle point between passivity and aggressiveness in our communicational discourse, we find assertiveness. This term, although coming from Latin (affirmation of the certainty of a thing), was described for the first time in detail by Wolpe and Lazarus in 1958.

Assertiveness consists of asserting ourselves and respecting ourselves, saying what we think and say without fear of retaliation, yes, always doing it with elegance and from a position of maximum respect.

What should i do to be assertive?

• Always tell the truth, whether it is positive or negative for your interlocutor, without treating him with contempt or sending hurtful messages. Assertiveness implies elegance and respect for others.
• Get your message across clearly, concisely, quickly and forcefully. Assertive communication does not understand hesitation. When it comes to effective communication, less is always more.
• Talk about what you know, never base yourself on mere speculation or perceptions. Why? If your credibility as a source of information is diminished, it is very likely that your interlocutor will take the opportunity to "eat you" with his arguments, entering a circle of aggressive-defensive communication.
• Invite dialogue, ask questions and ask for participation.
• Listen actively to your interlocutor. Active listening is a predominantly non-verbal communicative dimension³. Your facial expression and your confirming gestures will indicate your opinion to your interlocutor without the need to speak. This is a great way to save words and express yourself while listening. In addition, you will incite greater communication motivation and interest in you as a person with whom to share points of view.

6-have a positive attitude

Every communicative act between human beings contains these two components.

Attitudes derive from our beliefs, feelings, and intentions. The psychologist Allport defined them as mental and neurological dispositions that are organized from experience that exerts a directing or dynamic influence on the individual's reactions to all objects and to all the situations that correspond to them..

If we analyze this definition, we see that in a communicative act our attitudes are as important as our behavior. In each communicative exchange, our attitudes will always be present, providing information to our interlocutor..

When I talk about attitudes, I mean both those that we have towards ourselves and those that we take towards the other person, and both types of attitudes are of the utmost importance.

If your attitude towards yourself is negative (low self-regard), this will be reflected in your way of communicating, making the task much more difficult..

In what way? A person who does not value himself and wants enough will cause the same effect in his interlocutor and his credibility will be diminished.

On the contrary, if you maintain positive attitudes towards yourself, you will quickly see that others will have a greater interest in listening to your opinion and accepting your arguments..

7-Adapt to your interlocutor

Everything communicates: you, your interlocutor, the subject, the moment, the place and the way.

Depending on what the conversation should be, the context should be adapted. Thus, a work conversation is not the same as a conversation with friends or family..

Anyway, the most important aspect is the person you are communicating with. In this direction, Einstein said: "You don't understand something unless you are able to explain it to your grandmother.".

8-Empathy: What is my interlocutor thinking?

You probably ask yourself this question very often when you have a conversation. If so, very good. Empathy is the ability to perceive the thoughts, feelings, emotions and intentions of another person.

The better you know a person, the better you can empathize with them, and the more you get used to interpreting what the other person might be feeling or thinking, the better your ability will be..

If your interlocutor feels that you empathize with him, he will feel more interested and motivated by your conversation. This is why empathy is a powerful communication tool. By taking an interest in others, you will get interest.

What can I do to be empathetic in conversation?

• Ask him if your impressions are correct. During the conversation, try to guess what the other person might be thinking or feeling. When you have an approximate idea, ask indirectly using expressions such as “It seems that…. I'm right?" or "I get the impression that ...". Based on the answer you get, you will get clues to interpret the signals of that specific person.
• Pay attention to the look of your interlocutor: It is not in vain that it is said that the eyes are the mirror of the soul. The look of a person will tell you how they feel.
• Emotional reciprocity: If what you want is for the person you are talking to express their emotions, start by doing the same. It is very likely that this way the other person adapts to your level of expression.

Closely related to empathy is the concept of ethical communication. This refers to taking into consideration the well-being of the person with whom you interact, demonstrating your sensitivity to their feelings and beliefs..

If a person feels understood, they will be more open to listening to you and expressing what they really feel.

9-Observation and active listening

When we communicate, all of our senses can give us highly valuable information. Tending to use the sense of hearing as a priority, we receive only 45% of the total information transmitted by our interlocutor: tone of voice, volume, rhythm and content.

The other 55% of communicative information can be perceived through the sense of sight³ But, for this, we must train and get used to grasping these keys: expressions, gestures, position, respiratory rate, distance, etc..

When we listen to our interlocutor, we must get used to doing it actively, that is, extracting the maximum information from the stimuli captured: thinking, making associations and interpretations, etc. In addition, a good tool to motivate you by accompanying your speech is to make small nods using words or gestures.

10-Beware of communicative alterations

One of the best ways to learn to communicate effectively is to fixate and remedy our mistakes. There are certain communicative alterations that occur with high frequency in all communicative exchange:

• Distortion: consists of partially or subjectively interpreting the information transmitted by our interlocutor. When we listen, we must position ourselves in the frame of reference of the person speaking and try to isolate our own, based on our experiences and learnings. Every person is a world.
• Omission: since human attentional capacity is limited, we normally lose part of the information transmitted by our interlocutor. This can become frustrating and demotivating to the person you are talking to. Try to modulate your attention to make sure you remember important information and filter out less relevant information. In order to know what is important, we must pay attention to the non-verbal language of our interlocutor, which will accentuate that with a greater emotional content.
• Generalization: this alteration, contrary to the previous ones, refers to your communicative messages in response to those of your interlocutor. We tend to generalize a specific situation to "always, never, all, nothing, etc". Try to avoid using these expressions by generalizing specific cases that the person you are talking to transmits to you. Why? This will cause a feeling of misunderstanding in your interlocutor that will translate into rejection and frustration towards you.

And what do you do to establish effective communication with others? Your experience will help us to have other opinions and readers. Thanks!

References

1. Miller, J.G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 961-978.
2. Kelley, H.H. (1971). Attribution in social interaction. New York: General Learning Press.
3. Mehrabian, Albert (1969): “
   Some referents and measures of nonverbal behavior ”. Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, 1, 203-207.
4. Xlibris Corporation. (2008). Effective Communication Skills: The Foundations for Change.
5. Chambers, H.E. (2001). Effective Communication Skills for Scientific and Technical Professionals. Basic Books.