Effective Communication Skill — God Gifted or Can be Learned?

We often mix a person’s level of communication skill on whether s/he is extrovert or introvert. Extroverts are long being regarded as a better communicator. So, do you think since you could talk fast and loud make you a much better communicator and dealing with people? Communication is not that simple.

Often, the opposite is true. Many people who are talkative are poor communicators, often fails to deliver and understand the key message. Moreover, the ability of transmitting lot of words at a stretch makes sales and marketing professionals excellent at getting the message understood by others, most of them have this notion in their mind. However, in most cases, those people are seen as boring or obnoxious, or both.

Let me be clear on this: the ability to talk is not same as capability to communicate. Firstly, communication skill refers to the gift of both effectively sending and to receiving a message. Secondly, make an impact on the thoughts, feelings and actions of someone. However, most people who consider themselves as an effective communicator do not meet these criteria.

Thus, don’t become complacent if you could mix with people easily and are talkative. Talking to one or more persons is only the basic requirement of becoming an effective communicator; it takes a lot more to convey what you intend to and understanding what others are willing to communicate with words as well as through non verbal cue.

Another notion on effective communication is, it’s a skill which people born with. And it’s a skill either you have or do not have. If you’re not extroverted, gregarious and outgoing, you don’t have what it takes to be a good communicator. Nevertheless, communication is a skill that you could learn by practice. If you are willing to work on it, quality of every part of your life will be significantly improved.

Effective communication requires both sender and receiver to transmit as well as receive message without any distortion in the process. If you found it complex, probably it is. 99 percent of all the difficulties between human beings, and within organizations, are caused by breakdowns in the communication process. Either the senders do not say what they mean clearly enough, or the receivers do not receive the message in the form in which it was intended.

According to Albert Mehrabian, a communications specialist, there are three elements in any direct, face-to-face communication: words, tone of voice and body language. You’ve probably heard that words account for only 7 percent of the message, tone of voice accounts for 38 percent of the message, and body language accounts for fully 55 percent of the message. For an effective communication to take place, all three parts of the message must be congruent. If there is any inconsistency, the receiver will be confused and will tend to accept the predominant form of communication rather than simply the literal meaning of the words.

Additionally, there are times when you make people offended with words which supposed to be inoffensive. If you dig down and try to understand the reason, you will be surprised to get to know that your tone of voice was the issue.

At the same time, body language plays a key role in how people perceive us. That means, your posture, gesture and eye movement, relative to the person with whom you’re communicating, have tremendous effect on the message being received.

For example, you can dramatically increase the effect of your communications by leaning toward the person you’re speaking with. If you’re sitting down, this is easy. If you’re standing up, you can accomplish the same effect by shifting your weight forward onto the balls of your feet and leaning slightly toward the person you’re talking to. When you make direct eye and face contact with the person, combined with focused attention, you double the impact of what you’re saying.

Therefore, communication skill can also be learned through proper practice. The three ingredients of face to face communication; words, tone of voice and body language have profound impact on effective communication. The better you can coordinate all three of those ingredients, the more impact your message will have, and the greater will be the likelihood that a person will both understand it and react the way you want him to.

Abdul Mukaddes is a Marketer, Brand Strategist and Growth Hacker having 9 years of working experience in corporate, tech and startup companies. I would like to hear from you about how you think about this article. Let’s discuss! You can also reach me in abdulmukaddes@gmail.com

Originally published at medium.com on March 7, 2018.