Feature

Guidance Note Series-1


Amitava Basu

This is first of the 10 articles on the topic. Amitav Basu is an international expert on communication.

Good communication skills can advance your career and personal life to levels you never thought possible. If you feel your communication skills need to be developed but have fear about developing these skills, remove the misapprehension. Developing communication skills is much easier than developing skills for quantum physics or gymnastics. What is needed is awareness of one's abilities and limitations and determination to learn and improve. However, improving communication skills is a process and cannot be accomplished overnight. You need to proceed step by step. This is the first instalment of the Guidance Note Series on “Developing Communication Skills”.

Introduction

Communication is not mere speech or conversation. Behavioral style is a major element for effective communication. Non-verbal communication conveyed through action has a significant bearing on verbal communication. Disconnect between words and behavior impairs good communication. As a first step, start changing your negative behavioral traits and build upon the positives. Improved behavioral style would facilitate better communication. This week, we will discuss three important guidelines in this regard.

Eye Contact

Eye contact conveys interest and encourages the person with whom you are communicating to be interested in you in return. Shying away from eye contact reflects a trait of seclusion and indicates a feeling of insecurity and sufferance from psychological complex. Hence, when you are speaking or listening to, look into the eyes of the person you are in conversation with.

Body Language

In reality, body language tells people whether you are interested or bored in the conversation or you are in a hurry to wrap it up. For example, arms crossed and shoulders hunched suggest disinterest in conversation and unwillingness to communicate. On the other hand, an open stance with arms easily to your side tells anyone you are talking to that you are approachable and keen to hear what the other person has to say. Hence, during conversation, maintain good posture and approachable stance.

Audible Voice

Appropriate tone and volume ensure your listeners hear exactly what you are saying, and decreases room for misunderstanding and disinterest. Recall how you felt sitting at the backbench of the class when you could not make out what your teacher read; or, when in an auditorium you could not hear the speaker as the microphone stopped operating. Hence, when you are conversing, speak at a volume that you can be clearly heard.

Practice

Be it a chat with your friends in the college canteen, or gossiping with your family members on a lazy holiday afternoon, or a serious classroom discussion, never ignore to enhance your non-verbal communication. At the end of each day, spend five minutes musing on how much effort you had taken each time that you were communicating with others, when you were satisfied and when you thought something had gone wrong. Analyse yourself the successes and the failures. Next day, avoid the traits that you have identified as causes for failures, and repeat the styles and gestures that led to satisfactory communication. Continue this practice till you realise that no longer is conscious effort required to change your behavioral traits and the desired actions come to you naturally.

Diligently and routinely do the practice. Give yourself six to eight weeks time limit and wait for the result. Surely, you would communicate better.