Improve Your Communication Skills: Top 10 Ways to Communicate in 2023

Every person wants someone to understand him and, hence, he tries his best to use a method, which would describe the words that he is trying to say. But, in case, a guy misunderstands another one, there is a communication gap and they need to improve their communication proficiency.

The gap can be in any way – wrong facial expression, gesture, body language, wrong usage of words in the sentence, a wrong tool used in the communication process, etc. It could also be the other way around – Either of the particular persons needs to know the techniques that will help them in improving their communication skills.

Learn How to Create Compelling Content with The Best Content Writing Course

Introduction

Speaking of the ways to improve our communication skills, first, let us know what is meant by communication. In simple terms, communication means to get understood and to make others understand. However, there are multiple definitions, which can explain the term.

 In most of the definitions, the main aim is to make you understand that, correspondence happens between two persons, things and places, etc. Besides, the other aim is to emphasize the mutuality between the two objects, which may be a thing, person, or place, etc.

 Now, coming to the actual definition, as we said before, communication is the process of exchanging information, data, and ideas between one another. While, the broader definition states that it is the process of taking, providing, or transferring ideas, information, signals, or messages using appropriate mediums, permitting the individual persons or teams to convince, to receive information, to supply information, or to disclose emotions.

Learn about the important online modules with The Best Online Digital Marketing Course

Three key elements

Having learned the definition, now, let us look at the three elements, which are involved in the process of communication. Mainly, during any social intercourse, the three key factors, which are present in the process, are sender, message, and the recipient.

Initially, the sender encrypts the message, in a combination of words and non-verbal communication. Subsequently, the message is sent in form of a speech or written form.

Indeed, it is also true that, in some cases, the number of recipients could be above one and the complexity of communication indicates that all the recipients involved may get a message, which slightly differs from one another.

 During a face-to-face conversation, the functions of the sender and recipient are the same. Each of them will perform the same function, which will be repeated between the two. The duo would subtly chat with each other with or without eye contact and using somebody’s language.

Meanwhile, in written communication, the roles of the sender and recipient change, as the role sender is to write the message and send it to the recipient, without caring too much – if the recipient understands the written message or not. On the other hand, the role of the sender is to try and understand the message. Hence, in written communication, one must ensure that the correct language, spelling, and appropriate words are used while writing the message.

 If the sender fails to or forgets to include any one of the specified factors, the message would differ from what was intended to be written. Although the recipient has to decrypt every single word, the sender has written, and thus, the recipient must carefully read every single word, symbol, spelling, and language, which is written in the message.

Let us now proceed to our next motive, that is, to learn about the types of communication methods.

Channels

There are five types of communication channels

 Spoken or Verbal – In this type, generally, people use a face-to-face method or using a medium like a telephone, radio or television, etc. Few verbal communications are informal, like chatting or gossiping with a friend. On the other hand, other communications are more formal, like discussing a project with a colleague from the office. Irrespective of the forms, besides the words, it is also about the capacity and complexness of those words, how we construct those words together to make an all-embracing message, including the muttering (pitch, tone, cadence, etc.) used during the time of speaking. And during face-to-face communication, when the words become essential, they cannot be split from non-verbal communication.

Non-Verbal – This type of communication usually includes intangible ways like body language, gestures, our dressing or acting method (behavior), signals, emotions.

 For instance, if a person is discussing with his boss, regarding the cost-saving plan, he must pay attention to both their words and non-verbal communication. Even if the authority agrees with the person’s idea verbally, but their non-verbal communication (neglecting eye contact, yawning, etc.) might mean something else.

Written – In this medium, people generally sent their messages using letters, e-mails, social media, books, magazines, the Internet, and other mediums. Also remember, in this digital era, even if the sender dies, the message sent by that person will remain forever.

Often, poor writing skills lead to embarrassment for the sender, and confusion for the recipient. Hence, write a properly constructed sentence and ensure that the content, that is being written, is relevant and to the point.

Listening – The method of listening does not often pave its road towards the forms of communication. Active listening, though, and maybe is one of the major kinds of communication, because if we do not listen to the person, who is sitting in front of us, we are not listening to that person correctly, which is to say that, we are failing to communicate with that person. To properly communicate, means to evaluate what the speaker wants to say. To not listen, means, we are not communicating properly.

 Now that we know about the mediums of communication, we can move to the next topics – (a) Seven C’s of communication, (b) Importance of improving communication skills and, (c) tips and tricks to develop communication skills.

First, let us understand what are the seven C’s of communication. These seven 7C’s are quite essential to know before we go on to learn the process to enhance and improve your communication skills.

 Seven Cs of Communication

 In total, there are 7 C’s of efficient communication, which are appropriate for written and oral communication. These are mentioned below.

 1. Completeness 

The communication made must be complete. It should share all the data, information, and facts required by the recipient. The sender of the message must think about the receiver’s mindset and then convey the message accordingly. Efficient and complete communication has the following features:

• Always provides extra information, if needed. Erases doubts from the receiver’s mind.
• It Aids the receivers to make better decisions as they get all the relevant and vital information.
• Convinces the recipient.

2. Conciseness

Being concise means, getting to the point directly and saying the exact things, without having to explain further (explaining all the relevant things without forgetting the remaining C’s of communication. A brief message is crucial for efficient communication. Precise communication shows the following features:

• Saves time.
• Marks and emphasizes the main message without using surplus and unnecessary words.
• Conveys the message to the recipient in shorter and lesser words.
• Looks more interesting and understandable to the audience.
• Do not repeat twice.

 3. Consideration 

In communication, before sending the message, it is also important to think about the recipient’s mindset (recipient’s point of view, history, status, emotional intelligence, requirements, issues, etc). Hence, the sender should write the message with love, care, and affection, paying respect to the receiver. Considerate communication has the below-mentioned features:

• Puts stress on the “you” method
• Considers the recipient’s feelings and shows interest in him, enabling the receiver to display a positive reaction.
• Shows a positive outlook towards the receiver. Takes into account all possibilities and emphasizes motivational words like jovial, happy, thanks, committed, help, healthy, good, great, etc.

4. Clarity 

Clarity means, how clearly and easily, can the receiver understand the sender’s message. Clarity also indicates stressing a particular message or goal step by step than achieving it all in a single step. Clarified communication exhibits the following characteristics:

• Makes it easier and clearer for the receiver to understand the sender’s message.
• Clear and clear thoughts and ideas improve what the message means.
• A clear and clarified message uses exact, appropriate, and genuine words.

 5. Genuineness 

A genuine communication hints that are specific and clear rather than messy, chaotic, and general. Genuineness boosts confidence. Genuine communication displays the following features:

• Backed up with particular facts and statistics.
• Uses clear and exact words, which makes the message not seem like a duplicate and vague.
• Genuine messages do not get changed into a completely different meaning. Hence, a genuine message is never misunderstood.

6. Courtesy

A sender, while transferring his message to the receiver, should express his respects towards the recipient, and also show his politeness, excitement, responsiveness, and judgments. A courteous message shows the following features:

• Considers the point of view and from both perspectives and takes into account, especially, the receiver’s feelings.
• Courteous communication is motivating and concentrates on the receiver.
• Uses terms that are respectful towards the recipient.
• Is always impartial.

 7.Correctness

Correctness in communication means that the message is flawless – no signs of any grammatical error in the message. Correct communication has the below-mentioned features:

• Is always accurate, correct, and punctual.
• Correct communication always enhances morale.
• A Correct message leaves a big mark on the receivers/audiences.
• Evaluates the conciseness and accuracy of the information and data that are being used in the message.
• Uses suitable and the right language in the message.

 After learning about the seven C’s of communication, it can be said that if the sender and receiver are aware of those seven C’s, they would turn to be good communicators, if not great. Now, let us know why getting better at our communication skills are so vital in all spheres of our lives.

Other courses

Technical Writing Course

SEO Course

GST Course

Essentiality of improving communication skills

 As we have mentioned earlier that, communications is pivotal in all spheres of our life. Nonetheless, the forms of communication may differ in separate stages of life, but the significance stays as urgent as it was, during the point of origin. Thus, here are some information, which emphasizes the significance of improving communication skills and how it transforms as per the situation, profession, and context.

1. Significance in all aspects of life

If we learn the methods to enhance our communication skills, the world would become easier for us, as we would be able to understand people and they would also understand us. We will be more confident and positive. Rarely, people would misunderstand us.

• We can easily befriend any person and stay in touch with that guy.
• With good correspondence skills, maintaining good relations with friends, family, kids, and husband/wife becomes easier.
• We would be able to complete our daily duties at the recommended level.
• Completing our daily household work will occur at a recommended step.
• Persons with great correspondence skills have anxiety, tension, and stress, and boost our mental and physical health.

2. Importance in the life of students:

Most students experience a lot of stress, tension, and anxiety, as they do not know the benefits of improving communication skills. And, as result, that leads to poor performance in academics at schools and colleges. Thus, the need to develop communication skills is paramount for all students. Following are the reasons, why communication skills should be boosted in a student’s life.

• Helps students to communicate with their teachers and get the hang of a topic, which they are finding hard to understand
• It Aids a student to build a healthy relationship with his/her classmates.
• As a student develops his/her communication efficiency, the academic performance also begins to improve, as, with the progress of communication efficiency, it becomes easier to study and revise lessons and syllabuses.
• Advancing in communication ability, means, convincing parents to let us choose the streamline, which we like, becomes easier. In turn that will allow us to progress in our careers.
• With the improvement of communication capacity, our stress, tension, and anxiety levels drop drastically, and that helps us to be better students than others because we have become better at communicating.

3. Importance in the life of job seekers, employed persons

As a person moves ahead in his career, the first and foremost thing, which he/she would not want is miscommunicating at his/her workplace, as miscommunication would bring unwanted consequences. Hence, as a job seeker or as a professional, it is highly essential to have outstanding communication ability. The reasons are mentioned below.

• Persons, who have poor communication, are directly affected, as their performance in the workplace gets hampered.
• If we boost our leadership skills, our career would progress, in terms of our pay and post.
• Form a good and healthy relationship with our colleagues, bosses, and employees.
• Typically, sometimes it is necessary to grasp respect from our fellow workmates and bosses also.
• Enhanced and positive body language
• No or minimum stress in professional life is perfectly fine for us.

4. Important for all those, who are in the teaching profession and also for the ones, who are thinking about entering this profession

Teaching is considered to be, one of the most, responsible professions, as the teachers give their best, to impart knowledge among all the students, who, later on, go to be doctors, engineers, and scientists, who change the dynamics of a country. Hence, if we want to bestow life-changing knowledge amongst the students, we must brilliant in communicating. The teachers need to have outstanding communicators because:-

• Just like a student, a teacher also must have amazing communication with them, because a good relationship with the students helps them to be more assertive and expressive, which in turn, aids them to perform better in academics.
• Like we treat our children, with love, care, and affection, which force the students to respect the teacher automatically. Teachers, with excellent rapport, are paid huge respect from the students.
• Teachers, who have patience and immense understanding with their students, can help specially-abled students to easily grasp a subject, which they are finding difficult to understand.
• Like a child highly respects his/her parents, a teacher is also paid immense respect by their beloved students, as after their parents, it is the teachers, whom the students consider as a parent figure.

5. Importance in any business and for a company

In any business and company, communication skills are wanted the most. Since in a business or a firm, there are several departments, which need to functions with efficacy, which is why communication is the primary road. The reasons are explained in detail below.

• In any business or company, marketing, advertising and sales are the three departments, which go hand-in-hand, i.e. these three departments need to coordinate, cooperate to ensure that no products and services remain unsold, and that would lead to huge profit.
• A company or a business must maintain healthy and friendly communication with its customers so that in the long-run, they become loyal and be a client in the future.
• A company or a business with awesome communication skills will be able to sell its brand, which in turn would boost its reputation and worth.
• Organizations or businesses, with exceptional communication, are independent and do not spend much money behind professional communication creators. Their employees are so skilled and knowledgeable that other firms and businesses contact them on their own.

Having gained knowledge about the significance of developing communication skills in all aspects of our life, now, let us move to the last section of our topic, how to execute the same and give our lives a boost.

Ways to Improve your communication skills

We can build up communication efficacy, provided if we take the right approach. Acquiring communication ability is not something, which we can obtain easily in one day. It requires patience and practice to develop this life skill inside ourselves.

However, if we follow the below-mentioned ways, we can be excellent at communication and excel in our personal and professional lives. These suggestions are quite easy to understand and execute in our daily lives. If these instructions are followed, we would notice positive changes while we are communicating with a person.

Top 10 tips and tricks to enhance our communication skills

1.Boost Body Language

When it comes to maintaining body language, it means we would be dealing with non-verbal communication (checking our hand signals, postures, gestures, emotions, etc). Hence, we must maintain a posture, which would leave a positive impression on the person, we will be communicating with. Our stances should be positive, while our whole body must be straight, shoulders should be flexible and we should maintain eye contact, as these go a long way in making our body language optimistic and open (receptive)

2. Get to the point

The major reason for miscommunication is, instead of getting to the actual point, go round and round, wasting the other person’s time. And that pushes people away, as they think that the person, who is beating around the bush, speaks too much and blurts out irrelevant and meaningless words. Hence, we should always try to get to the point directly and politely. For that, we need to practice and practice, and there is no shortcut for that.

3. Listen

While listening to someone, for example, if we are listening to one of our friends, we must carefully listen to each word that he/she says. If we don’t listen to every word carefully, the speaker would get hurt internally and would never want to communicate with us again. However, if any doubt arises, hold it till the end, as none like being interrupted while telling something. Hence, it is important to hear each word spoken by our friend. In return, that friend would also listen to us patiently.

4. Read and learning

We also need to have great knowledge, to be great communicators, and for that, we need to read books a lot. Besides reading the books, which tells about the process to develop communication skills, we also need to read storybooks, newspaper, and motivational books. We can also enroll ourselves in other life skills like learning guitar, cooking lessons, gardening.

Learning other life skills will not only help us in developing other aspects of our lives but also enhances our communication. While we are enrolled in some courses, we would find like-minded people, who also desire the same qualities. During that time, we can find, if we can communicate with people, if not, we can work out where we are going wrong. Thus, we should enroll ourselves in life-skill courses, to boost communication skills.

5. Discuss

As mentioned before, communication always has been two-sided. A speaker should not always go on blabbering words, instead, he/she should let the listener ask questions, provided if any doubt arises. In case of doubts, the speaker can politely ask the listener to ask his/her query at the end, once the speaker is finished telling the story. In this way, a balance will be maintained and no one will get bored. 

6. Always be Respectful

Regardless of the communication type, always respect the participants in the communication. In case, the sender or the recipient is acting rude, we should still try to be good and respectful and continue the conversation. This may lead the rude person to think that his/her behavior was wrong. But if that does not work, we can go build the nature of being good, cool, calm, composed, and respectful.

7. Understanding our audience

Indeed, it can be said that there is a general way to communicate with people. However, if we want to evolve our communication, we must understand our audience. We must observe how they behave. For instance, while talking to a junior, who is asking for a piece of advice, we will talk politely and in a friendly way, as compared to, when we are advising a senior. In that scenario, we would talk politely and respectfully.

8. Reiterating key aspects

Despite being to the point, we still need to reiterate the key phrase of our communication, so that the listener does not forget it easily. Hence, begin and end the communication with the key aspect. Thus, the listener will easily memorize the all-important information throughout the entire life.

9. Asking for feedback

Communication would not be complete without feedback, as it the part, which helps us to focus and improve that area, where we need to sort out. As soon as the communication ends, we should ask our friends and contacts to provide feedback, so that we can get to know if they can understand what we are saying. Moreover, we have the liberty to request them to provide us with suggestions and advice on how to improve.

10. Daily practice the tips and tricks

Following the tips and tricks, for a few days, would not make us excellent communicators in a fortnight. We have to keep on practicing it day in and day out. If we keep on practicing, soon we would become great communicators.

Conclusion

In the end, we learned that, regardless of the lives that we are living in, good communication proficiency helps us to perform at our best. Hence, read the above tips and tricks, and follow them, so that you can improve your communication skills in all aspects of your lives.