Good Communication Skills: A better approach

Before you begin to realize how good communication skills can help you improve your life, Lets take a moment to realize what is the meaning of good communication. When two people meet and exchange views and one is able to understand and respond to the other in a easy and meaningful way, thats is a good indication of a Conversation.

If that conversation leads the two people to say " lets do it again sometime" thats a hint of a great conversation. Before you watch the short video below and experince an example of a mismatched communication try and recall at least one situation in your past where you had a misunderstanding due to lack of good communication skills

Didi you enjoy that Short comedy?What is your take away lesson from watching that conversation?Belive it or not we see a variation of this conversation many times in our life. For example : Two people ( Especially couples) quarelling with each other over somethign very petty. In most cases they cant even define what they are quarelling about. It starts with something very simple like " why cant you put the lid down" and within amatter of mitues will raise to you " your dad is an imbecile".

In a business setting it could start with " Why can't you bring me the reports on time " and quickly escalate to " You are always late to work" connecting the low to the high by fuzzy and sometimes absolutely stupid logic.

Most often the cuase of such trouble is because

We have learnt to " Talk" to people rather than "converse" with people

Conversing is a skill and it needs to be learnt just like any other skill. It is probabaly one of the earliest skills to develop and most people stick with whatever they learnt as a child and never go further in mastering communication skills. want a quick example? Do you know anyone who screams at their spouse? chances are their parents used to scream at each other and they just picked it up as an acceptable way of communicating.

 

Another example: Most con artists are smooth talkers. if you can get them to open up, they may reveal that early in their life they had atleast one parent or another significant adult who was extrememly good in convincing people. Does this mean if your parents were bad communicators you are destined to follow their roles? Absolutely not!. If you are willing to learn, you can always delop your communication skills and reap its magnificient benefits.

When you consciously exercise your communication skills, just like exercising your brain, it will be powerful and effective.

Another example of a "Bad lesson in Good communication" we are taught that speaking fast is sign of a Sharp Person. Speed is being given priority over the ability to think critically and explore. You need speed when runing away from danger but it takes intellect to think your way Out of it.

Good Communication rule that you can start using today:

STOP for a moment. Every time you communicate, STOP for a few seconds and reflect on......What  you are about to communicate?

There is no other magic bullet as powerful as this one to master good communication skills. It is so simple that you may be tempted to ignore it.

We all have an urge to be better than we are. That urge to better yourself may be the reason you are reading this page right now.  You may have attended many programs and seminars investing a lot of time and money to improve your life.And if you are like me, you may have even felt the sting of the dissappointment after atteneding those high priced seminars.

 

There are many fly by night operators in the world of Self Help. So you have to literally Help your self. When ever you see an ad for " Instant Confindece", Run Away as fast as you can. True, there are some tips and techniques which can make a dramatic difference in the way you speak or the way you achieve your goals and aspirations in life. But if the promises sound too good to be true, it is probably too good to be true.

Be wary of the Gurus who teach from behind an oak desk, with many alphabets next to their name like, Phd, D Lit, D Psy blah blah blah.... These intellectual snobs have no idea  how things work in a real world and are better left to experiment with their lab rats.And be specially careful t avoid the Latenight ads on TV promising you the star. If their product worked, they wouldnt be doing ads on latenight TV :-)

The tips and techniques presented here come out from a huge pool of practical experience. You can easily make the most of it by using these principles in real life, Right Now.... If you are still in doubt about the importance of communication skills, read on.

Years ago when I was a " Moron" when communicating with people, I had the opportunity to work under a mentor who helped me see through some of the most difficult times of my life. We used to venture out to unfamiliar cities and interact with total strangers. I had to approach a stranger and then mutter something unintelligible and just walk back. My poor victims sometimes just frooze, not knowing what to do and sometimes, they got upset or angry. Each person had a different type of reaction. Next,I had to choose a good looking woman as my " subject" and approach her with some of the silliest lines like "will it rain today?"

In the beginning, I was too scared to do any of this because I was an introvert and prefered to stay indoors most of the time. But I did have a buring desire to develop good communication skills and that desire was far stronger than my fears. By the end of third week, I could approach any woman and speak with her, no practice, no openers and no hesitation what so ever. Best of  all their Looks did not affect me at all. I could be speaking to a butt ugly or the most beautiful woman, I had no fear of having that conversation.

 

At one point of time I became so good that I could approach a total stranger in the bus stop and engage her in such deep conversation that she would forget to board the bus...

 How did I change from a fly on the wall to a refined conversationalist? I did a lot of mistakes and I started improvising .Talking to woman may not be an ultimate test of one's ability to hold a conversation but for a sixteen year old, having that confidence to converse with anyone he liked, held  a lot of importance and best of all, the same confidence permeates into other areas of life as well. Good communication is all about making mistakes just once and learning from them and improvising.

One You master the art of holding someone's attention, You can use the same logic to hold anyone's attention. To make it simple, You have to learn two important skills.

1: Ability to learn from mistakes and master a skill. and

2: Utilize what you learn in different areas of life.

A Lot of people have this misunderstanding that good communication skills means the ability to talk faster than others and to dominate the conversation. These are the same people who think it is a good idea to befriend a girl before you date her. It is a crappy idea and it does not end well in the real world.

Good Communication Skills is about having a meaningful conversation keeping in mind, lesser is always better.

The best conversationalists are those who use smaller words and have BIGGER impact, notthan the loudest mouth in the room. A Loud mouth is reaffirming his own importance by imposing his voice over others, while a good communicator demonstrats his ability to make people come forward and listen while he whispers...

 

Master good communication and you will Notice the postivive impact it has on your life. Once you are through with the principles of good communication skills, learn the starter tricks to improve communication skills. To talk good you need to Listen Good too.Read up on active listening ad practice it. If you find it hard to listen to people, here is how you can develop your listening skills.

 Remember all these resources are here to help you develop good communication skills. but if you do not use them, they are not going to make any difference in your life. This will just be one more site with too many words. You have a choice and I really hope you make the best use of it while you can. Procrastination is probably the biggest killer of ambition, I hope you choose the one that best suits you.

Good way to start Good communication skills is to Start it right now, where ever you are, what ever you are doing , use it right now..