Most of the time, we hear about communicating more effectively with the people around us. But what exactly is effective communication? We asked Louise Clark, a career and interview coach, about it and here is the first of Louise's two-part story as she warms up to the task and shares with us on the need to communicate effectively.
On average, about 70% of our time is spent communicating, whether it is verbal, non-verbal or through listening, reading or writing.
In basic terms, communication is the transmitting of an idea or an opinion from one person or group to another person or group; an exchange of ideas. Effective communication is required to ensure the message is delivered, received, interpreted and acted upon in the way it was intended.
Whoever you are – an office junior, CEO or stay at home dad – effective communication is key to achieving both your personal and professional goals.
There are two main elements to Effective Communication, assertive speaking and active listening.
Assertive speaking - To project yourself (verbally and non-verbally) in a direct, confident and relaxed way in order to be able to deliver your message, image or idea in the way that you meant it to be heard, whilst at the same time encouraging the audience to do the same.
Active listening - Utilizing empathy and respect to listen to both the content (verbal) and the emotional (non-verbal) elements of the message, idea or image being delivered in order to hear the message as it was meant to be heard.
Effective communication requires more than just words. It needs positive, direct and confident body language, facial expressions, pace and tone of your voice to all add weight to what you want to say.
Professor Mehrabian of the University of California looked at how face-to-face communication is received by any listener. The research discovered effective communication is based around three main areas, with the content or words used only accounting for 7% of the whole message.
Impact of communication
Achieving Effective Communication
At school we are taught to read, write and speak appropriately. I am sure we can all remember a teacher telling us to 'be quiet' or the ever popular 'shut up and (listen)'. But with the lack of formal training to listen, coupled with stress, deadlines and tension at work, it is not surprising that we can go through our work and home life without properly listening.
We are often caught in a tug-of-war scenario where more than one person is trying to speak at the same time, struggling for control of the conversation resulting in no one receiving the right message. Tension is created, the conversation takes an adversarial tone and ineffective communication takes over. Effective communicators are aiming to achieve a 'see-saw' style interaction, where one person is the speaker and the other person is listener. This usually switches between the people involved as they aim to achieve the same goal - mutual understanding and collaborative working.
