Most of occupations and job positions expect that their employees possess strong communication skills for workplace with the goal that they can convey their point of view positively and clearly both through speaking and writing. This article discusses vital communication skills for workplace success.
Communication skills for workplace plays a vital role in your success in modern corporate setup. But the problem arises due to the over usage of the term “strong communication skills for workplace” which becomes difficult to determine as to what it actually means.
Display of good skills in communication means you are able to transfer information to others smoothly and accurately with no complexity involved.
This includes the sending and conveying of your messages in a concise, simple, and complete manner which facilitate action and productivity.
What good communication skills for workplace means is comprehension of instructions of instruction taken, acquisition of updated skills and capabilities, know the art of polite requests, questioning, and furthering information in a harmonious and uninterrupted manner.
This is the reason that strong communication skills for workplace are believed to have a primary importance for an employee. However, despite being a very basic skill, it is the most preferred and the most sought-after skill by the employers on all levels and for all levels.
Importance of Communication Skills for Workplace Success
Communication skills for workplace are necessary for every position no matter what it is and what level you have in terms of work and seniority. In case communication fails due to any reason, it is the morale, objectives and efficiency of the organization that receives a setback.
In modern era of jobs market competitive settings, communication skills for workplace have gained an much higher value. The employers seek those candidates who possess a higher ability to communicate information, to successfully negotiate business deals, and confidently engage and deal with the clients.
Your ability to listen carefully, to speak clearly, and to put others at ease through your communication skills for workplace are some the attributes that make you well-liked and successful professional.
Communication Skills For Workplace Success
- Clarity and Cohesiveness
- Emotional Intelligence
- Nonverbal Communication
- Friendliness
- Empathy
- Confidence
- Respect
- Feedback
- Picking the Right Medium
- Open-Mindedness
- Listening
- Tone of Voice
- Asking Good Questions
Clarity and Cohesiveness
Strong communication skills for workplace is not merely saying the right thing; it is rather much more than that. It involves conciseness and clarity to make good communication.
Prior to starting a conversation, writing an email, or beginning a discussion, make sure you know the objective of your communication as well as the information you want to get as the feedback.
Remember! Lack of cohesion and clarity lead to confusion and poor decisions.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability is the ability to comprehend, utilize, and manage your own emotions in a positive way to relieve stress communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict.
Emotional Intelligence has four main attributes: Self-Management, Self-Awareness, Social-Awareness, and Relationship Management.
Each of these attributes is significant in its own particular place, and enables you to communicate with confidence and impression with different types of people.
Nonverbal Communication
All the nonverbal cues including your body language, hand gestures, eye contact, and tone of your voice contribute to your overall communication and determine the level of feedback from the recipient. A relaxed stance with open arms and relaxed legs, combined with a friendly tone relaxes the recipient showing you as an approachable person. This stimulates people to respond and speak to you in an open and positive manner. This is perhaps one of the foremost communication skills for workplace success.
You can never ignore the importance of eye contact. Looking at the person in the eyes demonstrates that you are attentive to them and their talk. Care should be taken not to stare at the person, otherwise they will take it as an offence, a gesture which will make them uneasy.
Similarly focus on the nonverbal signs and signals of others. Most of the times, they cannot convey through words what they feel. Focusing on their nonverbal cues will give you a clue to their inner thoughts and feelings. For example, you must understand that your recipient is either shy, embarrassed, or they are trying to hide something from you.
Friendliness
Setting the right tone is the basic requirement for strong communication skills for workplace. Your friendly tone makes the others easy, and thus motivates them to communicate with you.
Always add personal and subjective tone to your messages. This is most desired when you work in collaboration with your colleagues or partners.
Greeting people with good wishes display your courtesy. Similarly wishing your message receivers happy weekends or any other emotional chit chat is a very good technique to personalize your message.
Empathy
In a diversified and engaged work environment, each person has their personal concepts and ideas about how things should be done in a perfect manner. Consider and respect the point of view of your co-workers and fellows ever if you have ideas different than theirs.
Your empathy works wonders when you speak to your clients and customers if you have some customer-facing role.
The aim of empathy is to understand the context of the receivers—where he is coming from, and what is their perspective on certain things or issues. This enables you to respect their point of views even if there is a big difference and disagreement among your views.
Confidence
Confidence in communication plays a central and crucial role. You confidence will boost the confidence of the customers in your abilities and authenticity to provide them what they need. It will also give them reason to trust that you will follow honestly and surely with what you have committed to do for them.
Show of your confidence can be demonstrated through your eye contact during your chat. Similarly it can be shown by using a firm but friendly and amicable tone during your talk over the phone.
One thing you must take care of while showing your confidence is overconfidence. Do not come across as offensive or aggressive, because in that case your communication skills for workplace will have an effect that is totally unwanted due to having opposite effects of what you hope to achieve.
Respect
Respect is generated by empathy. Respecting the ideas and beliefs of others leads to prospects of more fruitful outcomes in communication. It is very effective if you are an active listener. This can be displayed by simply using the name of the person you are communicating with.
Be careful when you write emails. Make sure you are not taken as insincere through your text.
Feedback
The ability to give and receive feedback accurately and appropriately is very important for strong communication skills for workplace. Students, managers, supervisors, and other professionals must frequently devise patterns and channels to make sure effective and positive feedback regarding their respective projects. This may be either through emails, face to face meetings, phone calls, and/or weekly status updates and progress reports.
Giving response includes giving appreciation like saying “very good job” or “thank you for the extra effort” to a colleague or an employee boosts the morale of the people as well as the organization as a whole.
Likewise, you must have the capability to encourage as well as accept feedback from others that might not be the one you would like to be. Act maturely and with open-minded approach. Listen to the feedback they give you, as relevant question to clarify the points, and take measures to do or modify things according to the feedback received.
Picking the Right Medium
Another one of essential communication skills for workplace is to understand the appropriate form of communication to use on various occasions. For example, some serious conversations (layoffs, resignation, changes in salary, etc.) are almost always best done in person. Using another channel for such task is not recommended.
You must consider the person with whom you wish to speak. If that is a person with tight and busy schedule (such as your boss, perhaps) you might want to convey your message through email. People will appreciate and like your professional attitude, and thoughtful means of communication. Thus they will be more likely to respond positively and quickly.
Open-Mindedness
Try to be natural while entering into communication. Begin without any pre-defined or pre-conceived agenda.
Powerful communication skills for workplace ha a requirement of an open mind as against the narrow mind. It requires a commitment and intention to accommodating and understanding other people’s perspective. Good communicators agree to disagree. If you differ with what the other people say or believe, try to take a middle position. Look for a middle ground which suite and benefits both the parties.
An open minded approach to a discussion is more likely to end up with successful results.
Listening
Good communication skills for workplace success are dependent on effective listening. Take the time to listen to what the other person says. Respond to them by being an active listener.
Focus on what the other person is saying, ask relevant question for clarifying the point as well as eliciting more ideas, and say in your own words what the other person has said. This will help you get clarification on one hand, and will encourage the speaker in terms of focus and confidence on the other.
Tone of Voice
You can set or disturb the whole mood of the conversation with the tone of your voice. Your receiver will tend to respond in a way similar to how you communicate. If you start your conversation in a discourteous or aggressive manner, the receiver of your message will respond accordingly. Your friendly and courteous tone of voice will be fruitful in terms of positive response.
Your voice tone shows your emotional level that you use, the volume, and the level of communication you intend to choose.
Your tone and emphasis determine your meaning and hence your recipient’s response. Your stress and emphasis on certain words and phrases can elicit various and different meanings for one single sentence.
For example, in a customer complaint setting, the tone of your voice is required to be as calm as possible, because an unfriendly and rude tone of voice does nothing more than worsening the situation.
Asking Good Questions
Your good questions during your conversation help to regulate and smoothen the flow of your conversation, and thus to improve the results.
Always try to ask open ended questions during your conversation. These are questions with prompts which help the recipient to speak on certain topics with detail.
Additionally, if you still need some further information regarding the issue under discussion, you may use probing technique by putting questions which dig out more information form the recipient like, “please tell me about the procedure of…”
Include a blend of questions during your conversation. These questions include clarification question, “what if” and open-ended question to ascertain that you get what you initially set out to do at the start of the phone call or face to face conversation.
Sometimes in interviews you are required to show the strength of your communication skills. Question often asked in competency-based interview may include:
- Give me an example of how you dealt with a difficult customer at work.
- Give an example of how you dealt with a difficult or sensitive situation that required extensive communication.
- Tell me about a time when you had to explain an issue or process to a colleague (or colleagues) at work.
- How do you explain things to other people?
- Tell me about a time when you taught someone else something.
If you like the article, please my other articles on communication skills for workplace success. Also don’t forget to leave your valuable feedback in the comment section below.
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