Improve Your Personal and Professional Communication Effectiveness
Communication and collaboration are the cornerstone of any relationship, but it can be tricky to improve your personal and professional communication effectiveness without having a strategic plan.
Your strategic plan must be continuous, relevant and timely.
For example, if you want to get better at Executive Presence, but you are using an outdated model where a generic standard of professionalism exists, you will be behind the times. Executive Presence is a combination of how you present yourself, and how you are perceived, in context.
One of the most important things to remember is that you are in control of how you communicate with others. Start by making sure that you know what you want to get out of a conversation, and be prepared to navigate accordingly toward that goal. Will you use curiosity? Will you use commands? Will you use collaboration? Decide before you engage in conversation.
Improving your communication effectiveness is a matter of practice and learning from mistakes. This is what it means to be continuous. Imagine preparing to deliver a keynote address, a high stakes presentation, or even preparing to deliver a song, and all you did was practice one time.
Or worse! You did not practice at all. You simply kept it in your head, and jotted down a few bullet points. I know, I know…it sounds silly when you read that right, but that’s exactly what some of you do, but expect to have a great outcome.
You don’t have to be perfect at communicating, but you can become much better at it by following these steps:
1. Write down what you want to say. This will help make sure that when you’re actually speaking or writing, all your points are clear in your mind and ready for discussion or presentation.
2. Get feedback from others about what they think about what you said or wrote. Feedback loops make your conversations relevant. Without it, you’re simply hoping the message you intended was received.
Lastly, know that when you improve your communication effectiveness, you become a person people want to follow, engage with, interact, promote and recommend. You become known for your ability to masterfully handle situations, planned and unplanned with grace and ease. You become in high demand, and that makes you an even more attractive candidate for opportunities you’d never even imagined, or dreamed of.
People aren’t speaking up. Would you like to learn more about Clear Communication Solutions? Visit the media page, or if you’d like to book a consult for private coaching, contact me today.