How To Improve Communication Skills (Best 6 Tips)

So, how to improve communication skills? let’s find out…

You are already noticing that when you speak, people tend to place a different on your words leading to a huge discrepancy between what was said and what was heard.

Maybe you are someone that feels frustrated when you don’t get feedbacks maybe in meetings, project planning, or just any usual gathering.

Or maybe you find yourself using the YOU directive, where most of your communication with others starts with the word YOU and overtime you start to disregard and invalidate the feeling of others while prioritizing passive-aggressiveness and sarcasm.

Eventually, you notice that most people you meet don’t want to speak with you and despite trying all your possible best, you just can’t seem to be able to bring people together with what you say.

Your situation is understandable and it’s all just the lack of good communication skills.

Effective and good communication skills are very essential to success in various ramifications of life.

Both verbal and non-verbal skills are essential for delivering and understanding information and it is only when you balance this two that you can make success in relating with others.

So, how do you improve your communication skills?

Well, welcome to Thriven Authority and in today’s topic we’ll be providing you with tips on how to improve your communication skills.

So, why waste any more time, let’s get started.

Tip Number One: Control Your Facial Expression

Here’s the simple truth, while the process of communicating might start from your brain, nailing communication rightly actually starts with your facial expression.

In a situation where you pose an angry face while trying to communicate friendly with another individual, there will definitely be a misinterpretation in the message being passed across because the human brain doesn’t just interpret words but makes interpretation in correspondence with expressions.

What you should know is that your body language is a very important part of your communication skills since verbal and non-verbal communication go hand in hand to ensure perfect information delivery.

In fact, a study that was performed by Albert Mehrabian in the year 1972 showed that 53 percent of the information passed across during communication was gotten from studying the facial expressions of the person communicating.

This means maintaining eye contact with the person you are communicating with and posing a little smile in-between can really help focus your message and make your communication more effective.

Tip Number Two: Learn To Listen More

Being eager to pass your information across is a very important trait but sometimes just need to lay back, relax, and just listen to your audience.

The problem is we face is that we mostly tend to forget the communication involves a two-way process where you, the communicator, and the person you are communicating with have to exchange information without obstruction.

But you shouldn’t mistake listening with hearing as listening touches on how you pay attention to not just the spoken words but how they words are being spoken.

In other words, giving your full attention when communicating allows you to understand each other better.

In fact, a 2014 research made by Harry Weger and his colleagues showed that active listening increases the recipient’s perception of feeling understood.

By learning to listen more, you get to reduce conflicts, build trust, inspire people, and improve your work and life relationship.

Tip Number Three: Be Mindful Of Your Tone

What you are saying and how you are saying it are two important factors to be consider when communicating.

Your communication tone is a non-verbal component necessary for effective communication.

The non-verbal part of your communication skills is very important and a 2011 publication also confirms that non-verbal communication accounted for 55 percent of how an audience perceived the communicator.

The further proves that what you say isn’t just communicated through the words you speak but through the physical and audible gestures you make.

When speaking with other people, your tone, in a way, provides clarification and helps to better convey the meaning of your words.

Take a phrase like “I Don’t Know” as an example. This simple phrase can propagate a lot of definitions depending on the way you express it.

Albert Mehrabian, in is 1972 publication, also discovered that 38 percent of the information passed across during communication was gotten from interpreting the tone of the voice of the communicator.

Invariably, your tone doesn’t just affect how people perceive you, it also affects their willingness to listen to you. With a better tone, comes trust, and genuine connection.

Tip Number Four: Be Sure To Express Yourself Clearly

It is very necessary that you include clarity in everything you do including your communication.

Clarity is one of the attributes you need to develop to improve your communications skills as this will allow you to convey your information rightly to your audience.

But there’s even more to express yourself clearly.

The clarity in communication helps in improving the connection and engagement between you and your audience.

It is able to do this by increasing the level of transparency that is being passed across.

Unfortunately, clear expression is one of those things we don’t take into consideration and a 1990 study made by a Stanford university student was able to prove successfully by asking tappers to tap certain melodies for people to guess what the song.

The tappers believed 50 percent of the songs would be correctly identified but in reality, only 2.5 percent of the songs were identified correctly.

This shows that the tappers never paid attention to clarity and only focused on just getting the information out.

Most times, you audience will fail to take in as much as you expect and it is only when you clearly express yourself that people understand exactly what you are passing across.

Tip Number Five: Ensure Not To Over Communicate

The previous tip talked about the importance of expressing yourself clearly and while this is a very essential part of improved communication, it is also important to note that overcommunication should be avoided at all cost.

People love transparency and even a label insight study from 2016 shows 94 percent of consumers are likely to be loyal to a brand that offers full transparency. The same goes for individuals.

But overcommunication can be a dangerous territory to cross.

According to a publication on Chron.com, over-communication can worsen inefficiency so much more that information can get misplaced or even misinterpreted thereby leading to reiterating your message and creating more inefficiency.

In short, overcommunication will always beget inefficiency. By avoiding overcommunication you get to improve your relationships and increase the satisfaction of your audience.

Tip Number Six: Don’t Forget To Take Advantage Of Your Gestures

Gesticulating when communicating helps in passing your ideas across better.

Gestures allow for the communication of a variety of feelings and thoughts, and when combined effectively with other body languages, they provide significant additional meaning to the words you speak.

Meta-analysis made by Hostetter in 2011 and Dargue in 2019 has shows that gesture plays a beneficial role in the listener’s comprehension.

But that’s not all.

A study at the University of Netherlands discovered that gestures can also lead to positive social interaction.

This means… mimicking the behavior of who you are communicating with through your gestures can even make them like you more.

You don’t have to overexpress it; you just have to learn to be good at it.

Ready to start communicating better?

Then start applying these tips in your daily life.

The best is… we’ve got more to come and if you would love to learn these tips, then check our other articles and visit our official YouTube Channel, subscribe to the channel and don’t forget to turn on the notifications bell.

See you in the next one.