Awareness of Your Communication Skills

Awareness of Your Communication Skills

Increasing Awareness of Your Communication Skills

You’ve probably heard or read this quote by George Bernard Shaw many times:

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

I’m sharing it here because it speaks to the need to understand communication more deeply, starting with one’s own.

Some of the challenges of communication include:

      1. approaching situations with built-in biases and patterns learned in childhood or developed over the years;
      2. allowing assumptions about other people’s levels of knowledge and perspectives to influence how we communicate instead of learning more about them in advance;
      3. mistaking experience for expertise, assuming that daily communication equals proficiency;
      4. and the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias that allows people to overestimate their knowledge or abilities in a specific area, even though they lack the necessary skills or experience. This often stems from a lack of knowledge or introspection.

Gaining and maintaining awareness of your communication skills and style requires conscious effort. However, the payoff is fantastic! Better communication skills can improve relationships, increase productivity, reduce errors, and create a more harmonious work environment.

 

Actions to Become More Aware of Your Communication Skills

    • Set up your phone or a camera to video record yourself going about your day talking to people. If you’re at work, let people know you’re recording and that only you will watch the video. Don’t record confidential conversations. Watch the video with the sound off to observe your body language. Then, turn it up to observe your verbal delivery. Look for behaviors and patterns you want to change, such as less-than-confident gestures, the overuse of filler words, poor posture, and a lack of pauses.
    • Keep a communication journal. After meetings or at the end of the day, record your thoughts and reflections on your interactions and what you might do to be more effective in the future. Make notes about others’ reactions to you and your interpretations of them. Did people seem confused or did they shut down? This will help you understand you need to make adjustments to your communications.
    • Review something you’ve written. Read it from the perspective of the recipient(s). Did you communicate your points clearly? Did the tone reflect the energy you wanted to project? Was it too abrupt? If someone had a very different frame of reference and read what you wrote, is there a possibility it could be misinterpreted? Try reading what you wrote with an angry tone of voice and see if your message could come across harshly. This will help you understand what you could do differently going forward, such as adding a warmer greeting or some words to soften the message or providing greater detail or clarity.

Every day, you have the opportunity to become a better communicator. It begins with awareness.

If you’re looking to take this work further, the Communication Assessment Pack might interest you. It’s a series of four online assessments you can take to gain a much deeper understanding of your strengths as a communicator and the areas in which you could improve. The assessment pack is included in the Public Speaking Mastery and Communication Quantum Leap programs.

Learn more about all the programs here. 

 

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Communication Matters logo; newsletter by Communication Expert, Media Trainer, Presentation Trainer, and Investor Pitch Coach Lisa Elia
Lisa Elia, Media Trainer, Presentation Trainer, and Communication Expert, and Founder of Expert Media TrainingThis post was written by Lisa Elia, a media trainer, presentation trainer, pitch coach, communication expert, and speaker. She trains clients around the world for media interviews, speeches, internal and external presentations, panels, investor presentations, and promotional videos, and provides executive and team communication coaching.

With more than 25 years of experience, Lisa has prepared clients for interviews with TODAY, GMA, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, ESPN, and hundreds of other outlets. Lisa has shared her expertise with national media outlets that include Inc., Entertainment Tonight, E!, and many others. Clients include entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 companies, and everything in between as well as athletes, celebrities, and other public figures.

 

To arrange a complimentary consultation with Lisa, click here.

Trust and Body Language

Trust and Body Language

“I don’t trust you. I don’t know why, there’s just something about you.” – These are words some entrepreneurs have heard spoken on “Shark Tank” and they’re words that no one wants to hear after a media interview, presentation or pitch. What leads to a lack of trust? Quite often it’s body language.

In conversations or when watching you in media interviews or presentations, people generally pay more attention to body language than they are consciously aware of doing. Most people process language and speech in the left hemisphere, and nonverbal or spatial skills in the right hemisphere. While your audience or viewers may hear every word you say, part of their brain is assessing your body language, noticing any disparities between your words and your movements or other “tells” that may indicate the lack of truthfulness, confidence or commitment to your words. The more you know your material well, are committed to your ideas and gain the confidence that comes from mastering your content, the more your body language and movements will be authentic and synchronized with your words. This will help you to establish trust with your audience.

Read a more in-depth post about body language.

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Communication Matters logo; newsletter by Communication Expert, Media Trainer, Presentation Trainer, and Investor Pitch Coach Lisa Elia
Lisa Elia, Media Trainer, Presentation Trainer, and Communication Expert, and Founder of Expert Media TrainingThis post was written by Lisa Elia, a media trainer, presentation trainer, pitch coach, communication expert, and speaker. She trains clients around the world for media interviews, speeches, internal and external presentations, panels, investor presentations, and promotional videos, and provides executive and team communication coaching.

With more than 25 years of experience, Lisa has prepared clients for interviews with TODAY, GMA, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, ESPN, and hundreds of other outlets. Lisa has shared her expertise with national media outlets that include Inc., Entertainment Tonight, E!, and many others. Clients include entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 companies, and everything in between as well as athletes, celebrities, and other public figures.

 

To arrange a complimentary consultation with Lisa, click here.


Here are other pages you might find interesting:  

Top Media Interview Tips and Communication Tips

6 Tips for More Effective Presentations Video Tips - a page full of videos with tips to improve communication, presentations, speeches and media interviews.


Contact us to arrange a consultation about your media training or presentation training needs.

Call us at 321-821-3088.

Respect for Time

Respect for Time

When you think about what has the greatest value to you, it’s likely that time is way up there on the list. Or, you may say you value life most, but isn’t it the same thing? After all, life is time, right? Life is just moments here on earth; one moment followed by another and another eventually creates a lifetime. So, if you respect life, shouldn’t you respect every moment of time, both yours and others’? If you value time, does the way you spend it reflect this?

How many hours in a week do you spend wondering why that person to whom you sent a proposal hasn’t returned your call or worrying about things that haven’t even happened yet?

How much of your business day do you while away talking to people with whom you know you’ll never do business? Could you politely tell them you’re not interested and not waste their time and yours?

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

~Carl Sandburg

A respect for time blog post from Media Trainer and Presentation Trainer Lisa EliaDo you respect others’ time?

Consider the amount of time people spend wondering why you haven’t returned their call. Whose time are you wasting? What else could they be doing with that time they’re wasting wondering why you haven’t called? Could they be doing charity work or inventing a new product or helping the world in some other way? Take it a step further: how many people will not receive the benefit of that person’s charity work or wonderful creation?

Are you chronically late?

If so, think about this. You probably wouldn’t reach into other people’s pockets and take their money and spend it for them, so why do you feel okay about taking their time and spending it for them? If you’re paying people for their time and you keep them waiting, you’re essentially wasting your money on their time, but at least you’re paying them for their time.

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

Do you spend hours driving across time to save a few dollars or haggling or trying to get things for free? Could that time be better used working, producing more products and services, or developing new ways to promote yourself or your business in new ways?

Respect for time is respect for life.

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Click here. 

Communication Matters logo; newsletter by Communication Expert, Media Trainer, Presentation Trainer, and Investor Pitch Coach Lisa Elia
Lisa Elia, Media Trainer, Presentation Trainer, and Communication Expert, and Founder of Expert Media TrainingThis post was written by Lisa Elia, a media trainer, presentation trainer, pitch coach, communication expert, and speaker. She trains clients around the world for media interviews, speeches, internal and external presentations, panels, investor presentations, and promotional videos, and provides executive and team communication coaching.

With more than 25 years of experience, Lisa has prepared clients for interviews with TODAY, GMA, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, ESPN, and hundreds of other outlets. Lisa has shared her expertise with national media outlets that include Inc., Entertainment Tonight, E!, and many others. Clients include entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 companies, and everything in between as well as athletes, celebrities, and other public figures.

 

To arrange a complimentary consultation with Lisa, click here.

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