Cheryl Wright

Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion is at the heart of many bro­ken per­son­al and busi­ness re­la­tion­ships. Some­one didn't speak up. Some­one spoke at the wrong time. Some­one didn't say the right thing. Some­one didn't lis­ten. Some­one made the wrong as­sump­tion. Some­one didn't un­der­stand. Some­one didn't ask a ques­tion. To make re­la­tion­ships work, we must learn to com­mu­ni­cate in ways that con­vey what we want to say in the most ef­fec­tive way.

To be an ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tor

Iden­ti­fy what you want to say.

Some­times, in the heat of the mo­ment and over­come by raw emo­tion, you may com­mu­ni­cate a mes­sage that hurts, alien­ates or in­fu­ri­ates some­one. If you were to ex­er­cise a bit of self-con­trol – hold your tongue, con­strain your emo­tions and man­age your body lan­guage – you could send the same mes­sage with­out the neg­a­tive bag­gage. The key? Iden­ti­fy the mes­sage, the re­al mes­sage you want to com­mu­ni­cate.

Tai­lor your de­liv­ery.

"It's not what you say but how you say it" has been re­peat­ed so of­ten that we've for­got­ten who said it first. Still, it is ap­plic­a­ble in every sit­u­a­tion where you want to com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly. Whether you want to con­vey your feel­ings for some­one or about an in­ci­dent, tell some­one that you refuse to be tak­en ad­van­tage of any longer, give a short speech at a func­tion or chair a sales meet­ing, tai­lor your de­liv­ery to suit the re­la­tion­ship (per­son­al or busi­ness) as well as the sit­u­a­tion (in­ti­mate, ca­su­al, for­mal, busi­ness).

Com­mu­ni­cate with con­fi­dence.

You may know what you want to say be­cause you have all the facts, fig­ures and ex­am­ples. If how­ev­er, you don't have con­fi­dence in your­self and that the mes­sage is ac­cu­rate, ap­plic­a­ble and ap­pro­pri­ate, the mes­sage will re­flect that and you may come across as in­se­cure and un­con­vinc­ing.

Com­mu­ni­cate with clar­i­ty.

If the mes­sage you want to com­mu­ni­cate is in­un­dat­ed with so much jar­gon and ver­bosi­ty that it flies over the head of peo­ple and leaves them bored, you will lose their at­ten­tion and their re­spect. Make sure that your mes­sage doesn't leave peo­ple with false as­sump­tions. Even if they dis­agree with you, they should leave con­vinced that you knew what you were talk­ing about and your mes­sage was clear.

Show emo­tion.

Peo­ple no­tice and re­coil when you try to com­mu­ni­cate with them in a man­ner that seems aloof and un­emo­tion­al. There is emo­tion for every mes­sage you want to com­mu­ni­cate. When you are knowl­edge­able about the top­ic, con­fi­dent in your abil­i­ty to con­vey it and pas­sion­ate about the sig­nif­i­cance of the mes­sage, you will com­mu­ni­cate with gen­uine emo­tion.

Read body lan­guage.

Body lan­guage speaks loud­er than words. Don't take it light­ly be­cause it is a telling in­dex of a per­son's at­ti­tude, dis­com­fort, in­se­cu­ri­ties, ex­pec­ta­tion and bias. An ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tor reads body lan­guage and if pos­si­ble, tries to re­align her mes­sage and de­liv­ery to deal with it - ease the per­son's dis­com­fort, anx­i­ety, scep­ti­cism or an­tag­o­nism.

Deal with ques­tions gra­cious­ly.

You could be so in­vest­ed in what you have to com­mu­ni­cate that you can't bear the idea of some­one ask­ing you ques­tions, es­pe­cial­ly if those ques­tions put you on the spot to de­fend your mes­sage. An ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tor an­tic­i­pates pos­si­ble ques­tions and pre­pares an­swers. More­over, an ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tor is flex­i­ble and teach­able. She knows there is al­ways some­thing new to learn. So, when the time comes, she elic­its and an­swers ques­tions gra­cious­ly.