How to Improve Your Verbal Communication Skills
Strong verbal communication skills are valuable in our personal and professional lives. They help in building one’s confidence, command the respect of others and build rapport.
There are several tools and techniques you can use to improve the effectiveness of your verbal communication. These include reinforcement, reflection, clarification, and questioning.
Reinforcement
Reinforcement is the use of encouraging words alongside non-verbal gestures such as head nods, a warm facial expression and maintaining eye contact to communicate ideas and build rapport with others.
The use of encouragement and positive reinforcement during communication can:
- Encourage others to participate in the discussion (particularly in group work).
- Show interest in what other people have to say.
- Pave way for development and maintenance of a relationship.
- Show warmth and openness.
- Reduce shyness or nervousness in ourselves and others.
Questioning
Questioning is an essential way of clarifying areas that are unclear or test your understanding.
It can be used to obtain information from people on some specific topics as well as seek support from others.
Questioning is also a useful technique to start conversations, draw someone into a conversation, or simply show interest.
Effective questioning is, therefore, an essential element of verbal communication.
There are two main types of questions. These are:
Closed Questions
Closed questions tend to seek only a one or two-word answer (often simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’). They, therefore, limit the scope of the response.
For example, “Have you processed the client’s order?”
Open Questions
Open questions demand further discussion and elaboration. They broaden the scope for a response.
For example, “What content will you advise us to create for our next social media post?”
Open questions will take longer to answer, but they give the other person far more scope for self-expression and encourage involvement in the conversation.
Reflecting and Clarifying
Reflecting is the process of sending feedback about your understanding of what has been said by the speaker.
Reflecting involves paraphrasing the message communicated to you by the speaker in your own words. Reflecting is a useful skill because:
- It helps check that you understand the message clearly.
- It enables the speaker to get feedback about how the message has been received and can then clarify or expand if they wish.
- It shows interest in, and respect for, what the other person has to say.
Summarizing
A summary is an overview of the main points or issues raised. Summarizing can serve the same purpose as ‘reflecting’.
However, summarizing allows both parties to review and agree with the message and ensure that communication has been effective.
When used effectively, summaries may also serve as a guide to the next steps forward.
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