I know there are many reasons why we should all improve our communication skills. I just want to share with you the ones I consider most relevant and meaningful based on my professional approach to this topic.
Here are my favourite 7:
1. Inner control
You may have heard me saying that communication starts within and from there, we externalise it and interact with our environment and others. When you manage to control and filter the information that comes from the outside and react to it with a clear intention, you can become a very powerful individual. Power in terms of autoregulation and impact on the people around you.
Most of the time we like to work on our skills, new knowledge and so on, ignoring on many occasions higher levels such as values, beliefs, identity and purpose. Deeper works can be more challenging but definitely brings greater results.
Remember, it’s not just what you know but how you feel about it.
2. Create a new dialogue with yourself
The world becomes your oyster the very moment you gain control over the way in which you communicate with yourself. Yes, Self-Talk is what I’m on about here. Take a couple of minutes to reflect on how you speak to yourself on a regular basis, is it the kind of talk that empowers you to move forward or the opposite?
Learning to deal with your inner critic and turning it into your coach, mentor and greatest supporter will change your world for good.
3. Better health
Think about the two previous reasons that I’ve shared with you, right. When you begin to work on yourself, learn to self-regulate your reactions and emotions, manage your self-talk more effectively, trust me, it will begin to impact your health. When you experience less anger and more joy, speak to yourself with love and respect, your body, heart and mind will begin to appreciate it and reward you accordingly.
4. A more balanced approach to life
When you have the ability to control your thoughts and emotions, you become a more flexible individual capable taking a step back to proactively consider new perspectives around a situation or scenario, which in return provides you with new resources to deal effectively with whatever challenge comes your way. Great communicators have this level of flexibility in common.
5. Improved human interactions
Let’s go external now. In simple terms, once your internal communication process is in place, your output will be of greater quality. I’ll give you the example of my grandad, an authentic and loving person who naturally connected with people everywhere he went. If we agree that when we communicate, we are sharing emotions, no wonder why people wanted to be around him. He just loved being out there meeting and having fun with everybody. This just happened without any premeditation or preparation.
My Granddad never proactively invested in his communication skills but the way he was inside made him a memorable person that people loved and respected. With additional knowledge around the power of communication, he would have touched way many more lives, this is how I see it anyway.
6. Achieve your goals
This is when you become aware of what you know and decide to learn more. At this point, elements like charisma, body language, listening skills, different types of coaching questions, language and many more elements will begin to play a more important role if you wished to continue honing your communication skills, which I would recommend you do to share the excellence you carry inside and achieve what you want in life.
Whatever it is that you want, think that at least 80% will depend on your communication skills. This is your ability to connect, motivate and positively influence the people you come into contact with.
7. Influence and leadership
My granddad did this with his family and some of his employees up to an extent and we all do it in a way. Remember that there are not neutral interactions, we either build people up or the complete opposite, yes, a big responsibility as communicators.
When we internalise this, we begin to play a higher role in society. We turn into individuals that others look up to, follow and learn from.
This is to me the highest level in terms of communication and it’s in itself an action we continuously perform on a daily basis.
There are many more reasons as to why we should all improve our communication skills and even the above seven could be broken down into many more. The fundamental reason for me is that when we master our communication at a deeper level, positive change becomes available and that in itself is a very powerful reason, wouldn’t you agree?
Jose Ucar
Communication and Public Speaking Coach
