Have you ever been to a meeting where you came out less intelligent at the end than you went in because you did not understand anything about that meeting? It feels like you were waiting for the end of the meeting to go and continue your working day.
On the other hand, have you ever attended a meeting where you came out with much more information about the subject even though it wasn’t primarily addressed to your profile?
Well, I’m sure we have been in those situations before. Learning how to communicate is a must-know skill that must be mastered in the workspace and in our everyday lives.
For me, communicating effectively means :
- Having a mastery of the subject: knowing what we present is the first step for an effective communication
- Adjusting your message to your audience: This required connecting with your audience on their level, putting rhythm into your language and speaking and paying attention to the non-verbal message sent to the audience. It could be their level of concentration or even boredom through their gesture.
- Finding the right words: Having a rich vocabulary gives you more choices and allows you to find the right words to approach a subject. This can lead to more precise communication. What it says in many words can be expressed in a few words but with a more significant impact. This will help remove noise in communication, resulting in more clarity, precision and less room for interpretation.
- Establishing a cohesive connection between the critical message and the details: this involves transitioning from the general aspects of the subject to specific, incorporating details or more technical aspects.
- Optionally giving examples/anecdotes: This will help people in the audience get to know the subject and not feel that the subject is coming from another planet.
Communication is also the energy we put in when talking about a subject, the non-verbal behaviour, gestures, the emphasis we put in some words, the rhythms…