Communication
Skills.Regardless of what business you are in – a large
corporation, a small company, or even a home-based business –
effective communication skills are essential for success. The purpose
of communication is to get your message across to others clearly and
unambiguously. Doing this involves effort from both the sender of the
message and the receiver. And it's a process that can be free of
errors, with messages often misinterpreted by the recipient. When
this isn't detected, it can cause tremendous confusion, wasted effort
and missed opportunity. In fact, communication is only successful
when both the sender and the receiver understand the same information
as a result of the communication. By successfully getting your
message across, you convey your thoughts and ideas effectively. When
not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you send do not
necessarily reflect your own, causing a communications breakdown. New
and innovative technology offers wonderful opportunities for team
members to work across borders, spending long periods of time
together on projects without ever meeting face to face. This creates
an added obstacle for electronic communicators: elimination of
personal interaction with important colleagues. To circumvent this
lack of face-to-face contact, it becomes imperative for the sender to
transmit an electronic message that allows the receiver to "see"
the person at the other end of the communication. Also a leader needs
to understand from a logical perspective human behavior involved in
communication, decision making and motivation. Every manager will
approach leadership issues with varying levels of knowledge that will
affect decision making. Strong leaders will have more than just
knowledge. Your level of success and ability to grow is totally
dependent upon your behavior and your ability to change it. Treat
everyone in the organization with respect. Be fair. Listen more than
you talk. Solving problems involves understanding them. You need
communications skills. Listening allows you to see others
perspectives. It also allows you to think before you speak. Before
you start working on your talk or presentation, it's vital that you
really understand what you want to say, who you want to tell and why
they might want to hear it. When it comes to wording your message,
less is more. You're giving your audience headlines. They don't need
to and are usually not expecting to become experts on the subject as
a result of hearing your talk. When writing, remember that once
something is in written form, it cannot be taken back. Communicating
this way is concrete than verbal communications, with less room for
error and even less room for mistakes. This presents written
communicators with additional challenges, including spelling,
grammar, punctuation, even writing style and actual wording.
Thankfully, today’s technology makes memo, letter and proposal
writing much easier by providing reliable tools that check and even
correct misspelled words and incorrect grammar use.
When writing
letters, it is best to address the letter to an individual. And, when
beginning the letter with a personal name, be sure to end it with an
appropriate closing, such as ‘Sincerely yours’. If you cannot
obtain an individual’s name, consider ending it with a more generic
(less personal) closing, such as ‘With kindest regards’. For
normal business letters, your letter should start with an overall
summary, showing in the first paragraph why the letter is relevant to
the reader. The body of the letter needs to explain the reason for
the correspondence, including any relevant background and current
information. Make sure the information flows logically, ensuring you
are making your points effectively. The closing of the letter is the
final impression you leave with the reader. End with an action point,
such as ‘I will call you later this week to discuss this further’.
There are a few simple rules that your emails are read in the first
place and stay useful to the recipient. Subject Lines are Headlines
The headline in a newspaper does two things: It grabs your attention
and informs you what the article is about so you can decide whether
you want to read further. Email subject lines need to do the same
thing. Use the subject line to inform the receiver of EXACTLY what
the email is about in a few well-chosen words. Because everyone gets
emails they do not want (SPAM, etc.), appropriate use of the subject
line increases the chances your email will be read and not deleted
without so much as a glance. The beauty of email, compared with
letters, is that it doesn't cost any more to send several mails than
it does to send one. So, if you need to communicate with someone
about several matters, write a separate email on each subject. That
way your correspondent can reply to each one in the appropriate
time-frame. One topic might only require a short reply that he or she
can make straight away. However, as with traditional business
letters, the email should be clear and concise, with the purpose of
the email detailed in the very first paragraph. Sentences should be
kept short and to the point. The body of the email should contain all
the information and should be direct and informative. If a lengthy
response is required to an email, but you don't have the time to pull
together the information required now, send a holding reply saying
that you have received the message, and indicating when you will
respond fully.