communication skills

In this world of competition and everyone vying for the other person's job it is important to acquire better skill sets and keep ahead of the competition. One such skill is communication. With the best communication skills required by the corporate world today you can be assured that career advancements will surely be thrown to the wind and you will be left in the shallow while the rest of your colleagues will climb the ladder of success.

Communication skills or the power to effectively communicate with co-workers and business clients or customers is the most important qualification of a successful executive. Any business needs to have excellent communication facilities to be understood within and without the boundaries of the business. Managers and senior executives must constantly work on developing their communication skills if they are to effectively handle their domains and make the business more productive.

Signing up for a short term course in communication skills is one way to improve your chances of career advancement. Look at it this way, if you improve your communication skills you will be able to effectively communicate with your superiors and thus will be able to communicate to them your need to advance in the organization. You may be dropping hints for a promotion but the boss might not be able to understand you, this is one example of bad communication skills. If you look around you will find many people climbing the corporate ladder just because they have better certifications in communication skills. Many universities even have degree programs for those who want to study communication techniques and enhance their communication skills.

A degree in communication skills will assure your prospective or present employer that your profile of skills include honesty, sociability, communication skills, integrity, decision making ability, speaking, reasoning, listening and a host of other skills. All these skills are acknowledged by the Department of Labor as the key skills needed for managers to effectively manage their domains in order to produce the best productivity in terms of man hours. This is endorsed by every business house in the world. Effective communication skills are something no business can do without.

You can be assured that your career advancement opportunities will greatly increase once you have enhanced your communication skills. Being able to speak effectively in public and address groups of people is important to get your ideas across. You may be needed to communicate to people individually or in groups through public forums. You may be needed to do this personally or through some medium such as the internet, newspapers, magazines or the radio and even television. Your communication skills will permit you to make an effective impact on your target audience if you have the necessary skills in communications.

Abhishek Agarwal

For the Academy's fourth Masters with Masters event, Bobby Braun, NASA's Chief Technology Officer, and Steve Altemus, Director of Engineering at Johnson Space Center, sat down with Academy Director Ed Hoffman to share stories and experiences in a 90-minute session that streamed live to all NASA centers on September 13, 2010. Braun talked about what he learned from working on the Mars Pathfinder and the Mars Polar Lander microprobe Deep Space 2. Altemus spoke about the connection between learning from past failures and communications. They also shared their thoughts on innovation within the agency. Visit the NASA Academy website: 1.usa.gov

During my twenties and thirties, I attended Saint Lukes Episcopal Church in downtown Atlanta. I was active in the church in a variety of ways including teaching second grade Sunday school, serving on the associate vestry, and making calls for the annual fund drive.

Year after year, my friend Kitty and I would schedule appointments with parishioners, meet in their homes, and ask them to tithe ten percent of their income. These calls were not easy for me. In fact, I would have preferred eating glass, but I knew it was important to make them.

Those calls forced me to look at my own patterns of giving. I believe tithing ten percent of your income is a good idea, but I still do not do it. To be honest, I am afraid that one day I will need the money. But I do not like focusing on scarcity, instead of abundance, and I do not like living in fear. So each year, my giving creeps closer to ten percent.

Tithing money is important as are other forms of tithing, such as tithing our time in the form of volunteer work and a new form of tithing I read about in The Power of Giving: Creating Abundance in Your Home, at Work, and in Your Community by Azim Jamal and Harvey McKinnon. It is called intrapersonal tithing.

I met Harvey McKinnon at a workshop I gave at The Giving Institutes summer conference in Napa Valley, California, this summer. Harvey formulated the idea of intrapersonal tithing. He says there are 8,760 hours in a year, and the average person sleeps eight hours a day or 2,920 hours. That leaves 5,840 waking hours. After subtracting other essential commitments such as:

Work: 40 hours x 50 weeks = 2,000 hours a year;

Buying, preparing, and eating food: 2 hours x 365 days = 730 hours;

Housework, washing clothes, etc.: about 200 hours; and
Commuting: about 300 hours;

We have 2,610 hours left, or approximately 2,000 hours. Ten percent of that would be 200 hours. That is a little less than four hours a week. Think how different your life would be if you committed four hours a week to yourself and your personal growth.
You could:

Read fiction and nonfiction that inspires, entertains, and/or educates you.

Spend time with your loved ones.

Journal.

Take a course at your local community college.

Do something creative such as paint, sculpt, cook, or write.

Meditate or pray.

Meet with a mentor, coach, spiritual guide, or therapist.

Spend time in nature.

Exercise, lift weights, or do yoga.

When you enhance your knowledge, learn new ideas, and gain new skills, you have much more to offer others, Harvey says. Great knowledge can lead to better jobs, higher income, and more personal satisfaction and your mental, psychological, spiritual, and emotional health improves, too.

Many of my clients complain that they have no time for themselves. They feel stretched and stressed. They worry that they are burning out, and they are. I counsel them to take time for themselves to recharge their batteries if they are going to be any good for their families and work.

Many initially say that designating ten percent of their free time to themselves is daunting. I do not know where I would find the time, one client remarked. Another said, Ten percent feels so self-indulgent.

If you share similar feelings, Harvey recommends escalator giving, increasing the time you devote to yourself by one percent a year until you reach ten percent. There are few of us who can not commit to that.

Could you commit to designating more you time?

Still not sure? Try intrapersonal tithing for a month. I believe you will find that you are a happier, more productive person for it.

Randy Siegel

This video gives an example of effective communication skills and the affect it has in interpersonal relationships within the family

Good social skills are key to getting along with others and they help us to connect with the people around us. They're not about conforming, but having a healthy respect for others.

There are many, many different elements to social skills and if you're looking for an all-in-one, short-and-sweet, how-to lesson on them, you're going to be disappointed. There's no magic formula for good interpersonal skills, no Social Skills Potion #6.

Social skills encompass a wide variety of verbal and non-verbal communication skills. Fortunately, social they can be learned and, with practice, you'll reap the benefits in your career and personal life.

Building Social Skills
Here are three basic non-verbal tips for improving interpersonal interactions.

Smile
First thing's first: smile. Smiling is a great way to make people comfortable around you and make you appear approachable. Try it when you enter a room, meeting, or event and se
Rethink Autism Tip: Developing Social Skills - Advanced

e how it automatically creates a friendly rapport.

It's not like you should paste a phony grin or a forced smile on your face - we can all see through that. Just a simple, sincere, greeting smile that is welcoming and appealing. If you're not a "smiler," at least be aware of your facial expression.

Make Eye Contact
In Western culture, making eye contact shows an interest in someone and what they're saying while avoiding eye contact can show disinterest or boredom.

Eye contact should be friendly, attentive and relaxed. It doesn't mean staring intensely into someone's eyes - this can be uncomfortable for the other person.

If looking into someone's eyes makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to look directly into them. Try looking in that general area - their eyebrows or the bridge of their nose. At the very least, look at their face as opposed to your shoes.

Listen
This is probably one of the least developed social skills. Listening is different from hearing. Listening is making sense of and understanding what is being said; hearing is a physical ability. We tend to be good "hearers" but not always good listeners.

Listening goes beyond using your ears. It involves your entire face and even your body.

Your facial expressions let the speaker know that you're listening and whether or not you're following and understanding what he is saying. Focus on the person who is speaking by maintaining eye contact, nodding your head, using verbal cues such as "uh-huh" and "I see," and standing or sitting still to reduce distractions.

Also, don't interrupt. We tend to want to be the speaker and say what's on our mind. You'll have your turn to talk when the speaker is finished. Speakers need listeners and vice-a-versa.

Notice that these three tips don't include talking. This doesn't mean you shouldn't talk at all, far from it. These three skills have been isolated to emphasize their overall importance as good social skills.

Being aware of non-verbal skills is part of good social skills. If your goal is to have better interactions with others, simply keep these in mind.

Laurie Wilhelm