How many times have you been involved in a conversation that either party involved had to say “I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say”?
Verbal communication is the core of our existence as humans and it can be whatever the parties involved make it be.
Whether heated, calm, enjoyable or regrettable, we need to communicate effectively to co-exist and be productive.
For verbal communication to be effective, you need assertive speakers and dedicated listeners.
It takes the form of a rally in tennis, where either party enjoys hitting and returning clear, concise and objective sentences.
It's listening and understanding contrary opinions even when you believe what you've said is the absolute truth
Greetings, yelling for help when someone is in trouble, asking for something when we’re in need, joking about stuff with friends, dropping a sales pitch to a potential customer, giving monthly/quarterly review to your reports or firing an employee are all forms of verbal communication that we often get wrong.
Greetings easily go from ‘Hello how you doing’ to a contest on who’s having the worst morning, or who has the most exciting story to tell about the weekend.
Asking for help becomes an avenue for the helper to make the person feel dumb for not knowing what he’s asking for help about.
Experiences shared among a group of friends as jokes, takes a spin-off into who can make people laugh the most by telling the worst lies.
Salespeople deviate from their conventional methods of persuasion to lying through their teeth just to make you spend money on their product.
We are all unique humans with valid thought processes. When two or more of us are gathered(mostly with some booze), there's almost always a conflict in these thought processes.
With effective communication, times like these can be the most valuable, because we get the opportunity to learn new things, new things that may change our lives for good.
But most times, our ego interferes with the learning process, and instead, we spend hours looking for ways to disprove the other person's thought process.
It becomes a game that either party wants to win. We end up preferring arguments, to admitting how we may be wrong.
Having battled with speech impediments my whole life, I’m not the best communicator. I worry about how to say what I need to say without stuttering, rather than focusing on how to make more sense out of what I want to say. I’ve gotten better over time, because I learned to focus more on building better communication skills, around it.
Being a stutterer, talking less has helped me develop awesome listening skills. When I'm tuned in, I soak up every decibel of sound I hear. "Oh my God you hear everything" - my wife teases me sometimes.
But it goes beyond hearing everything; It's listening and understanding contrary opinions even when you believe what you've said is the absolute truth.
It's being a sounding board for people that like to talk; lending listening ears and inquisitive minds to their ideas.
It's asking questions about things you may not understand, even when these questions seem stupid to you.
As we continue to learn every day, let's keep it at the back of our minds that, effective communication is the key to improvement, and should be the center of our daily conversations.