Communication Skills - The 6 Keys Of Powerful Communication

Hey , this is Leo for actualized dot org .

And in this video , I'm gonna talk about communication skills .

All right .

So let's talk a little bit about communication skills and what it really takes to improve your communication skills .

And how do you become a good communicator before we go into that ?

And I'm gonna give you 66 key points that you need to follow to become a very effective and lethal communicator .

But before we get into that , let's talk a little bit about why this is even important .

Why this is something that you should be concerned about communication skills .

It's something that see ruining people's lives , lack thereof .

When you lack communication skills , if you lack communication skills , you're going to have a problem in your intimate relationships .

If you lack communication skills , you're gonna have a problem at your job , at your work .

If you lack communication skills , you're gonna have a problem managing employees or running a business .

If you do that , working with clients , that's something that's really big that I found communication skills are important in and overall in life , having solid communication skills is important to make your life smooth .

Just like little things will work better for you when you have good communication skills , even something as simple as like placing an order at the restaurant , placing a clear order and doing it in a way where you get what you want from the waitress or the waiter and getting your way in life .

This is much easier when you have solid communication skills rather than when you're , you're unclear , you're mumbly , you're not sure what you want , you're not assertive and you have all these other problems .

So let's go into that and talk about it .

Communication skills are something that you want to work on because this is something that's going to last for your whole life , right ?

Your life goes on , you're going to run into people , you're gonna have problems communicating , you're gonna have problems writing , you're even going to have challenges with marketing yourself , whether you're selling yourself in a resume format where you're pitching yourself to new employers and you're trying to get a better job or you're selling some sort of business proposal that you've got or maybe a product or a service that you've created that you really want to be successful and that , that's important to your purpose in life .

Well , to do all those things effectively , you need to be able to communicate effectively .

So let's talk about that .

What does it really take to become a good communicator ?

I would say that there are six pillars , at least for me that I sat down and I kind of thought about , OK , what is it really ?

What are the essential components ?

So here they are , I'm going to list them off and then we're going to go into each one into some detail and you're going to get some clarity around that and then you can go and work on whatever one of these six or maybe more than one you are deficient the most in .

So it's kind of like looking at your sticking points .

Where are your communication skill , sticking points .

So here are the six .

Number one is assertiveness .

Number two is authenticity .

Number three is open mindedness .

Number four is empathy .

Number five is clarity and number six is listening , listening skills .

So those are the six .

Now let's go and talk a little , a little bit about each one .

So first of all , assertiveness being a communicator and the reason that you're communicating anything at all is because you usually want something to happen because of your words or however you're communicating , you can communicate , not just using words , you can communicate , using body language and imagery and other things .

But ultimately , you're trying to convey some sort of message , have some sort of impact .

So a lot of people , they will communicate things , but then they don't get what they actually want with the communication because their communication is not assertive , they're not really pushing for their own agenda .

They're not sticking to their guns .

So then they end up not getting what they want .

Maybe this is happening to you in a relationship , maybe this is happening to you in a debate , maybe it's happening to you in an office meeting or somewhere else in your life , right ?

You have to be assertive , you have to be assertive .

That means that you can't be a doormat .

You can't just let other people impose their agenda upon you .

Your communication has to be such that people perceive it as , as serious that way .

They take your words and your language seriously and they take your intentions and your ideas seriously .

So this is something that is very important .

You have to know how to be confident in your delivery , not just that but also be insistent and persistent , right ?

Like I know people , friends of mine who are really , really good at this personally , I've struggled with assertiveness myself .

I was always kind of meek in the way that , that I would interact with people and I still am to a certain degree , I've worked on it a lot , but this kind of weakness really holds you back because a lot of times you'll want something simple and you won't be able to get it simply because you give up before your message has been delivered .

And sometimes your message has to be repeated and repeated and repeated persistently until you get what you want .

It could be just a very simple thing like maybe you go to a hotel and they don't have your room for some reason .

They sold your room to somebody else and now you need to , you need a room for the night .

So basically , what can you do ?

Well , you can just accept it as it is , maybe ask them about why they screwed up your reservation and accept it or you can be assertive .

You can be persistent , you can get the manager to come out , you can get his manager to come out .

You can kind of pummel away at the problem until maybe some something clicks and something happens and you'd be surprised how , how often something like that where you're being assertive and being assertive , sometimes just some sort of spontaneous solution presents itself .

Whereas if you were meek , then you would have just been hit , you would have taken that hit and you wouldn't have ultimately gotten what you wanted out of the situation .

So , assertiveness is important .

The next point is point number two , authenticity .

Authenticity is critical .

Authenticity is about being true to yourself .

How often are you true to yourself in your communication ?

If you're like most people , then what most people do is they hold back .

They want to be polite , they want to be cure .

They , they don't want to offend somebody and they'll do anything to , to make the , the transaction , the verbal transaction go well , the communication go well and they won't really worry about whether they're being honest and true to themselves , whether their own values are being honored here in this situation to do that .

You have to , first of all know what your authentic self actually is .

So you have to kind of be clear about your own values .

You have to know about what your own agenda is and what you want out of life and what is true and what is not true for you .

You have to know where the boundaries are and then you have to have the courage to go out there and , and fight for that because being authentic , that's not something that comes spontaneously to most people , for most people that takes effort and work because we've always been taught and been conditioned to be polite and to put this big smile on our face and uh you know , that can be fine in some situations and that will hold certain situations over .

But in the long run , it doesn't work in the long run .

People see that they can see right through your inauthenticity .

And when you are communicating with someone who's inauthentic , you can clearly feel it off that person .

And so his message and his ideas , they get deluded , they don't have the power that they want to have .

But not only that , but the person who is doing that communication who's being inauthentic , he or she is uh is ultimately unfulfilled with him or herself .

So that's why authenticity is critical number three is open mindedness .

You have to be open minded when you're interacting with other people .

Open nine does this means that you're willing to consider other perspectives , alternative scenarios and ideas ?

Don't close your mind off to alternate points of view because you will be coming into contact with many people in your life and their points of view might be very different than your own .

And a lot of times our gut reaction is to say , no , that's not something that I'm interested in .

That's not something I want , that's clearly wrong .

That's , that's awful .

Whatever .

And you judge and you criticize and you draw a basically a wall between yourself and the other person or his ideas .

And when that happens , then there's that wall , there's that wall between you two .

And so no effective communication can happen if all you're doing is just being very , very insistent on your own points of view , being very dogmatic and grounded on that .

But then you're not willing to consider other perspectives .

Well , other people are not going to want to communicate with you .

You're going to be a very stubborn person .

People will label you as such and then they'll try to avoid you because who wants to be in that kind of environment , who wants to communicate with someone like that ?

People want to communicate with somebody who's willing to listen to them to consider their ideas , not just in a superficial way , but honestly , like there should always be a chance for that other person to convince you of their ideas .

So if someone is talking to you and even if you don't like what they're saying , you can still stay there and listen and entertain an idea just because you're intelligent and you're willing to entertain various ideas that are not necessarily your own .

And that doesn't mean you have to adopt them , but you can entertain them , you can play around with them .

And then once in a while , you actually do adopt one , it's actually something that's very critical and important to your own personal development .

Because if uh if you're not taking on this kind of open receptive mindset , then that means that you are uh you're kind of stuck in your own place , you're stuck in your own beliefs in your own ideas .

Not only is it going to create communication problems , it's just going to limit your growth as a human being .

Ultimately , you're hurting yourself by doing that .

So , open mindedness is very important .

The 4th 0.4 the fourth point is empathy , empathy is very important for communication .

In fact , human beings we have and this has been a study by neuroscientists .

We have what are called mirror neurons , mirror neurons , what they are , are they specialized neurons in the brain ?

And what they do is they allow us to have empathy with other human beings and even other creatures .

So for example , we can see maybe someone like a friend of ours or a spouse of ours walking across the room and stubbing , let's say her toe on , on the , on the coffee table .

And so she stubs her toe on the coffee table .

And when I look at that , I wince , I go right because I see the pain in her face , I see her grabbing her toe and I'm wincing because I , I feel the pain literally in my own brain .

And those are my mirror neurons firing off .

And what the mirror neurons allow us to do is they literally allow us to , to experience the emotions that we would have experienced if we were in that situation .

But we're not right when I'm seeing someone stub their toe on the coffee table , I'm not in that situation but I'm seeing it and I'm imagining it .

And now I'm actually feeling the pain of it a little bit , not as much but a little bit of that pain .

I actually feel that's what makes my face scrunch up and wince .

So those are the mirror neurons happening .

That's empathy .

Now , why is empathy important for communication ?

Well , the other person wants to feel like they're being heard and they're being understood .

Empathy creates a common ground when you can empathize with the person that you're communicating with that person will feel like , oh OK , he gets me , she understands where I'm coming from .

OK .

She's just like me .

We have common ground .

Let's communicate let's see , kind of like where this goes and it comes , it creates this kind of a cooperative dynamic .

Whereas if you have no empathy for the other person and you don't understand their emotions , you can't relate to their emotions .

They will sense that off of you and they will think , well , this , this guy or this girl , uh she doesn't know anything about me .

He doesn't know my problems and my challenges .

So how can , how can I listen to him ?

How can I listen to her ?

Her message is not going to resonate with me because she has very different experiences , very different for me .

And so there's now this , this this gulf of separation .

If you notice a lot of my videos , I talk about a lot of the problems that you have .

When I start off a video , I start talking about a problem and I talk about the emotions of it .

That's because I want to build empathy and I don't just just do that to kind of courtesy favor with you .

I do that because a lot of times I've come and I've experienced those negative places that I'm talking about , right ?

So if we're talking about some sort of negative emotion or some sort of negative situation in life that you're trying to fix , well , I've had those situations in my life and now I can use those and I can build a common ground between us so that you'll be more receptive to what I'm saying .

So , empathy is going to hit you a very long way in your communication skills , especially in intimate relationships .

Empathy is very important .

The next point , this is point number five .

Now is clarity .

Communication needs to be clear .

There's an old idea , I don't remember where I got this from .

But I think it's a classic idea that communication is not what you meant to say , but it's what the other person received .

So a lot of times we'll think that we said something and then the other person will hear our words , hear our message and then do something else or believe something else other than what we intended .

Well , here by this more rigorous standard of judging our communication , what we really want to say is that whatever the person hears and understands , that's what was really communicated , not what we intended .

So clarity is all about getting your intention in line with what the other person actually perceives .

The best type of communication is extremely clear .

It's accurate .

It's easy for other people to understand what is being meant .

It's not loosey goosey and nebulous and too abstract , which allows for many , many types of interpretation .

Clarity is very important because if you're not clear in your communication , then what you're communicating will get misinterpreted and then people will start doing things that you didn't really intend them to do .

They'll start believing that you believe things that you didn't actually believe this can create problems in your business .

This can create problems when you're giving instructions to people to do things .

This can create problems with just very simple things .

Like you tell your kids , you call your kids on the phone , you tell them to , to do something very specific .

And if you don't say it clearly in the right way , then they won't do it , they'll do what they want to do .

So clarity is something that you need to work on .

If you have problems where people are misperceiving what you're telling them , then maybe it's not them , but it's you .

And the way that you're communicating , you're not articulating yourself accurately .

And the last point point number six is listening .

So communication just talking and talking and talking , it doesn't really work unless you also hear back , right ?

As I said before , people wanna wanna feel like they're being listened to .

They don't , they don't want to just be talked at , they have to be listened and listening is not just about opening your ears .

A lot of times it's just as simple as opening your ears .

But you have to also let the other person know that you're listening to them and they , they were heard .

So for example , just like very simple little things being an active listener , what that means is nodding your head when you're standing there and you're listening to somebody nodding your head so that they're registering it saying mhm once in a while .

Mhm .

Oh I see .

OK .

Oh , interesting point .

So make little comments like that , asking questions , clarifying questions about what was said .

So the person feels like you're actually listening and you're engaged and you want to know more .

Those are , those are very critical , very critical when you're sitting down face to face with somebody , especially when the stakes are high .

When the issue is big , you need to let the other person know that you're actually listening to them and hearing them and you have to actually want to do that .

Ok .

So if these are the six pillars , now you have to ask yourself if you have trouble with communication skills or you want to improve , which one of these six are the one or two that are really holding you back that are causing you the most friction in your communications ?

Is it absurdness , authenticity , lack of open mindedness , lack of empathy , lack of clarity or lack of listening , pick one or two of those and then say , ok , I want to improve that .

I want to work on that and I'm going to devote the next 30 or 60 or 90 days really focusing on that and looking for ways that I can improve .

Let's say , let's say you want to improve your clarity .

I'm going to look at ways that I can improve my clarity .

How can I write more clear emails ?

How can I give more clear presentations at work .

What does that mean ?

Do I have to study ?

Do I have to read some books ?

Do I have to take some notes ?

Do I have to , do you have to spend more time preparing for my presentation ?

Do I have to , do you have to maybe get feedback from my boss in a way that I haven't been getting before ?

Do I have to maybe learn some new vocabulary ?

Maybe I have to simplify down my vocabulary instead of being all highfalutin and trying to be sophisticated .

Maybe I should just boil my vocabulary down to something very simple where people can actually understand what I'm saying rather than trying to impress them with my big use of fancy words .

So that would be a way that you could work on clarity and you could do this for all the other ones as well and then practice , practice at work , practice in your intimate relationship , practice at , uh , even like very simple places when you're going out and you're ordering a coffee at the Starbucks practice there as you're chatting with the , the cashier , you can practice all these things all the time throughout your life and the more you interact with people , then the better and better and better you get at this .

But I think that it's important to put your attention on it because a lot of people , they'll just assume that communication , well , that's something that just kind of kind of comes naturally .

I don't really need to work on it .

Well , if you are in any kind of professional setting , then you know that it takes , it takes actual work and practice to get really good at communication and you can join organizations like toast masters and , and maybe volunteer to do more types of public speaking and other types of things at your , at your job in order to become a better communicator .

Ok .

This is Leah , I'm signing off .

This is how to improve your communication skills .

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