The importance of effective communication

It is not difficult to communicate with others, but how many of us exercise effective communication? Honestly, I don’t think I do. Be it choice of words, speaking tone, or even body language, I often find myself falling short of communicating effectively with others in an engaging and interesting way.

Never did I know that there were so many components in communication until I surveyed the textbook. They can be broadly categorized into four areas, such as active listening, interpreting nonverbal communication cues, building interpersonal communication and fostering intercultural communication. Learning more about effective communication serves a very practical purpose in organizing and expressing my ideas, especially when I should be stepping into the working world soon.

Being an active listener is pivotal, since communication is never a unidirectional process. However, it is always a challenge to overcome the many barriers in active listening, such as mental, environmental, emotional and socio-cultural barriers. Some strategies to active listening could be focusing on the goals and purposes of the conversation and paraphrasing the speaker’s thoughts. I find this very useful because not only can I restate the speaker’s ideas in my own words (which means I understood what he/she meant), I could also check if I got any of the parts wrong.

Nonverbal communication is also an important component in effective communication because they are the little things that our body expresses, sometimes without us consciously knowing about it. I’m guilty of this, because my face is a blank slate and my emotions are usually written all over it! I cross my arms when I’m angry, roll my eyes when I think you’re being ridiculous, and slouch most of the time. These things are awful aren’t they? Developing effective communication skills are therefore important to me because not only do I see them useful in helping me communicate with my colleagues in future, I think it also makes me a better person on the whole.

Effective communication also helps to build relationships, be it with the older or younger generations, with our future spouses, and also with our bosses and colleagues. How you carry yourself in a conversation seems to be the first impression that you give others as well. In a relationship, we’ve also got to be empathetic and sensitive to issues and taboos that come with different ethnic groups. With the “shirking world” due to globalization, it would be inevitable that we would meet people from different parts of the world, hence knowing their culture and customs would enable us to communicate more effectively with them. This also has an immediate application closer to home since Singapore is a multi-cultural society, and racial harmony is something our society values very much.

Identifying the steps to effective communication is the first stage to developing it. Now, it’ll take a lot of conscious effort and practice on my part to try to master them.