An individual might have an extremely pleasing personality, in depth knowledge of the subject, a good and a very strong network but if he doesn’t have effective communication skills, he fails to prove his worth and his charm and talent go simply unnoticed. A person without effective communication skills will never be able to carve his niche in this fierce competitive world.

Not every individual is born with good communication skills; it is inherited in due course of time as the individual passes through the various stages of life. Communication skill is an art which has to be mastered to make one’s presence feel, stand apart from the crowd and emerge as a strong leader in all facets of life.

Let us find out some easy steps which an individual can follow to improve communication skills.

• There is no magic stick which can improve the communication skills of an individual in a day or two. One has to follow the two Ps to improve one’s communication skills. The two Ps are Practice and Patience. One has to be extremely patient and practice a lot to improve communication skills. Interact with your friends, relatives, colleagues as much as you can and also try to gain from them in the discipline of accent, fluency, pronunciation as well as new words. If you come across any word whose meaning you are not aware of, don’t ignore, always find out its meaning and whenever you speak the next time, try to use the new learnt word.

• Whenever a thought comes to your mind, always do your homework well in advance before communicating. Carefully prepare a content by choosing appropriate, sensible and relevant words. Avoid using extremely complicated words in the content. Try to make the content as crisp as possible. Unorganized and haphazard thoughts always lead to misunderstandings and confusions. Don’t ignore even the minutest detail as questions can pop up anytime from the listener’s side.

• The pitch and tone should be taken good care of while interacting. Don’t stammer or chew half of the words while speaking. Speak clearly and properly in a tone audible to all the listeners, even those sitting at the back.

• Don’t stretch any conversation, presentation or meeting too long as it tends to become monotonous and the message never reaches the brains of the listeners, and hence resulting in an ineffective communication. Crack some jokes, funny quotations, one liners, discuss about the day’s weather, and use warm greetings and compliments to captivate the interest of the participants. Tea break or a snack break must be included to break the ice among the listeners and make the communication interesting and healthy.

• In any communication, it is very important to understand the recipient. Remember the listeners are also an active part of the communication. One must understand the mood, educational background, cultural back ground, thought process, religion background of the listeners before addressing. It is must to do a KYC (Know your customer) check before proceeding with the communication.

• Never communicate in a noisy background as noise acts a barrier to an effective communication. Busy streets, honking traffic, overcrowded buses and trains, market places, construction sites, railway stations should be avoided as the devil called “NOISE” overpowers the original content and thus distorts the message and information never reaches in its desired form. In case of an urgent message, rely on text message or non verbal mode of communication.

• Always cross check with the receiver whether he has downloaded the message in the correct form or not? Also ask questions from the receivers in between the conversation to reconfirm whether they are attentive or simply lost in their own dream world. While sharing any contact number, email id, bank account details or any other important information, always recheck with the recipient. At the end, do clear the doubts if any of the listeners.

• Don’t always depend on verbal communication at work place. After any verbal communication with the fellow workers, make it a habit to send the minutes of the meeting or the important points through e mail marking a cc to all the participants. Always depend on planners, organizers and jot down the important points against the date set as the deadline to complete a particular task. During presentations, the addressee must use whiteboards, papers and the participants also must carry a notepad to avoid forgetting any point.

• The listeners after receiving the message must also give their valuable feedback whether they have received the correct information or not. Before leaving; the listeners must clear all their doubts and must respond to the sender to make the communication effective. Never leave the meeting with queries in your head, always clear them with the speaker. The question answer session must come at the end of the conversation. The listener should not jump in between the conversation with questions as it leads to misunderstandings and conflicts.

• Last but not the least the sender must make an eye contact with the recipient for the desired impact. The speaker has to be very confident and ought to show positive body movement and attitude for the correct flow of information between the two parties.

Remember effective communication is a necessity in today’s challenging scenario and the above tips definitely go a long way in improving one’s communication skills.