Warren Buffet is rumored to have told a group of MBA students that communication was the one skill he wished he had learned more about while he was in college.
Communication is one of the most crucial skills to thrive. Always has been. Always will.
In a recent survey of recruiters, communication competency was cited as the single most decisive factor in choosing managers.
To get the most out of this course, begin with the Self -Assessment.
then start filling in the areas you want to learn.
- Foundations
- Communication Theory
- History
- Thinkers
- Shannon
- Chomsky
- Lakoff
- Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
- Eckman
- Process
- Turing
- Machiavelli
- Models
- Communication Theory
- four communication building blocks you’re going to need every day.
- communication strategies you want to incorporate in your everyday situations.
- It’s in these ordinary day-to-day situations that we prove our credibility to others through excellent communication. (a survey of LinkedIn learners to find out what types of communication situations you face most often, and they told us they wanted to hear about dealing with these awkward professional yet social settings like lunches and pre-meeting small talk.
- In these strategies, we’ve included tips for running great meetings and sending out emails, two things you probably do every single day.
- Maybe you also need to explain or teach or demonstrate things to other people, which can be tough any time, but especially if the person you’re teaching is older than you or has been with the company longer than thing have.
- The beauty of online learning is that you can watch straight through or you can pick and choose among these five common communication situations to learn about the ones that are most relevant to you.
- five challenging communication situations.
- 10 frequent and stress-inducing situations
The Five building blocks:
- Intent
- People
- Message
- Context
- Listening
Four building blocks create the foundation for successful communication, the people, the message, the context and effective listening.
The four elements are at play in every communication event, whether you’re presenting in front of 1000 people or making small talk with a coworker.
Before communicating, consider each of these four building blocks. As you walk to your next meeting, think to yourself, who will be there? What do I need to know about them? What kind of listener do I want to be right now? Before you hit Send on your next email, ask yourself, how’s the timing of this email? Is email appropriate or should I pop in for a quick chat? You’re making communication choices all the time, be mindful about those choices. Let’s begin by exploring the people building block, whether you’re the sender or the receiver of a message, it’s important to think about the other person’s perspective
for example, Tatiana and I need to edit some writing we’ve done, I send her an email saying, “hey, you edit the odd chapters, I’ll do the even ones, let’s finish by the end of the next week. “
Simple enough, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Well, if I don’t manage perceptions, the whole project and our relationship could blow up, I intended for this message to Tatiana to be helpful, to get things going, but the message might sound bossy or overbearing, who am I to tell her which chapters she has to edit? My intent may have been helpful, but what was the actual impact?
When deciding what and how to communicate with another person, consider the Think, Feel, Do model, what do I want someone to think? Time to start editing. What do I want them to feel? Respected, treated fairly and what do I want her to do? Get started. Now that I’ve thought of how I want them to feel, I might adjust my original wording from, you do the odd chapters, I’ll do the even to something softer like, to get the ball rolling, I suggest you edit the odd chapters, I’ll do the even, but if you have something else in mind, please let me know right away.
Communication gets tricky, because all people have mental filters, certain levels of knowledge, personal concerns or preconceived notions, that affect the way we interpret messages. If I’m leaving for a business trip tomorrow, when I ask Tatiana to let me know right away, right away to me means now, she on the other hand has just started her vacation, her kids are on break, right away to her means a few hours or even days. Those mental filters dictate how we decode or understand a message. Think of a conversation you have coming up soon, what assumptions might your conversational partner have about you or the topic? What do you want the other person to think, to feel, to do? Let your answers inform the words, the tone and the body language you use during the conversation. If you want to be a great communicator, begin with the people building block, do your best to understand a message from the other’s perspective.