Communication skills are very important for your relationships and our personal well-being. Discover how to improve your communication skills thanks to psychology.
Our communicative skills They define a lot of who we are and how we relate to others. Thanks to our communication skills we can express what we really want to others and therefore, we have a higher degree of satisfaction in different areas of our lives. In this way, expressing yourself correctly becomes one of the basic skills to be happy.
The communication skills It is the ability that people have to express our thoughts and feelings. In this way, when an individual has basic communication skills, he or she is able to say what he or she thinks in a respectful way with others and with him or herself.
Types of communication skills
There are different styles of communicative skills that we people have. According to psychologists, people can have these three types of communication.
Aggressive
He has a high tone of voice, he also usually speaks very quickly and always tends to spend a long time speaking. People with aggressive communication skills tend to be serious and do not respect distance from their other interlocutors. Another feature of this type of communication skills is that they tend to use swear words in their speeches as well as pay little attention to the recipient of the message.
Passive
Unlike people with a communicative ability aggressive, passive ones usually use a low tone of voice. They also tend to have unclear and rather fast language, thus, they tend to be people who do not express clear statements or face the opinions of others.
Assertive
People with these communication skills They usually have a more conversational tone, pleasant intonation, adjusted speed, adequate clarity, frequent smile, friendly facial expression, firm but not abrupt gestures that accompany the speech, loose hands and upright posture. Likewise, show personal attention, ask a variety of questions, provide praise and verbal reinforcement, and respond to questions according to their formulation (open or closed).
The communicative ability Assertive is the one that brings us the most advantages, since:
It allows us to express ourselves in an appropriate manner and without attacking
Allows us Solve the problems that we find in social relationships, which generates satisfaction and makes us feel comfortable with ourselves and with others, increasing our self-esteem.
Allows us defend our rights and express our opinions respecting those of others.
In a social situation, it makes us feel relaxed and in control the situation.
Have the communicative skills Being assertive is a skill that you must learn to be able to have better relationships and know how to express your desires to others. Not doing so is not only a mistake that will harm you but also the people you love most and your relationship with them. For this reason, if you want to improve your communication skills you can always count on the help of a mental health professional.
How to improve our communication skills?
If you want to improve your communication skills, there are a series of tips that you can take into account to apply in your daily life. Thanks to applying them you will be able to improve your communication skills and your relationship with others.
1. Be aware of what your objective is when starting communication
Before starting to talk to the other person, clarify your goal, what is the result you need to achieve. This is essential to not get dispersed. The greatest risk of not being clear objectives in communication It is getting lost in the world of our interlocutor. That will take us away from our real objective.
To avoid this, analyze, design your objective, and get the other person to follow that path you have outlined. Every time you go to talk to a person, think about what you want to say before you say it with your words. Doing this small step will make your communicative ability It will improve a lot because you will have organized your mind before talking to others.
2. Communicate positively
To improve your social skills and communication With others, it is vital to try to let go of negativity. To do this, you will have to take care of your words as well as abandon negative expressions in your language and your body. If you suddenly realize that you are speaking negatively, in a natural, gentle way, go back to communicating positively. Focus on what you want, on the possible solutions, and avoid focusing on what you don’t want, on the problems, on what is missing.
3. Focus your attention on your interlocutor
Communicating is the art of persuading: when we communicate we are trying to convince the other person about something. For this, it is essential that your attention is focused on the other, not on you. And this is a very common mistake: we use our attention as if it were a flashlight focused on us, and in reality we do want it to be useful to improve our communicative ability we should focus it outwards.
By practicing active listening to the other, you will discover their way of seeing the world, of thinking, you will even guess things that they are not saying with language, and that they are saying with their body. At this point, if the conversation has to make sense, it has to make sense to the other party, the one who is listening to you, the one you want to persuade. People buy our arguments for their own reasons, they respond to their own reasons, not yours.
So if you pay attention to what the other person is really thinking and feeling, you will have very valuable information to convince them. By focusing on your interlocutor you can improve your communication skills Observing these small details that give you a lot of information about the other person.
4. Rapport
Before starting a persuasive conversation, such as a negotiation, mediation, or a difficult conversation with a productive claim, you must first generate an environment of empathy. Tune into your interlocutor, empathize with him, and then it will be easier to enter into a persuasive conversation and be a more communicative person. Otherwise, unnecessary resistance will be generated, which will take you away from your goal.
In life everything has its time, its rhythm. Listen to the person, tune in to them, and from there everything will be easier. Move with the energy of the other and reach joint solutions with them. What is important for develop communication skills It’s not that you are the winner of the conversation. The important thing is that you achieve your initial objective, and to do this you must put your ego aside before starting the conversation. In this way you will be able to reach agreements that benefit both parties.
5. Avoid presuppositions
An important part of conversations is finding out what is really important to the other party, or what they think about the situation. Don’t assume that they think like you, or that they have access to the same information as you. Don’t take anything for granted. Find out what he knows, and what opinion he has about your conversation. By letting go of presuppositions you will not only improve your basic communication skills but you will also be able to improve the bond with the person since you will begin to see them with different eyes.
6. Separate facts from interpretations of facts
A mistake we all make our communication skills It is confusing a fact with our interpretation. A fact is a description of what we have seen, heard, felt at a given moment. There is no room for interpretation, it is aseptic, clean, transparent data.
The moment we say what that specific fact means to us, we are making an interpretation of it. We are passing judgment. We interpret things and events based on our personal history. In this way, our communication skills They are influenced by our subjectivity.
When we communicate, it is recommended not to give interpretations about other people’s events, that is, let the other person make their own interpretation. Thus avoid imposing your way of seeing things, since that vision is valid for you, but may not be valid for others. Talk about what your opinion is, not about the opinion of others, since there are an infinite number of opinions and an infinite number of realities, and they are all partly right.
7. Check what you are listening to
It is important to keep this advice in mind when closing a conversation. Effective communication ends when we repeat to the other party what we have heard and understood, and the conclusions you have reached. In this way we let him see that we have been attentive, that we care about his point of view, and what is more important, that we have understood what he wanted to tell us.
We are giving you an opportunity to make the necessary clarifications and clarifications, we make sure that we have understood you correctly, and it is also a way to close the conversation by reviewing the fundamental milestones. Through this communication skill we can close a conversation in the best possible way.
8. Discover your own thoughts and feelings
The ABC model of psychologist Albert Ellis explains to us how our thoughts and emotions depend on the interpretation we make of the events that occur in reality. If our interpretations are very distorted, they will lead us to mistakes in communication with others. Therefore, if you want to improve your communication skills or your communication competencies you should try to organize your thoughts and feelings before you start talking.
9. Be aware of non-verbal communication
From everything discussed regarding gestural communication, it is important to highlight the need for congruence between what is said and the expression and gestures that accompany it. Generally we will achieve congruence in the message if we behave authentically, feeling and respecting our own being and empathizing and respecting the world of others. In many cases, body language says much more than words. In this way, if you want to improve your communicative skills start paying attention and learning from these small signals that our bodies send to others.
These are some of the methods that will improve your communication skills. Despite this, the key to communicating well is knowing yourself inside and out. Therefore, having the help of a psychology professional will undoubtedly be one of the best options if you want to have the best communicative skills In order to speak well with others, you must first know how to speak to yourself.
