Become a Better Communicator

Five Things to Do to Improve Your Communication Skills

The late Earl Nightingale called your ability to communicate "the single factor that controls to a significant degree the amount of money you will earn and the caliber of people with whom you will associate." Yet it isn't just an issue of money or professional success. Les Giblin, in his classic How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing With People, wrote: "Our happiness...depends to a great extent upon our ability to express our ideas, desires, hopes, ambitions, or disappointments to other people by the use of talk." Quite simply, communication is the most fundamental and important skill in life.

Here are five things you can do to improve your communication skills:

1. Decide that it's more important to understand other people than it is for them to understand you.

In his classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey says that we must "seek first to understand, and then to be understood." Put another way, you must make it a priority to understand people and their wants and needs - and this must be more important to you than your own. This is a tall order, since we live in a very self-obsessed culture.

This advice is rooted in ancient wisdom. The Apostle Paul told the church in Philippi: "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself" (Phillippians 2:3, NKJV).

You should apply this principle at home and at work. At home, this means making sure you understand the needs, desires, and communication of your spouse before you try to get him or her to understand you. Same with your children. At work, make sure you fully hear and comprehend the proposals, opinions, concerns, suggestions, and objections of your boss and co-workers, before you try to get them to hear you.

2. Become an active listener.

The first step puts you in a position to implement this next step. When you listen to the other party (be it your spouse or co-worker), listen actively. Make sure you understand what he or she is saying. If that means, asking questions, do it. If it means repeating back to the person what he or she said, do it.