Improving Communication Skills
To help you build your brilliant business connections you need polished communication skills. If you can harness these to your other attributes, you will be well on the way to making these relationships rewarding and profitable.
Face to Face Encounters
The key to success is to get onto your business contact's wavelength as soon as possible. By putting yourself in his shoes you'll demonstrate your ability to empathise with him. He'll find communicating with you easy and will show positive responses.
One of the most important aspects of communicating is to develop good listening skills. By listening you will pick up quickly on the areas of common ground between you.
Key Point : Many people are not good listeners. You are not alone if you are far more interested in what you have to say, or what the people standing next to you at the business reception are saying. Poor listening damages exchanges and that is what you are at pains to avoid.
Good listening avoids misunderstandings and the errors that result from them. The behaviour of a good listener is as follows:
- A person who is listening attentively keeps a comfortable level of eye contact and has an open and relaxed but alert pose. You should face the speaker and respond to what he is saying with appropriate facial expressions, offering encouragement with a nod or a smile.
- Adopting the behaviour of a good listener will help you establish good rapport with your business contact. It requires a degree of self-discipline and a genuine desire to take on board the message the speaker is trying to convey. You need to be able to suspend judgement and avoid contradicting or interrupting him. Postpone saying your bit until you are sure he has finished and you have understood his point.
- Reflecting and summarising - repeating back a key word or phrase the speaker has used - shows you have listened and understood. Summarising gives the speaker a chance to add to or amend your understanding. Your business contact is far more likely to listen to you if you have let him know that you have heard what he said by using the tactics of reflecting and summarising.
You should avoid:
- thinking up clever counter-arguments before he has finished making his point
- interrupting unnecessarily or reacting emotionally to anything that is said
- if the subject becomes dull or complex, registering your disinterest by succumbing to distractions or fidgeting.
