What are Communication Skills?

Communication skills are really important skills to have.  To find out why communications skills are so important, follow the link below to read an article on understanding communication skills.

http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/CommunicationIntro.htm

Are You Communicating Well?

To succeed in everyday life and the workplace, good communication skills are essential.  Take the quiz at the link below to find out how good your communications skills are:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCS_99.htm

The 7 C’s

If you need help understanding what clear communication looks like have a read of this online article.  The 7 Cs checklist is a really useful tool to help you ensure that you are communicating clearly and effectively.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCS_85.htm

Present like Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was known as one of the best presenters in the world and it’s because he kept them simple, but engaging. Follow these useful tips when doing your next presentation.

• Set the theme or headline; this is the main topic that should be consistent throughout the presentation.
• Provide an outline; summarise what you are going to address as a guidepost for the audience.
• Clear transitions; don’t just jump from one topic to another, try and create seamless transitions.
• Passion; avoid being monotone and avoid standing in the same spot reading from a piece of paper. Be engaging by using passionate language to show what you’re talking about is interesting and people need to pay attention.
• Make it meaningful; listing facts and figures aren’t effective if your audience can’t relate to them – so make them relevant by comparing them to modern day to day life.
• Make it visual and simple; you need to use visual aids to capture attention, but at the same time you don’t want too much going on as the audience won’t take in what you’re saying.
• Build up to something memorable; take the most interesting section of what you’re presenting and place that towards the end so you can build up to it
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse; it’s obvious when someone hasn’t practiced because they trip over certain words, they don’t look away from their notes and they don’t look comfortable – and that makes the audience feel awkward.

Watch some examples about how he did his presentations on this clip;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ntLGOyHw4

Communicating with Others

There are times we all get annoyed when people don’t understand something that you consider quite simple. This is very apparent when it comes to group work, and this is something you need to get used to at sixth form and university. But most of the time, it actually comes down to how clear you are actually being when explaining something.

As an activity; find something you can use to construct something, with a variety of shapes and colours. A handful of Lego would do the trick. Construct a unique object, nothing fancy, and take a photograph of it on a phone or camera.

Now, dismantle your structure and place the same pieces in front of a friend. But, you need to blindfold them. Now try and guide them verbally of how to reconstruct that object until it resembles exactly what your photograph shows.

Afterwards ask yourselves these questions;

• What does your friend think you could have done to help them more?
• What do you think your friend could have done to help you more?
• What could you do better if you were to do it again?

Repeat this exercise and see if you have improved on your time