Effective communication skills are vital and crucial if one is to excel and succeed in life. Unfortunately, the ability to communicate is inborn and it does not come naturally for most of us. Nevertheless, it is a skill which can be improved with practice.
The purpose of effective communication is to be able to project your idea clearly so that the listener receives the message that you intend to deliver, without any confusion or misinterpretation. There are many forms of communications, such as non-verbal, verbal or written. In different situations, different forms of communication used will elicit different responses. Thus, it is important we know the most appropriate ones to use. No matter how brilliant one’s idea is, it will be useless if one fails to share it effectively with others. To acquire these skills would certainly put one on an advantageous ground on the global industrial terrain.
Good communication skill is one of the key criteria in clinching a job, especially in a job interview. It is a crucial factor which outshines the candidate from his contemporaries, who have more or less of the same qualification. In addition, with effective communication skills at the workplace, a strong working relationship could also be forged with fellow colleagues. As a result, work can be done with more efficiency and less friction. Cumulatively, one who acquires good communication skills may excel and probably climb up the corporate ladder faster than others. Furthermore, communicating effectively could also help foster bonds with our loved ones and consequently contributes to a healthy lifestyle for oneself.
In conclusion, with the acquisition of good communication techniques, we can ensure that argument and disagreement are kept to a minimum, thus fostering relationship to develop well. Given the importance of effective communication in both the personal and corporate worlds, anybody who wants to make progress in life should develop this skill.
Hi Diana,
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on your first post! I think it's quite good!
I agree with you that the ability to communicate well does not come naturally for most of us, and it definitely does improve with practice! So I suppose we should definitely make the most of the opportunities in class to try our best to communicate with our classmates!
For the rest of the post, I do generally agree with your points, though I feel that you may be looking at it from an overly career-related point of view. Effective communication skills are definitely going to be helpful in our careers, but I do feel that it is invaluable too as part of our personal development.
I would also like to point out that part of the third and fourth paragraph sounds a little weird grammatically to me - for example, it may be to say "(..) a crucial factor which allows the candidate to outshine his contemporaries".
Cheers!
Hi Diana!
ReplyDeleteHope you are still doing fine during class.Don't worry, you will survive!
I think generally,most people believes that having good communication skills serve as a plus point for job candidates,but how many employers still choose good communication skills over merits? Does having the ability to communicate effectively really help a job candidate to outshine?
Dear Diana,
ReplyDeleteI must comment that you can write very well in my personal opinion. You have a especially good grasp of the English Language. I think one very big barrier in effectively communicating with another person is the medium of message transfer - which is none other than the language we use. Professionally, a formal and grammatically flawless use of a language makes a piece of writing outshine the others that were taken to compare altogether. In my opinion you have absolutely no problem in that aspect.
Something I would wish to comment on is the picture you included in your blog post. Often, long wordy blog posts do put readers off...but if written messages were to be enhanced with the use of pictures it makes it more attractive to the reader. First impression counts. I look forward to seeing more attractive blog posts from you!
A humble opinion from my part is that you could think of how to better link up the individual paragraphs and create even better transitions in between.
Anyway, that's a good job my twin!
I think your point about effective communication helping work well, secure jobs thanks to great communication skills and the like is a strong one.
ReplyDeleteAnd having said that, I also feel that there are times when their importance is overstated. While it does help open doors, I feel it also matters that we have the substance to back it up.
For example, I may make it into a job thanks to great talking skills but if I am no good at it, I would be shown the door pretty soon as well. I guess it does matter that we know where to draw the line.
Hi Diana,
ReplyDeleteI think you have done a great job for this blog post. You have managed to summarize all the main points that we have learnt during class into 3 sweet, short paragraphs. Moreover it is so concise. I do agree with Goh Chern that you have a good grasp of the English Language.
Well, I do agree with you that having a good communication skill will let you have an edge over the rest, who are vying with you for the same job, during a job interview. However, if you do not have the qualities that the company is looking for, no matter how eloquent you are, I suppose you will still not be able to clinch the job?
Just my two cents worth?
Hello guys,
ReplyDeletethanks and I appreciate all your comments!
Clement: Well, I certainly agree with you that effective communication skill is invaluable too as part of our personal development. That is why from my point of view, good communication skill also contribute to a healthy lifestyle for oneself. In order to achieve this, we have to constantly maintain or nurture a healthy communication network with our dear ones and people we interact with in our daily lives.However, in most scenarios, this is not easily achievable as differences in internal beliefs between individuals impede us from communicating effectively. Moreover, there are also many mental and physical factors such as temperament and mental awareness. Thus, I vehemently feel that developing good communication skills certainly contributes to one's personal development too! Thanks Clement for pointing it out.
Clement, Goh Chern, WeiYing: Thanks for your comments about my command of language. It is not as awesome and flawless as you all think, because I do have an editor for my post! Thanks for pointing out grammatically weird parts Clement, I will take note. Writing fluently and bringing my message across effectively to my reader is never easy but I believe by practising, there is always room for improvement. Moreover, with the help from fellow mates like you all, improvement is never impossible.
Goh Chern, thanks for your comment on creating a better transition between my paragraphs. I would love to pay more attention to that the next time.
Deenise, Rohan, WeiYing:
Yes! I agree with you all that we have got to have the potential to do well in the job as well. That is one crucial factor we have to acquire in order to excel at work. However, I believe by having effective communcation skills will certainly serve as bonus. First impression always counts. At the interview, it is often hard to judge the candidate's capability to hold the job well. Therefore, how we carry ourselves during the interview will definitely be accessed and contribute to clinching the job. However, whether or not we can hold the job for long will really depend on our work performance. And I believe with good talking skills, we can boost our work performance further and thus excel faster.
Thank you, Diana, for this clear and comprehensive post. You summarize quite well various skills that are vital for effective communication. You also present your ideas very fluently, demonstrating a good command of English. There is, however, one sentence that confuses me.
ReplyDeleteYou write: "Unfortunately, the ability to communicate is inborn and it does not come naturally for most of us."
This statement seems to have two contradictory assertions. Do you see what I mean?
Finally, I feel that there is one bit missing in this post when I look at it after referencing the post assignment: while you make a fine statement of the value of effective comm skills in general, you don't bring this down to your own situation enough, seemingly ignoring --except by implication -- your specific needs. This is not a major complaint, but an observation.
Still, I really appreciate your effort, and I look forward to reading more from you.
Hello Brad, thanks for your comments.
ReplyDeleteYes I agree there is a contradiction in my statement. Perhaps I should rephrase it as: The ability to communicate effectively is either inborn or developed over a period of time with environmental influences. Unfortunately, this communication ability does not come naturally for most of us.
Wow, thanks for pointing that out Brad!
Personally, I feet that effective communication is like a tool, probably used by all living things for interaction, which is necessary for survival. A newborn infant communicates by crying, but as it slowly grows up, it slowly learn to mimic its parents’ speech. Eventually, the child discovered that certain speech patterns elicit different responses from their parents or people around them. In short, even children learn effective communication and it all started at the moment we were borned.
Be it verbal or written communication or body language, they are all important tools of communication which we use in our daily lives. At times when communication breaks down, I feel that I couldn’t express my thoughts and concerns to people around me the way I want. Consequently, tension, confusion and misinterpretation will arise. Unnecessary explanations to clear the confusion and time wasted may even make others feel irritated. As a result, people may not want to relate or interact anymore, and we may even find ourselves as social outcast. With good talking skills, things can be done faster with better efficiency. In fact, we may also find it easier to enlarge our circle of friends. Nothing stays status quo in this dynamic world, and I believe in making constant progression to excel in life. Therefore, acquiring effective communication skills is of great importance to me in order to stay in progress in this competitive society.
Hope I have managed to express the importance of effective communication based more on my personal view now.