How Well Do You Communicate?

Have you ever felt communicating with someone can be difficult or challenging? or When speaking to someone, whether it be at work,home or in our personal relationships, messages can easily be misunderstood, misconstrued and mistaken for something they're not? Surely that can lead to confusion and frustration.

We have to remember people have different goals, tempers, backgrounds, perception, ideas and personal rules. I think if we keep that in the back of our minds when communicating, it will make it easier to get our point across.

A person can be successful when communicating if you have the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as your own.

Think of how many times you've said, or heard others say: "But I thought you meant...." or "I assumed you were talking about...." or "No, you've completely misunderstood what I was saying."

These little phrases come out of our mouths daily. We're so used to saying them we don't think about the wider implications: that it sometimes requires really hard work to make ourselves clear and to get ourselves understood by others.

When someone is talking to you, listen with the intent to understand first, not impose your ideas. Once that person feels heard, he or she will be open to then listen to you.

Effective communication occurs only if the receiver understands the exact information or idea that the sender intended to send. Most successful leaders have one thing in common...strong communication skills. They have the ability to effectively communicate and connect with all different types and kinds of people and personalities

How Do you rate?

Take this quiz to find out: COMMUNICATION TEST

Here's my score...

Snapshot Report

Insightfulness
_____________74 (out of 100)

Your results indicate that you are fairly adept at interpreting other people’s words and actions and seeing things from their perspective - although the rare misunderstanding may occur. Overall however, you seem to realize that empathy is an essential part of good interpersonal skills and therefore, will do your best to place yourself in other people’s shoes in order to better understand them. For the most part, you can sense what others are thinking and will likely adjust your behavior accordingly if a person you’re conversing with seems confused or perhaps uncomfortable. There may be the occasional time when you pay more attention to the message you’re sending rather than how it’s received. With some time and experience, you’ll likely be able to improve your insight even more.