Communication is the key to making life run more smoothly, both personally and professionally. All jobs require some level of interaction, whether with colleagues or the outside world. The good news? Mastering a few simple strategies can help you stand out, grow your career, and shortcut your route to career advancement and success.
By developing effective communication techniques, you can ensure all workplace relationships are enriching, whether you're the manager, an entry-level employee, or somewhere in between.
Communication strategies help you work more efficiently and stay on top of vital information. When you're part of a team, knowing how and when to use different strategies can boost your results and strengthen connections with your colleagues.
Not everyone will see eye to eye all the time, but sharpening your business communication skills can help keep disagreements from turning into full-blown conflicts. A little time spent practicing verbal communication strategies now can save you the hassle of resolving arguments later.
Here are 15 effective communication strategies you can use to make sure you're always putting your best foot forward.
Have you ever spoken to someone and felt that what you said went in one ear and out the other? Chances are, they weren’t practicing active listening. Engaging in active listening is a simple but powerful way to show you truly value what someone has to say.
Some ways you can show you're actively listening include:
Using nonverbal communication strategies, such as nodding and facing the person speaking to you
Making eye contact
Avoiding interrupting your conversation partner
Asking questions to clarify their meaning
Finishing the conversation by paraphrasing their thoughts to check you understand them.
When you actively listen to someone, you make them feel truly heard while reducing the chance of misunderstandings. It’s also a fantastic way to deepen your connection and build their trust in you
There are several different kinds of listening to employ depending on the situation, including:
Empathic: When you focus on the lived experience of the speaker
Appreciative: When you're looking to enjoy what you hear
Comprehensive: When you're looking to comprehend and take detail from the speaker
Critical: When you're looking to provide feedback.
The simplest communication is often the best. There are several ways to ensure your communication is as clear and concise as possible:
Use simple language, avoiding unnecessary jargon and technical terms.
Structure your ideas logically so everyone can follow them.
Use examples to illustrate your points and back up your logic.
Finish by summarising the key takeaways from your discussion.
Keep it clear and concise. Using straightforward language helps prevent misunderstandings and saves valuable time. Sharpening your oral communication skills can pave the way for quicker, smarter decision-making.
Connecting with other people often requires empathy – that is, a feeling of understanding. If you want your colleagues to trust you, developing empathy is a way of ensuring you build your relationships on solid foundations.
Effective strategies for empathetic communication with others include:
Put yourself in their shoes; show them you understand where they're coming from.
Recognise and acknowledge their emotions.
Practise active listening.
Use supportive language when responding, which validates their experiences.
With even Google launching its own ‘Empathy Lab’, the value of this element of human connection is clear. Their purpose in creating this is to ensure there are human-centred design concepts which focus on how users feel, rather than merely centring around solutions.
General Electric have utilised empathic design principles to create an MRI scanning experience that is less daunting to children, with friendly, imaginative elements. In considering the perspective of these already vulnerable children, they have elevated their experiences.
How can you apply this empathic focus to your own communication? Next time you are in the position of needing to have a difficult conversation, ensure you consider not only your own perspective but also the perspective of the other person.
Much of what we say is in the way we hold ourselves as we say it. Nonverbal communication strategies are essential for balancing our words and tone of voice.
Nonverbal communication elements to consider include:
Body language: This includes your posture (how you stand and where you hold your weight), your gestures (what you do with your hands as you speak), and your facial expressions (whether they're emotive and match the situation).
Tone of voice: Consider your vocal register – elements such as pitch and intonation. You can say the same sentence in many different tones, and each time the nuances will be different.
Eye contact: Staring people down is unnerving, whereas avoiding eye contact suggests you have something to hide. There's a balance to ensure the right level of eye contact.
Personal space: Invading someone's personal space will likely make them feel uncomfortable, either because you come across as intimidating or overfamiliar. Being aware of personal space is key to setting others at ease.
Different people have different thresholds for physical contact and eye contact, and cultural differences sometimes arise in international work situations. For example, the suitability of extensive eye contact is different in Australia than Japan, and hand shaking is only appropriate in some settings.
If you're aware of others' cultural expectations regarding nonverbal communication strategies, you can save yourself a lot of trouble.
Performance reviews are an excellent way of monitoring employee success and progression in the workplace. For these to work, both the giver and receiver of feedback need to be on the same page to ensure a constructive session.
Tips for giving feedback include:
Follow the SMART acronym: Make targets specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-specific to ensure they're achievable.
Use the sandwich approach: Give positive feedback both before and after any negative points to soften them.
Focus on behaviour: A character assassination is never going to go down well, so leave personality traits out of it. Instead, focus on observable behaviours that the person can work on.
When on the receiving end of feedback, ensure you:
Actively listen: Show you're involved and invested in the conversation by using nonverbal communication strategies and asking follow-up questions.
Are open-minded: Don't enter the conversation assuming that you know how it's going to go or that the feedback won't be useful.
In the remote working world, sometimes you need to give feedback online. The best practice for this is a two-pronged approach, as you'd expect in person. Give the feedback over a video call, then follow it up with the same feedback in writing.
We all want to develop as professionals. By giving and receiving feedback, you contribute to the strength of your team.
There are five main communication styles: assertive, passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and empathetic. Most people consider assertive and empathetic to be the best forms of communication to adopt.
Different people lean towards different styles. In some industries, some communication styles are more appropriate. For example, in health and social care settings, an empathetic approach when dealing with patients is the general gold standard, as there's a large focus on bedside manner and putting people at ease when they're in a position of vulnerability.
While it's a good idea to identify which styles you tend to use and aim to be assertive in most communications, you have to be prepared for others and their favoured styles. By setting the tone with your own interactions, you invite others to follow suit.
It's important to balance professionalism with approachability, which is difficult to do with an aggressive style of communication. It's also important to adjust your approach depending on your audience. In education, for example, the tone a teacher or lecturer takes with their colleagues will be far less instructional and assertive than the one they take with their students.
Asking a good question at the end of an interview is a general tip for securing employment, as it demonstrates your critical thinking and evaluative skills. It's no surprise, then, that asking questions is itself a valuable communication strategy.
There are a few different types of questions to consider in different scenarios:
Open-ended: Think “why” and “what” type questions. These invite more creative responses and provide the opportunity for expansion. An example is, “What do you like about the product?”
Closed-ended: These have singular, binary answers and are useful for obtaining particular, necessary answers. Think “yes or no” and “on a scale of 1 to 5” type queries.
Probing: Like open-ended questions, these invite longer responses but build upon the conversation, seeking more personal input about the contributor's feelings.
Asking leading questions is generally ineffective. Asking someone “Why do you like the product so much?” to get feedback is not the same as asking whether they like the product. A rule you can turn to is TED: tell, explain, describe. This allows you to ask probing questions without leading the answers towards your personal bias.
Active questioning encourages clarity, deeper thinking, and better discussion. All of these things lead to innovation within business. And don't anticipate what the answer will be – active listening means actually hearing what the other person is saying and responding accordingly.
As we move towards being a more global community, we'll inevitably find ourselves communicating more regularly with people whose cultural backgrounds differ from our own.
Cultural sensitivity is important not only for forming bonds with others but also for keeping you from appearing to harass or bully those who are in cultural minorities.
Some good ideas for ensuring this include:
Avoid stereotypes: If you're not sure of someone's preferences or thoughts, don't make assumptions. Wait for them to guide you, or kindly ask.
Develop your cultural intelligence: Become aware of the cultural norms of others you interact with, and don't push them to come around to your way of doing things. A good place to start is Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions framework.
Adapt your verbal and nonverbal communication strategies: Various cultures have different expectations regarding things such as eye contact and physical touch. Avoid any unintended offence by changing your style to suit the person you're communicating with.
Having a simple level of awareness that not every culture operates the same can safeguard you against communication breakdowns owing to cultural misunderstandings.
The quickest way to alienate a colleague is to accuse them of being at fault. Even if an issue arises because of an individual's actions, playing the blame game isn't a healthy way of resolving conflict in the workplace.
Some suggestions for what to do instead include:
Depersonalise the accusation with passive language; say "this has happened" rather than "you have done".
Use "I" phrases to discuss your feelings and needs, centring them around yourself rather than the other person.
Seek common ground and aim to stay united on a path to progression.
Actively listen to each other and practise empathy so everyone feels heard.
There are so many factors that come into play when working with others, so you can never predict how someone is going to react to you. Should conflict arise, there are several different styles of resolution that you can employ to avoid escalating a disagreement:
Accommodating: This involves ceding fault in an argument or sacrificing your needs and allowing the other person to take the lead. Only use this if you're sure it won't lead to a build-up of resentment from the submitting party.
Avoiding: This involves avoiding a conversation topic or spending time away from another person. This tactic isn't one to use indefinitely.
Collaborating: This is a superb way to foster positive connections. Collaboration means everyone is on the same page and working together to find a solution.
Compromising: Finding common ground to move forward means everyone loses in some way, but equally, everyone gains something from the resolution.
Competing: This quick resolution style is when someone uses their authority to resolve a matter.
Trust your instincts to guide you on which form of conflict resolution to turn to.
Post COVID-19, remote work has become more common, with 36% of people in Australia primarily working from home. Many find it works for them because it provides flexibility. That said, it's a very different way of operating and has presented challenges for many, especially when it comes to connecting with colleagues.
Some areas of digital communication to focus on include:
Emails: Make them clear and concise. Ensure you only commit words to writing that you'd be happy for the head of your company to read.
Video conferencing etiquette: Establish whether your workplace has a “cameras on” policy, and consider background blurring for an extra level of privacy. Avoid interrupting others by using the chat or "hands up" functions, and only take control of the screen if everyone has agreed in advance.
Platform choice: There are a lot of technology options out there. Slack, Teams, Google Meet, Skype, and Zoom are just some, and selecting the right one is crucial to striking the right tone. Try to keep work chat confined to official channels – WhatsApp is better suited to having personal conversations than organising your next project.
We've come a long way in a short time when it comes to digital communication. Setting boundaries is key to maintaining your work–life balance. See our work from home technology checklist for more on tools that can make your communication as effective as possible.
Difficult conversations can be daunting for everyone involved. Role-playing strategies ensure you feel prepared for a variety of responses. They also help you become aware of how it feels to be on the other end of a conversation.
Sometimes, you might feel as though silence is something you need to fill or an awkwardness that you need to push through. But by using strategic pauses in your communication, you give yourself a chance to gather your thoughts and allow others to do so as well.
Pauses give everyone a chance to reflect, whether upon how to answer a question or the connotations of a statement. They also invite others to contribute to the conversation, enhancing opportunities for connection.
When delivering information to a team remotely, a recorded video might be the easiest way to do this. Creating a video with a clear workflow ensures every necessary element is present.
People can replay the video if necessary so they don't miss any important details, and receiving information at their own pace can result in less stress and better understanding.
Working collaboratively can be difficult if you don't know the personalities of those you're interacting with. Engaging in team building activities, such as fun games in the workplace or group outings, can enable everyone to bond. Through this, everyone can learn how to work effectively together and which role to take on: supportive or leading.
Attention spans are often short. To ensure nobody forgets your conversations or instructions, timely follow-ups are a good idea. This doesn't mean nagging or requesting updates every 10 minutes. Gauge the required pace based on your colleagues’ responses, and keep your follow-ups light to begin with.
Strategies always work best when you implement them company-wide. Instilling a culture of considerate communication in a business can help ensure it becomes second nature for all employees. If everyone is in the habit of self-assessing after communications, the company's workforce will become more harmonious and thoughtful overall.
Communication strategies in the workplace include listening actively, using pauses, showing empathy, and adapting to your audience depending on their background and your relationship with them.
Constructive feedback tends to be SMART:
Specific in scope
Measurable in outcome
Actionable for the receiver
Realistic to achieve
Time-specific as to when it needs a resolution.
Important verbal communication strategies include using a range of question types, focusing on clarity, avoiding unnecessary complexity and jargon, and using supportive language to show empathy.
Nonverbal communication skills include making eye contact, using gestures, and using facial expressions to display emotion and show that you're listening.