Communication Skills: An Overview

Among thousands of skills, some are more important than others. Based on their essence, we can compartmentalize them into two groups: hard and soft skills. Those skills that require specific capability and can be measured are known as hard skills. Typing speed, coding ability, and SEO marketing are some examples of hard skills. Contrarily, others are soft skills such as communication skills, problem-solving and critical thinking.

Soft and hard skills both are equally significant in their domains. However, soft skills are more noteworthy because they multiply the worth of one’s hard skills.

So, which soft skill should be one’s top priority? The answer is communication skills. They are crucial for everybody, from a child to a senior citizen, a student to a dean, and a clerk to a chief executive. No matter what occupation one belongs to, the significance of communication skills is inevitable. Without them, a person is mute even though one speaks.

As I mentioned in the previous topic, communication differs from talking and involves multiple skills, like listening, responsive emotions, and hand gestures. Since communication is a vast field, let’s parse it for better understanding. Following are the different types of communication.

1. Verbal: It involves the use of words to deliver the message.
2. Nonverbal: It uses different human features, like expressions and hand gestures.
3. Written: As the name suggests, communication in written form is called written communication.
4. Visual: It utilizes graphical charts to transfer the information and mostly
5. Listening: It plays a vital role in comprehending the data.

As social animals, we interact with many people daily. All of them have varying communication styles. Some of them are effective and intriguing, while others are not. What if we want to understand them, so we choose a better communication mode for us. Then, we must categorize them. Here are seven styles of communication that everyone on the Earth uses.

1. Assertive: This style expresses one’s ideas concisely while respecting others’ views.
2. Aggressive: In this style, in addition to using a terrifying and loud voice, people typically believe their interests to be more vital than others.
3. Passive-aggressive: People use it to express their rage indirectly. It is the favorite style of two-faced people.
4. Submissive: People with this approach tend to please others, feel apologetic, and avoid conflicts.
5. Manipulative: Expert communicators use this style to influence others or turn sympathies on their side.
6. Direct: Direct communicators clearly convey their message to others without caring about their feelings.
7. Indirect: It is a confusing style for the message receivers because indirect communicators suppress their intentions.

On Earth, almost every organism, from insects to elephants, zooplanktons to whales, and chicks to ostriches, communicates in some way, and so do humans. However, unlike other animals, humans have tools to boost their communication skills, the 7C strategy, for instance. Let me give a glimpse of the 7Cs of communication.

1. Clarity: This is about the purpose of communication when one communicates.
2. Conciseness: It makes the communication to the point, eliminating unnecessary information.
3. Concreteness: It ensures that the arguments are logical.
4. Correctness: The authenticity of the facts or figures is known as correctness.
5. Coherence: Its objective is to keep the ideas in flow to make them easily understandable.
6. Completeness: This means that the information presented in the communication has no loose ends.
7. Courteousness: One’s positive behavioral response to the audience while communicating decides the courtesy.

While many people consider communication merely a skill, I believe it is more than that. I call it art that anybody can master if one breaks the barriers to communication. Forthcoming 7 communication barriers refrain one from becoming a master of communication.

1. Physical: The elements like noise, place, and time that can disturb the flow of communication are physical barriers.
2. Perceptual: It is about the mental contrast in understanding the values and opinions of others.
3. Emotional: The absence or presence of positive or negative emotions are emotional barriers to communication.
4. Cultural: The cultural barrier to communication is the difference in ethical values and beliefs among people due to their geography or history.
5. Language: People talking to each other in an unintelligible language creates a language barrier.
6. Gender: This barrier is the second name of hesitance or reluctance that a person feels when one talks to opposite or different gender.
7. Status: While communicating, the reluctance due to superiority or inferiority is called the status barrier of communication.

M. Danish