There are 6 billions of people in this world. In everyday life, there are many people around us. And it is communication that allows us to convey message to one another. Furthermore effective communication skills give one an ability to inspire and influence others.
For me, developing effective communication skills helps to improve the way I communicate with my family and friends, and prepare me for my future job. Communication is not just verbal, but it also includes writing and nonverbal communication. Being able to cope well in these 3 areas of communication is a tough task but once acquire it, it will be very beneficial in both career and fostering relationship with people.
One of my weaknesses in communication is that I am a communication killer in front of new friends. I cannot find an appropriate topic to keep our communication going. And I do not know whether my topic interests him/her. And I realized that usually people who can talk well are popular. Thus, in order to enlarge my social network and be popular among my friends, I need to develop effective communication skills.
When I enter the workplace, communication with superiors, subordinates and colleagues are important. If I cannot communicate clearly, I would not be able to get my message across correctly and it will cause problem to my job. At work, writing is especially critical. Writing is a form of formal communication and an essential part in the workplace. If I cannot write well, there will be many misunderstandings as the reader will interpret the wrong meaning from my poorly written document.
Hence, to be able to popular among friends, and prepare myself in the workplace, I decided to attend ES2007S to develop effective communication skills.
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7 comments:
I believe that not being able to communicate well with new friends is not a weakness but is dependent more on the person's personality. Some people just happen to be more sociable than others and they are able to strike any conversation with a total stranger they meet. Some on the other hand, tend to be more shy than others and take a longer time to warm up to new friends. Taking a longer time to warm up may not necessary be a bad thing, one may like to find out more of a new friend before he/she opens up to him/her. Forcing yourself to be more outgoing and sociable may sometimes cross the line to being unnatural, hence making you seem like a person that you are totally unfamiliar with. However by saying this, I am not discouraging you from trying to be more outgoing, but also pointing out that you should find the right balance and taking it easy.
Finding a topic of conversation is not always an easy thing as the chemistry between people is an unusual phenomena that is difficult to explain. Having good communication skills does help with this.
In most cases I do see that people who have a good command of English and are able to speak well are popular but is not always the case. People may be popular and also unpopular for other reasons.
All in all, I do hope that you would find what you are looking for from this course and good luck with achieving higher popularity.
Dear Jean
I agree with Rui Sheng completely about finding the right balance in forging new friendships.
With some luck and opportunity, I am sure everyone will be able to find their right match of friends to compliment their personalities.
Wanting to accomodate new friends, is a good thing. But don't let your zealousness in wanting to know more people, musk your own style and make situations unnatural and contrived.
With the correct communication skill sets and a positive attitude, I am sure people around you will be naturally keen to be friends with you.
Cheers
Guang Yi
Hi Jean,
I am very much a of conversation killer too, especially before new friends. Unintentionally, my replies to them are always rather short, leading to awkward moments of silence pausing in our conversations. There are also times when I consciously make an effort to pack these moments of awkward (at least for me) silence with small talks. However, most of these small talks just bring me back to square one. Perhaps it is indeed like what Rui Sheng and Guang Yi has brought up, that being ourselves is in fact the best policy to follow when conversing with friends. Hopefully, as we learn more about effective communication skills in this course, we could be able to initiate conversations and befriend others more confidently.
Hey Jean,
I think most people, including myself, face a similar situation as you do during conversation with people, especially those whom you just befriend with. Many times, we do not know how to get the conversation going or afraid that what we say may indirectly offend the other parties. At the same time, if we choose to keep quiet, we will never be able to expand our social circle. Therefore, in my opinion, it is important that all of us are at least equipped with very basic communication skills such as appropriate words to use and understanding some common nonverbal language when having a conversation.
I believe effective communication skills can greatly increase a person self-confidence.
Hi Jean,
I agree with Rui Sheng that not being able to communicate well with new friends is not a weakness. Sometimes, you just cant click with that particular person. Maybe both of you just don't share the same ideas. Like what he mentioned, it depends more on the person's personality. Sometimes, i will feel that too, especially when you don't really know the other party, you don't know whether he/she will treat it as a joke or take it seriously.
Like what we learn, try to open small and common topics with others. Thus, attaining good communication skills is very important, not only in the working society but in our everyday life.
Cheers! ;)
Hi Jean,
Being able to communicate well with new friends of course confers to us an advantage in establishing deeper friendship. However, that alone is not a surefire way of cementing friendships. Perhaps what you cited in this blog is the verbal communication skill, but in the context of forming friendships and bonding with new friends, it is not only the verbal component of communication that is important. Non-verbal cues are very effective in bonding as well. I believe that one doesn’t need to own a glib tongue to be able to bond well. The ability to help out friends when they are in need, the ability to share happiness and joy and also share burden of grief and stress are all crucial ingredient to a healthy friendship. Sometimes, in certain occasion, it is good to be frank and straightforward (of course, one still have to be sensitive in phrasing their message), rather than trying to humour or indulge the other party. What is more important is honesty and loyalty to friends rather than to be a glib talker. Of course being glib has its advantage, but it is definitely not a necessary condition in cementing great friendships. =)
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