My Experiences of Learning Communication Skills

A well known proverb goes “Experience is The Best Teacher.” You might be wondering how this proverb holds true for the given topic. Well, communication skills are all about learning from various experiences of life.

Communication Skills can be defined as skills that facilitate communication. Communication is synonymous to life, hence learning Communication Skills is inevitable. One starts learning Communication Skills since he starts living. Even to breathe a new born baby starts crying. Basically, these skills are known to every human being. It is just that we realize them. For example you don’t teach a baby how to cry. What we learn are some tactics or ways that will improve our communication skills.

Communication Skills includes basically four skills, i.e. Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking. Listening is one of the most important skills in communication. But sometimes poor listening and premature evaluation hampers the communication process. Poor listening means non-attentive, non-evaluative and non-empathic listening. In business, communication is hampered when the receiver evaluates the message before getting the complete information. This happens particularly when one receives new ideas. Human mind resist change hence inattentive listening is done. The best example of poor listening is in the Parliament where a minister is presenting some new idea for the welfare of the country. The other members are not empathic towards his viewpoint resulting into a poor listening. This is also a result of closed mindedness. Closed mindedness affects communication in a negative way. I remember how I needed to convince my friend to choose a topic for the presentation. She could not understand my viewpoint i.e. she was more in empathic towards me. Moreover due to her closed mindedness she could not accept a new