Reasons for Poor Communication Skills
Before you start making judgements about someone’s communication skills or before commenting on it, please make sure that you understand why a person may struggle with communication skills. It is a crucial step before learning how to tell someone to improve their communication skills.
There are three big reasons why some people may find it difficult and struggle to communicate effectively. These are:
1. The person is not aware that their communication skill needs improvement. This may happen due to the lack of social awareness and/or emotional intelligence.
2. The person knows that their communication needs improvement but doesn’t know how to do so. This is due to a lack of understanding of techniques of effective communication.
3. The person may know the techniques and characteristics of effective communication, but they lack in confidence to use it effectively.
Learn How to Tell Someone to Improve Their Communication Skills with 15 Tips
Many of us want to know how to tell someone to improve their communication skills and help them simultaneously. We will now be answering this question for you through 15 tips and tricks. Instead of straight-up telling someone that they’re bad at communicating, explain how they can improve their communication skills. Try to make these points clear to the person who is struggling with communication.
Step 1: Learn to Listen
The most essential thing in communication is hearing. Listening is an art that requires attention over talent, spirit over ego, others over self. If you want to know how to tell someone to improve their communication skills, observe their listening skills.
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, and they listen with the intent to reply. But be a good listener. You must consider the person talking to you as the most valuable person in your life at that moment. One more important fact that you have to keep in mind is to get hold of one specific communication at a time.
Step 2: Be Concise
If you are trying to help someone and wondering how to tell someone to improve their communication skills. You can ask them to keep their messages short.
If you are in any written or verbal communication, you must learn to be quick and to the point. Try to stock up with enough information within a short span of time. But make sure that your audience understands what you are trying to convey. For example, if your task is to respond to an email, then make sure that you go through the full email properly before you prepare a draft for it.
Don’t worry, and you will gradually learn to communicate concisely by practising it constantly.
Step 3: Look Who You are Talking To
For effective communication, you need to understand and talk according to the person you are talking to. In the third step of how to tell someone to improve their communication skills, ask the person to be aware of who they are talking to.
While having a conversation with someone, you have to keep in mind who you are talking to. You can use any friendly or informal language while talking with your buddy. But don’t use these “GTG/TTYL” or any kind of short informal language while you are texting or sending a mail to your boss or any professional client.
Why? It isn’t professional. And it’s also possible that the other person you are communicating with doesn’t know the actual meaning of those acronyms. You surely don’t want to be misunderstood, isn’t it? So, it’s better to be on the safe side and avoid these informal languages while communicating formally or officially.
Step 4: Catch on to the Basics of Non-verbal Communication
Brush up on some elementary non-verbal communication clues. It will help you reduce the chances of miscommunication when talking to someone.
For example, be comfortable with your body language and keep your facial expressions natural and normal while speaking to someone.
Your hand gestures and facial expressions say a lot about you. It can be the first impression you make on someone. One more important thing is maintaining eye contact, especially when you meet and greet someone for the first time.
Step 5: Take Care of Your Own Emotions
It’s very vital to keep your emotions under control for clear communication and personal comfort. But, of course, you have to express your emotions in a perfect context within an ideal situation. On the other hand, don’t always pass your strong emotions into a professional environment. It can sometimes lead you to face poor communication with your peers.