As part of my 1 blog post (or more) a week challenge I set for myself, here's one about a set of steps that I found useful for me in improving my communication skills, maybe these steps will be useful for you too:
1. Identify where the problem is
This sounds obvious but it's important to take a step back and have a moment of self-reflection. In what area are you struggling to communicate? Is it in a large group setting? Is it when you are alone with your manager? For me, it was when I had to communicate to a larger audience, especially in a scenario where the larger audience consisted of individuals from both technical and non-technical backgrounds.
2. Think about what your measure of success will be
Before diving in it's important to determine your measure of success. My measure of success was engagement, which to me translated to how many people asked a question during/after my presentation. That was my measure of how the audience was engaged.
3. Expose yourself
Now I don't think that this will help a lot of people but this helped me a lot personally. I tried my best to always take the opportunity to gain experience in speaking to a larger audience.
Within the teams where I was working, we had opportunities where you were able to present what the team had been working on to a larger group. I volunteered for the position to present the work (together with the individuals who did the work, sometimes this was myself as well).
4. Reflect
Now that you have done the deed, it's time to take a step back and think about how well it went. Did you meet your measure of success? Personally, it would have been my second or third meeting when I started gaining momentum and getting more engagement when I was presenting on certain topics. Another point to consider here when reflecting was to consider if your measure of success was correct, maybe there is something else for you to focus on to build up the confidence you need to succeed.
5. Take a break
I will admit that speaking to a large audience on a bi-weekly basis is not my cup of tea. It certainly pushes me out of my comfort zone and that is a stressful situation so always remember to take a break when you can! This can be done by either skipping being the presenter in one of these meetings or sharing the burden with someone else on your team.
Let me know what you did to improve your communication skills!
Top comments (0)