How to Communicate Better: 5 Practical Tips

Whether it’s with strangers or the people closest to us, being able to communicate better and clearly is a skill that can serve us well in a myriad of situations. Living well in community with others – at work, at home, at the gym, while you’re out on a run, or at the movies – requires us to relate with others in a way that promotes both our and their well-being.

Effective communication can also aid you at work. If you can help others see and hear your ideas more clearly, it can be a powerful tool for professional development (provided that the ideas are good!).

How to Communicate Better

Like most skills, communicating better is something you can work to develop if you feel you need to improve in that area. How do you go about doing that? Here are a few tips that will help you communicate better with others.

Take time to listen

Becoming an effective listener is a great way to develop your communication skills. Often, people make the mistake of thinking that communication is simply about talking until we’re heard. This can backfire if we misunderstand our audience and are unaware of what we’re communicating verbally and otherwise. Remember, good communication is not just about people hearing your point of view, but about engaging theirs as well.

Much has been made of active listening as a valuable skill in communicating well with others, and rightly so. Active listening entails skills such as reflecting, asking questions, not interrupting, and so on. When we listen actively, it pushes us to pay attention to what the other person is saying.

You can ask clarifying questions, allowing them to restate what they’ve been saying. You can reflect what they’ve said, summarizing and repeating back to them what you’ve heard. This allows them to correct you or expand on and emphasize certain points. By not interrupting them, you give them room to express themselves without feeling like their competing to get a word in.

Active listening helps your communication in at least two ways. Firstly, you get to understand the person you’re talking to by allowing them to express themselves. When you have a better picture of who they are, what concerns they have, their level of understanding, and so on, you can better modulate your message to resonate with them.

You may have seen videos online of scientists trying to explain a concept such as gravity or dimensions to grade-schoolers through to a fellow expert. You must pay attention to your audience to know how best to talk to them. Being a good listener is a great start. Secondly, by listening to them, you make it easier for them to extend the courtesy and listen to you as well.

Think about what you want to say

At times we can be thoughtless with our words. Not taking the time to consider carefully what you want to say and how to say it can undermine the clarity of your message. As in the example earlier, if you wanted to explain a concept such as gravity to a young child, it’s no use rushing and dumping your entire store of knowledge on them. They simply won’t get it.

Similarly, if you’re doing a presentation at work, take some time to think about who will be in the room – what is their level of expertise? What do I want them to walk away with from this meeting? How can I make my presentation accessible? Is this a formal meeting or a more informal get together with co-workers?

All these elements help you in thinking carefully through what you want to say; it provides you with a context and a guide for the content you’re trying to communicate. Thinking carefully about what you want to say helps you to choose your words wisely and deploy them effectively.

It’s what you say, not how you say it

Some things don’t need saying and verbalizing them is simply off-putting in social settings. These things are social faux pas regardless of how you go about doing it; perhaps only the funniest or the most charming among us can say them without being considered offensive, but that’s reason enough for the rest of us to stay away from these conversation killers.

Even as jokes, racial epithets, sexual humor, and stereotypes of various sorts are things to avoid in conversation or communication in general. Not only are they unhelpful and ungodly, but expressing these things as part of a conversation will likely shut down the receptiveness of your listeners. It’s a case of what you’re saying being offensive and detracting entirely from the rest of your message.

If the point of communicating is to win over your listeners so that they want to hear you out and they take in the entirety of your message without distortion, then it’s wise to understand the kinds of things that shut down that receptiveness and simply avoid them.

To do this in a broad variety of settings, the ability to ‘read the room’ is crucial. Reading the room is a combination of being aware of who your audience is, applying active listening skills, and feeling out where people are. You can usually tell when people tune out, and that lets you know where the areas of sensitivity are.

It’s also how you say it, not what you say

To be more effective at communicating with other people, we must know that how we express ourselves matters just as much as what we’re trying to say to them. The adage, ‘You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar’ might apply here with a slight alteration. If the words coming out of our mouths are laced with vinegar, they are bound to be less attractive than if they were laced with honey. The ‘how’ of communication relates to our word choice, but it also relates to the tone of voice with which we deliver those words.

The book of Proverbs says, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). How we speak matters as much as what we speak. People can pick up on whether we are angry, speaking disdainfully or down at them, and this can take your words which are meant one way to come across a completely different way. Your tone of voice carries what you feel about what you’re communicating.

Pay attention to body language

Learning to communicate better is not only about the words we choose to use, the words we avoid, and how we say our piece. While our words and the tone of voice we use aid communication immensely, humans are wired to respond to visual cues as well. Our body language helps to ‘sell’ the entire package that we’re trying to put together in our communication.

If your words scream ‘Excitement!’ and yet your shoulders are sagging and you look bored, it does make one wonder whether you believe what you’re saying. Our body language must remain consistent with our words and intention for communication to be effective.

Leaning in to denote intimacy and close attention lends power to a message designed to say just that. Your body language is a powerful tool in your communication arsenal. Understand and use it well.

Conclusion

Communication is a lot about wisdom. It’s about understanding how human beings work and shaping our words to best deliver our message. To understand others, our ability to listen effectively must be engaged – this helps us to understand our audience better, and this in turn enables us to speak in ways that make the most sense in those circumstances.

Apart from wisdom about others, communicating well is also about deep self-awareness. When we know who we are and how people perceive us, we can adjust ourselves so that our message is not distorted. The last thing you want is to betray or cloud your message inadvertently.

For example, instead of speaking from and with anger, we can learn to speak gently and so gain the attention of others. Great communication skills matter. With better communication skills, we can deepen our relationships meaningfully and effectively meet our professional and personal goals.