Learn People Skills

Basic communication skills are essential for continued success, whether personal or professional. At the very base one needs to understand the communication process.

Thus, one may ask what are communication skills? To answer that simply - Basically, communicating is like a two-way street, which entails the relation between the sender and the receiver. In this process, a cycle of communicating messages is formed between the sender and the receiver. The sender is required to conceive the message he/she wishes to send, encode this message and then transmit. The receiver then is required to receive the message, decode is and clarify his/her understanding of the message.


In order to maintain healthy communication, the two must go through this process, without bringing in other elements of intellectual thoughts and judgments, as they tend to harm the harmonious process of message passing and receiving.



From the sender's perspective one needs to have the following essential skills:



Skills to compose the message

Skills to send the message



From the receiver's perspective one needs to have the following essential skills:



The skill of receiving a message

            Without assumptions

            Placing biases aside

            Actively listening



Thus, the elements of effective communication are:

Listening

Verbal skills

Non-verbal skills