BECOMING MORE EFFECTIVE

Communication has been an integral part of our personal and professional lives since time immemorial and naturally, will always continue to play a dominant role. Effective communication is a not only an art, but also an important tool that has the power to influence decision making across different spheres of business and life.

There are a basic set of skills that can help you become more effective at anything you do. Just like oiling the machine or sharpening the saw, it is important for individuals, be it a student or a professional, to hone their skills at communication and decision making that can help one work more smoothly and effectively, and thus become successful.

1.     Reading and Remembering: Every day we are bombarded with information across different channels and journos. The key to success is to be able to identify what is important and then remember it. Recalling an important fact can make the difference between success and failure in the heat of a negotiation or important meeting.

2.     Scan for details: The more you read, the more you will remember. If you practice long enough, you will be able to scan a document and remember enough to hold a conversation about it. Start by reading whole sentences in one go. To do this, focus your eye on the sentence rather than on each individual word. Just visually scanning the first few sentences will improve your understanding and memory. If you are late and unprepared for a meeting, try visually scanning your documents. You will be surprised how much you pick up. Even if it doesn’t work, you will be able to find the information you need more quickly.

3.     Be Creative: Many problems have simple solutions, but those are the problems that everyone can solve. Being creative enables you to solve, or contribute to solving, difficult problems. This will get you noticed. Some people appear naturally creative, but creative – problem solving is a skill that you can learn and hone through practice.

4.     Find Creative Solutions: Creativity comes from abandoning linear thought and making leaps of the imagination. All your brain needs is the stimulus to make these leaps. Brainstorming is one unique form, getting a group of people to throw out possible solutions without the constraint of evaluating suggestions creates energy and sparks new ideas. Another technique is asking people to consider the problem from a different perspective, such as: “How will our customers see this?” or “What if we turn the question on its head?” Practice being creative in your private life and it will develop your ability to be creative at work, completing cross puzzles, learning new language, taking an activity holiday, or finding a new experience.

5.     Ask the Right Questions: When you are faced with a problem, it is often the boundaries or rules that constrain your thinking. “We can’t do this because…” is a phase that stifles constraints wasn’t there?” will allow you to consider all new world in your mind you will often find the opportunities open to you when you remove a constraint are so great that it is worth the time and effort it takes to remove it. Did James Dyson ask the question “What if there is no electricity?” when he invented his clockwork-powered radio?

6.     Use Bench-marking: Not every problem has to be solved again from scratch. Most problems have been solved before so all you have do is to find solutions. Bench-marking is about comparing processes. It is about weighing up the way your organization does something against the way that another organization performs the same function. Start by making sure that you understand your own processes. Who does what, when, how, and why? Just doing this will increase ideas for improvement, but it also forms the basis for bench-marking: comparing your processes with those of your chosen benchmark subject. 

7.     Being Confident: It enables you to do what you want to do without constant fear of failure, or even despite fear on some occasions, and to maintain your sense of self-worth and not to be dependent on what other people think. If you’re confident, you can take center stage when you want, and you don’t always have a linger in your background. If you have a confident demeanor you will be treated like a confident person by others this will reinforce your self-belief and help you feel confident yourself

8.     Think Positive:  The first step in building up your confidence is to pay attention to what you’re thinking. Concentrate on your positive thoughts. It’s very easy to focus on the negative. You probably find that when you have been given feedback, at your appraisal perhaps, you concentrate solely the one negative comment even though there were five positive comments. To help come over this, build a blank of achievements and positive comments on which to draw. Sit down with a pen and paper, and answer the following simple questions:

• What have I achieved in the last year and in the last five years?
• What am I proud of? What did it feel like when I did it?
• What am I good at? (create a list)
• What compliments have I received from others?

Concentrate solely on the positives of each situation, don’t let negative “but” thoughts creep in. commit the answers to your “achievement blank” and draw them in moments of doubt.

9.      Managing Thoughts:  Most of us have a voice in our head telling us to be careful and stopping us from doing things that would harm you. That same voice can prevent us from doing new things and progressing: “ask yourself: “What’s the worst that can happen if I do this?”, “How likely is that to happen? In most cases you will find the good outweighs the bad, and you should go ahead. If not, at least you have evaluated the risk logically and assessed whether it is one you are prepared to take.

A synthesis of these elements will yield a positive impact on one’s conduct be it in a boardroom meeting, servicing clients or even negotiating a deal - especially in an era that is witnessing rapid strides embracing globalization, which has brought the world closer and has increased professional interactions across borders.