Improve Communications Skills

Good business communication skills are a key factor in every aspect of your career –  from being hired, closing a sale, working well within your organization to earning a promotion or finding a better job. Here’s examples of soft skills to help you in your career. Or,access the communications skills guide for 2022 here.
Even if you outperform in every other area, being marked poor in communications may greatly reduce your likelihood of career advancement.

Practicing good communication skills on an ongoing basis can help you develop professionally and reach your business goals.

What are Interpersonal Communication Skills

Common definition for “communication”: “the process that we use to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings to another person.” Though we agree with this definition, we find it a bit vague.

Here’s a modification: Interpersonal communication is the process we use to build relationships with others through communication by effectively doing the following:

Understanding the other’s situation

In order to build a relationship with someone, we need to be aware of where the other person is coming from.

Communicating in the right manner

It’s not just what we say that matters but also the tone we use and how we say it. Additionally, by considering our understanding of the other person, we figure out how to best our intentions and ideas to that particular individual.

Influencing them to listen and/or take action as needed

People are more likely to listen to us when we listen first to them and make efforts to establish common grounds. When we approach any communication with the intention to create a win-win situation, that’s when we will maximize our influence on others and inspire them to action.

At the end of the day, the purpose of communication is to reach a common understanding, build a better relationship, and/or agree on what to do next if action is required.

3 Most Common Myths about Interpersonal Communication

Myth #1

Only focus on the facts: Facts are important in a conversation but can’t be the only focus. Often we spend too much time figuring out what facts we want to communicate and too little time on how we want to communicate them. Every person we speak to is human with insecurities, ambitions, and biases. So remember the common adage: “It’s not what you say, but how you make people feel that matters.”

Myth #2

If I’m right, I can say so: It’s never a good idea to kick someone when they’re down. If someone on your team makes a mistake, communicate that but focus the conversation more on where to go from there and allow them to recover. If your customer overbilled you, you still don’t want to overstep in your communication. Approach the situation gently and patiently. It’s always better for the relationship if you give others the benefit of the doubt.

Myth #3

Sugarcoat bad news: Bad news like a layoff message or a message to your boss about a mistake you made at work is difficult to deliver. It’s important to deliver the message tactfully, but this is not the same as sugarcoating. Sugarcoating implies being not direct or clear about the gravity of the message. While sugarcoating a message may make you feel more comfortable, it could confuse the other person or make the listener feel patronized. Sincerity and a focus on moving forward will help more. Whatever happened already happened. So be straightforward and focus on next steps.

Interpersonal Communication Skills are More Important than Hard Skills (Some examples)

Have you ever wondered why having the best answer to a business problem sometimes makes no impact at all? In school, we were always incentivized to give the best answer – the best answer leads to good grades, which lead to job offers. So, naturally we brought that mentality to work. We would work tirelessly to get the perfect, best answer, but were often disappointed when nobody seemed too interested in hearing it.

However, the best answer is not as good as a practical answer that has executive buy-in and champions who are willing to implement the solution.

This is just one example of why interpersonal skills are more important than hard skills. We think of hard skills as what it takes to develop the perfect solution to a business issue. We define interpersonal skills as our ability to build relationships with others, to effectively understand their circumstances, communicate our proposed solution based on their business reality, and persuade them to take action. Only when we combine soft skills, like interpersonal skills, with our hard skills can we become more effective in business.

View some examples of interpersonal skills. Here’s another example of why interpersonal skills are more important than hard skills:

One of our colleagues was assigned a new dentist but at the same office as the old one. As soon as the dentist started examining her, she started “scolding” them for waiting too long on a cleaning (it’s been a year) and not flossing enough. It made them tense, but they said nothing.

Then she told them that they may have the beginnings of cavities on three teeth (no actual cavities yet), and she started scolding them again for waiting too long to get a cleaning. After “scolding” them three times, they asked her to stop repeating herself. After the cleaning, they promptly told the front desk to always give them their old dentist for future appointments, even if they have to wait longer to get an appointment.

Was their cleaning well done this time? Yes. Did the new dentist give them the best diagnosis? Probably. The dentist had all the hard skills to give them their best, but it left our colleague with a “bad taste” in her mouth because of her interpersonal skills. People don’t want to feel stupid or wrong during a business transaction, even if they were.

The business world is not too different. People and companies value good customer experience, practical solutions, and tactful communication methods. We may think that business decisions are made mainly based on logic, but that would be a naïve assumption. Here are three more examples about interpersonal skills which illustrate their importance in business:

Major deals are signed on golf courses

Why are so many deals negotiated on golf courses? Interpersonal skills are used to build close relationships (through a common interest, like golf), and the trust built using these interpersonal skills lead to signed deals. Another, more subtle reason, has to do with the role of body language and negotiation skills.

All logical factors being equal (like price, convenience, delivery time, etc.), people usually choose the vendor with groups that they’ve had good experiences with

Sometimes, people will even choose a higher price with their current vendor because they value the existing experience, rather than wanting to risk having a bad experience with a new, lower priced one.

A mediocre solution that has executive buy-in will get implemented over a more perfect solution created in a black box

This is the lesson I learned in consulting: It’s great to be smart (hard skills), but if I don’t have the interpersonal skills to understand my clients, what’s practical to implement in the company’s current circumstances, and how to best persuade them to take action, I will not be able to make any impact.

These examples all teach an important lesson, especially for those with exceptional hard skills, like engineers, programmers, accountants, scientists, etc.