Imagine how your life could improve with better communication…

Whether you are talking to your spouse, boss, co-worker, or your child, you need to get your message across to them. You need to be heard, but just as important, you need to hear.

 There is a tremendous difference between talking and communicating. Everyone talks, but not all communicate with effectiveness. 

Communication is a Two-way Street.
Are You Ready to Explore a few Rules of the Road?
Are You Ready to Explore
A Few Tips on How to Communicate With Power and Influence?

The ability to communicate with power and influence is one of the essential skills for leaders at all levels. Here are six effective communication success tips to communicate with power and influence.

1. Learn This Skill to Improve all of Your Relationships. If you want to improve your relationship with your children, your spouse, your coworkers, or anyone else, learn to acknowledge their feelings before you seek to fix their problem.  Sometimes we hear someone’s problem and immediately start in with, “You should …” or “What I would do is …” 

2. How to Ask Great Questions. Asking questions can be one of the best ways to enhance a conversation, but the wrong questions can hinder discussion.  Not all questions are created equal!  Open-ended questions are friendlier and more efficient than closed-ended questions.  They usually start with “What” or “How.”

3. The Importance of Non-Verbal Messages. Next time you have something important to say, consider not just your words, but also the message your body and voice are communicating.  When you send conflicting messages through your verbal and non-verbal cues, the non-verbal message wins every time.

4. Conveying Understanding through Paraphrasing. One of the most powerful communication skills you can learn is the art of paraphrasing.  When someone tells you something, make sure that you understand him or her correctly by using paraphrasing.

5. Assertive, Aggressive, or Passive Communication? When you practice assertiveness, you will experience more productive and enjoyable communications.  It’s not necessary to do it perfectly all the time; just take each conversation one at a time and assertiveness will begin to come naturally to you.

6. Danger Ahead! Communicating with Anger. Finally, if you’ve ever communicated when you were angry (and who hasn’t?) then you probably know that it is fraught with dangers.  While it may feel good to “vent” or “get it off your chest,” sometimes it does a lot of damage to your relationship with the other person.  Seldom is it worth the short-term feelings of vindication we get from blowing off steam.

In conclusion, each of these steps can be effective, depending on the situation and people involved. Remember that influencing is highly situational. The key is knowing which approach to use in a given situation.

Which one of these tips do you already use, and which one do you need to work on?