Complete Video Transcript
Hi viewers welcome to the session. So this morning, I was going through my emails and I noticed that I received an email from a business firm. As I was going through the email, I noticed two communication errors. One was grammatical and the other was a spelling error, that’s when I decided that I should seriously compile a list of most common communication errors for you all, because communication errors have the potential to tarnish your reputation. Not just that, it can really upset your clients and sometimes lead to loss of revenue. So to avoid all those I decided to compile that list in the session for all of you. So I hope this session turns out to be very productive for you. My name is Michelle and you are watching Skillopedia, the perfect place to learn real skills for the real world.
So first looking at written work, one most common communication mistake that you can make with the written work is to not edit your work. Yes you can make spelling errors, grammatical errors and even errors with the tone, which means that how soft or your harsh is your written piece of work. Now there are obviously some ways to edit it like spell checks. But spell checks are not enough because all that they can track are spelling mistakes but not grammatical errors. So if a word is used wrongly or it’s placed wrongly and the grammar is not correct, the spell check would not be able to get it. So you cannot rely completely on it. It would not even catch the tone of your written piece. So what’s the alternative? The alternative would be to get someone to proof read your work. So anyone that you think has good command over the language, you can ask them to proof read your work which means that they would read your work, looking for errors and if they are able to find the errors then you can definitely make some changes. If that’s not enough and you want to proof read it further, if it’s such an important document, then maybe you can read your work aloud. If you read your work aloud, there’s a high possibility that you’ll catch the typos and you can make the changes and the best part, you can catch the tone of the written piece and then you can make the required changes. If you want it to be more assertive, you can definitely add some elements and if you want it to be softer then you can cut out on certain harsh words. There’s one more thing that you can do related to this and that is to make a list of the words that confuse you. For example, you are or your, its without an apostrophe and it’s with an apostrophe. So you can make such a list and keep it handy so that you don’t make any communication errors for your written communication.
This is another communication error that I have noticed. So sometimes people deliver bad news by email. What do you think about it? Do you think it’s a good medium to deliver bad news? I don’t think, would you want to deliver the news of a layoff, which means when you are uemploying someone from your company, would you like to deliver that via email or WhatsApp? No way that’s a very bad idea because like this you cannot communicate your message clearly and the person receiving the message might take it way too harsh. so the best thing is, if you have to deliver a bad news which cannot always be avoided, do it face to face and your body language definitely will soften the message and you’ll also understand that how is the listener responding to it. Is the person feeling too bad? If so, then you can definitely console them and this would help you avoid a long term bitter relationship. So do not give bad news by emails.
It’s not always possible to avoid difficult conversations. Sometimes we have to give negative feedback. What is negative feedback? Negative feedback means that if you feel that any of your employees is not doing something correct, you must tell them that they are not doing it correct. But why should you do that? Well if you don’t tell them, then how will they learn and how will they change? So let’s take a situation where any of your employees is not coming to work on time repeatedly. So it’s a good idea that you share with them, your concern and ask them to mend it. But it would be even better if you can give them a suggestion about how to mend it. Maybe you can tell them, the importance of being on time for professionalism. So this way you can definitely help them and your feedback will not only be negative but it’ll also be constructive, which means you’ll help them improve their professional approach. So don’t avoid difficult conversations, indulge in them and they will lead to better results.
You may be one of those people who is very dormant, which means who is very soft spoken and is not very dominating. But when you’re in a position to lead, it’s important that you are assertive which means that your words carry some weight. So that the person who is working with you or under you will value what you have told them. On other times it might lead you to compromise, if you are not very assertive and people may take you for granted. So being assertive is basically being impactful and being forceful with your words. No you don’t have to confuse it with being aggressive because aggression means anger. So an assertive person is not an angry person but this person knows how to get the work done. But an angry person does not care about other person’s rights. So while you care for their rights, it’s very important that you get your work done as well.
So now we’ll look at oral communication. Let’s say that you have to present something before a set of people in a meeting. You have to give a presentation and you do not prepare thoroughly. What happens? You might fumble, okay which means that you might flutter while you speak. On other times, you might just lose the confidence about saying what you have to say. Such are the results of not practising what you have to speak. So it’s very important that when you’re doing a presentation, you go through the material that you’ve prepared carefully and also look for any errors. So that out there you’re very confident about what you are speaking.
Have you ever sent a reply to an email in a very angry manner? Or have you ever shouted at your colleague for doing something wrong. Well this is an example of reacting. We always react when we are angry or emotionally charged. This means that you know when you have a rush of emotions, you just tend to act, which is called reacting and sometimes this can hurt other people. So a better thing to do would be to respond calmly. If something has gone wrong, maybe you need to look into it. You could be at the wrong side too. So look into it and think carefully if it’s wrong on your part and may be you’ll be able to respond instead of reacting.
What size of clothes fits you best? Is that a weird question? Okay then let me ask a valid question. What size of clothes fits your mother best? Is it a weird question again? Okay it’s very simple. So not the same size fits every person. So the same way, every person’s personality is not the same. At your workplace, you might be having employees who need you to be very firm with them in order to get your work done, which means you need to communicate with them strongly. But there might be people who might require you to only guide them and that’s all they need to complete their task. So learn the learning styles of different people and give them the correct stimulus to work.
If I give you ten seconds to list the country, age, sex and religion of the people working at your workplace, would you be able to do it? I’m sure you would require more than five minutes to do that. What does this show? This shows that these days, we have people from various backgrounds at our workplaces. So what should you do for that? For this it’s important that you have an open mind towards people, who are coming from different backgrounds. It’s important because all those people carry their own experiences and their own opinions. If you tend to stereotype people, thinking that okay, she is from XYZ state, so she might be more of an introvert, not a good thing. You should have an open mind and you must accept their opinions.
So here we are at the end of today’s session, where you have learnt eight most common communication mistakes that people generally make. As I told you, I’m expecting to be very productive for you because I hope you will not be making these communication mistakes in the future and this is definitely going to improve your professional image. So thank you so much for watching this session with me, this is Skillopedia, the place to learn skills for the real world.
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