Professional communication is one of the most important tools in the life of a skilled professional. Without it, positive influence is nearly impossible, professional growth stagnates, and learning opportunities dwindle. It’s a fascinating topic that can’t be fully covered in just one article, or even just one book. In this article, we will look at the foundational elements of professional communication and what you need to practice on a regular basis.
Foundations of Professional Communication
The number one thing to realise about professional communication is that it contains verbal and nonverbal language. Whether the purpose of your communication is to influence or to be understood, using your full range of written, verbal, and nonverbal communication skills will set you apart from those who just want to be heard. Let us look at some elements of communication:
Verbal
Verbal communication is all about what you hear, what you say, and how you say it. It should be remembered in that order. Listen well before you speak. Active listening should be applied at all times. Don’t just wait for your turn to speak; listen to understand and then respond. Observing the other person’s mannerisms, verbal language style, and body language will give you valuable insights that you can use to tailor your communication. For more information relating to observation, have a look at last week’s article here.
The words you use in your verbal communication can be very selective when you understand the person you are speaking with. Choose words that resonate with the other person, words that align with his/her vernacular. This builds rapport and makes the conversation more memorable. Building rapport with the person also leads to influence and prestige.
Perception is influenced by the delivery of your verbal communication. The way you say something is often more important than what you are saying. A basic example of this is applying different emotional states when saying something like “I attended a sales training session this morning”, and then thinking about how someone else perceives it. If you say it while applying an energetic, positive emotional state, your communication will be perceived as positive and the listener would probably want to know more about it.
If you apply a sad emotional state to the delivery, the listener will perceive the content in a negative light and will probably want to steer away from talking more about it.
Much more can be said about verbal communication, and a future article will go into more detail. For now, the above should help you think a bit more about where to start and how you can improve the quality of your verbal communication. Here is another article about interpersonal communication that might be of interest to you.
Written
Nonverbal communication, like written communication, has a lot of potential to influence and be understood. The words you use are the most important, as you don’t have the luxury of using body language and inflection to change the perception of the person you are communicating with.
Words in written communication can stir emotions and guide a conversation. The problem most people face when writing a message or an email is that often the content is verbose, and other times too much brevity is applied. To be fair, the word count is not as important as the pertinence of the content.
When you are writing a message or email to someone, use words with positive connotations as often as possible, and steer away from words that could elicit negative emotions. Let’s look at some examples:
Positive
“I’d like to explore more options”
Negative
“I need more options”
Positive
“I’m excited to be part of…”
More positive
“I’m ecstatic about joining…”
Think about what the receiver of your message is seeing in their mind while reading your content. Your words will influence what he/she sees. For example, when you use the word “flower”, what does he/she see? As soon as he/she reads the word, an image of a flower pops into his/her mind’s eye, unless he/she has aphantasia. This is, at the root, a form of influence. Using words that create pictures in the recipient’s mind becomes more memorable and guides the conversation. Look at the following sentence an think about what you see and feel:
“The sand beneath my feet squeaked as I walked and was white as the driven snow.”
What image or experience popped into your mind? Notice that the content was quite metaphorical. Metaphoric language bridges the gap between our differing maps of the world. The sentence above reminds me of walking on the beach at Camp’s Bay in Cape Town, South Africa. The beach is man-made and the sand seems artificial and literally squeaks under your feet, and it looks bleached. The sentence brings back a memory from way back when. When you read the sentence, there is a good probability that a certain memory you hold will pop into your mind. Here’s how not to write that sentence:
“I walked on the beach at Camp’s Bay, South Africa.”
The message is more or less the same but, unless you’ve been to Camp’s Bay, it probably does not capture your imagination or bring any particular experience to mind.
Body Language
There are many great articles, books, and online resources relating to body language, and this article will not go into the finer details of it. A really good online resource for you to look at is The Science of People. Vanessa van Edwards lives and breathes body language and is a great source of information.
Body language is a big part of nonverbal communication and has the power to influence perception. Just like the way you verbalise something can influence a listener’s perception, how you move, what you’re wearing, and your facial expressions can influence reception and perception too.
Comprehension
Understanding someone and being understood is the pinnacle of professional communication. Facts above fiction should be your rule of thumb. Mind reading and reverse mind reading are not useful when you want to be understood or when you want to understand the meaning of someone’s message.
Remember, your map of the world is your own representation of it. In order to comprehend the meaning of someone’s communication, you should aim to understand his/her map of the world. Using the NLP Meta Model is a good way to help you get to the meaning of the speaker’s message.
One way of knowing if you are being understood is to listen to the replies from the listener. Another NLP supposition says “The meaning of a message is in the response that follows”. This is a useful supposition to remember.
In summary
Professional communication is part of your life as a skilled professional and should be practiced and fine-tuned continuously. Habit 5 in Dr. Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, puts it very well; “Seek to first understand, then to be understood.” The better you understand the people around you, the more tailored your conversations with them will be, and the easier it will be for others to understand you, as you will mirror their non-verbal communication and you will use words that resonate with them.