Simple Ways That You Can Boost Your Communication Skills to Engage Your Audience

There are some people out there who find that communicating comes naturally. These are the people who can walk into a room full of strangers, address them clearly and confidently, and leave knowing that everyone has understood the importance of what they are trying to say perfectly. However, for the rest of us, good communication is something that we have to work at. It does not matter whether you are a teacher, a team leader or a small business owner trying to pitch your company or product. Communication is vital, but it does not always come easily.

It can be easy to start to feel like there is struggling to communicate is something that you are just going to have to live with, but there are so many different ways that you can give your skills a huge boost. Communication is about so much more than verbalising, especially at a time when we are doing so much of our work digitally (including communication!). Here are some of the best simple ways that you can improve your communication skills to better engage your audience.

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

If you are worried about communication, one of the best things that you can do is to know what you want to say. This sounds so simple, but you would be amazed at the number of people who would do anything to avoid putting the work in on a presentation, for example. It can be especially tempting to avoid doing the preparation if you are anxious about it, as it can feel like you are just going to overwhelm yourself before you even get started. But if you know that spontaneity is not your strong suit, it will absolutely help to do that homework. Don’t be afraid to do a practice run at home. If you are giving a lecture or a seminar, doing this will also help you to see how long your presentation will actually last too, which can be vitally important. You don’t want to be putting your audience through an endurance test if you want them to take away the important points that you have raised.

Be Sure To Listen

It can be difficult to remember this if you are anxious about your own communication skills, but one of the best ways that you can become a better communicator is to listen to what other people are telling you. If you do not listen, you are not going to be properly engaged, and you are not going to be able to create a flow, whether it is in conversation or in a presentation. The phrases active listening and soft skills can seem like a bit of a nonsense buzzword, but it is really important to show the people that you are working with that you are paying close attention and that you are adapting your responses accordingly. People are much more likely to engage if they feel like they are being listened to instead of talked at. One of the best ways that you can make sure that you are doing this in a presentation is to ask questions of your audience, which brings us to our next point.

Look for Feedback

When you are nervous about your own communication skills, it can feel difficult to invite feedback. But what you need to remember is, if you are giving a presentation on any subject or if you are holding a meeting, you are in control of the room. Asking people for feedback is not inviting criticism, it is making sure that everyone is able to understand and follow what you are trying to tell them. Now, this can be a little intimidating whether you are in the same room as people or speaking to a large group of people remotely via videocall, but there are plenty of ways to make it easy and fun. One of the best is by using live polling. Live polls can be used to ask your audience any number of questions, and you can engage your audience in real time. Vevox allows you to gather the feedback you need quickly and easily to help you to optimise your presentations, and you can create fun polls to help people relax and enjoy themselves.

Try to Keep Things Brief

This point is not always that easy to achieve, and some people do not like being told that they need to cut their presentation down or find a more concise way to communicate. However, the fact is that concise communication is always going to be better than the alternative. You need to factor in that people do have a limit to their attention spans, and that if you overwhelm them with new information for too long then they will stop taking things in. This is where the preparation that we mentioned earlier can really come in handy. If you properly prepare, then you will know what the most important things that you need to get across are. If you find that you are repeating points, then you can cut them out or rework the structure. You should also think about the type of language that you are using. You might think that certain words sound good and make you seem clever, but if your audience doesn’t understand, they are going to tune out.

Watch Your Emotions

A lot of people find that communication is difficult because they struggle to contain their emotions. It can be easy to find yourself becoming emotional if something happens which throws you off your pace, or makes you lose your concentration. You may start to feel angry if it seems as though someone is being deliberately disruptive or disrespectful towards you or other people in the meeting or presentation. You may also start to feel embarrassed or anxious if something happens that is not part of the plan. Work-related stress comes in many different forms and finding it hard to communicate can be a real trigger. What you need to remember is that you need to try and avoid these emotions from becoming part of your communication. This is how things start to break down, and if you are not careful you could find that a conflict situation may arise.

Non-Verbal Communication Is Very Important

Good communicators know that being able to read body language is as important as listening to what people are telling you verbally. For example, say you are giving a presentation to your colleagues at work. If you can see people starting to fidget, or if they are becoming restless in their seats, this could be a sign that you have lost their focus for some reason. Of course, this could be for any number of reasons ranging from the subject matter being too difficult to understand to the meeting running on for too long. But you need to be able to pick up on these signals and adjust your plan accordingly. Non-verbal communication is even more important in a one-on-one setting. Body language can tell you all sorts of things. But you also need to think about how you are presenting your own body language. If you are slouched, people may think that you are disinterested. Try to maintain good eye contact to show that you want to connect with your audience.