Why is professional communication important to me?

What is communication? Communication is defined as the exchange and imparting of messages, thoughts and information. Where can communication skills are used effectively? There are a few areas where communication is very important. They are friends and families and workplace respectively.

First of all, I would like to share my personal experience regarding effective communication. I was involved in a project work group while I was pursing my ‘A’ levels in Nanyang Junior College. Ineffective communications was one of the key aspects that contributed to the poor grades we were awarded during the evaluations.

Though we know each other in class, we came from different ‘cliques’. We seldom hang out together during or after curriculum. We were made to group together for our project and we’ll only get together for the project. Because we seldom talk to each other and nobody actually tried to break the communication barrier, information on the project were not passed down effectively and efficiently. There will bind to be unclear instructions and information but nobody made an effort to clarify with each other regarding it. We’ll just leave it the way it is thinking that we have actually done our part and had contributed significantly to the project work. However what we forgot is that a lot of the work done by us is actually redundant and double work.

Communication between friends and families are a key aspect in building rapport and understanding with one another. By communicating well with friends and families, not only will you build strong bonds and gain mutual trusts, relationships with one another will definitely get stronger. Should communication fails, relationships and bonds will gradually break and start to drift away.

I believe that all of us have at least one good friend, someone whom we can trust, pour our sorrows to and share happiness with. But how did this good friend came about? It is due to months and maybe years of communication between one another. We talked to each other about anything and everything. We found out more about each other, likes and dislikes and shared a lot with one another. The same scenario applies to our family as well. Parents themselves have to be good speakers and listeners as well. They have to communicate well with their children and concurrently be good listeners so that they can understand how their children is feeling and hear what their children have to say.

Employers and employees respectively require a certain level of good communication skills in order to ensure a smooth operation and mutual working relationships. As employers themselves, delegating jobs and motivating workers to achieve desirable sales target for the company is an essential component an employer should be master at. This would all come down to nothing if not for communications skills. Employers should know their workers’ strengths and weaknesses. How do you attain this? Communicate more and get to know each other better. Delegating jobs and tasks requires the speaker to give clear and concise instructions to the listeners, who are usually the employees. This way, it reduces the risks of misunderstanding und conflicting instructions between the employers and employees. Being employees should also be good listeners. They should not interrupt when instructions or messages are passed down to them and they should wait till the speaker, who is the employer, is done with his speech before asking questions and clarify doubts instead of just interrupting the speaker. This is deemed rude and improper manner.

I also realize that I’m not a good presenter and listener myself. I tend to pace up and down during presentation and I don’t feel composed as I would like to be. My body language also says it all when I presenting. Unnecessary movement while presenting gives away my tense and nervous appearance. I’m also very long winded and I would tend to repeat myself when I’m conveying a message or thought. I would usually lose focus and not pay attention as I believe that I get distracted very easily. The slightest distraction would just pull me out of the conversation immediately. I’ll have to ask the speaker to repeat what he or she is saying as I do not get what the speaker is trying to convey.

In conclusion, I believe that effective conclusion is very important and useful to me. It is a indispensable and life long skill that can help me irregardless of where I am, in school, at work or even at home. Effective communication minimizes conflicts with one another and it also reduces lost information through communication channels. I definitely hope that my communication skills can be further improved to make me a more effective student, a more understanding daughter, a better friend and a competent employee/ employer in future.