April 6, 2015
I’m quite excited to actually announce the release of my new course on Udemy. It is likely titled 3 Steps To Improve Your Communication Skills.” As a coach, I work work with my clients to create congruency in the domains of language, emotions and body. So what is that mean?
Well everything begins with communication. Or at least that’s what I believe. And the keys to effective communication skills involves communicating not just through language but also through the emotions as well as the body. While working with clients, I notice that the belief is that verbal communication is everything. Whether at the office, in the career, at home with family or in the community, a large percentage of my clients approach effectiveness by speaking effectively. This is an entirely linguistic aspect of communication.
With the course, 3 Steps To Improve Your Communication Skills and through coaching, I work with clients to ensure that there is a congruency between the words they say, the emotions they feel and the body shape they adopt.
Communication Through Body, Emotions & Language
We start communicating the moment another human being notices us! By the time we get to the speaking part, we may have communicated several messages through the way we are dressed, by the manner in which we walk, and other physiological clues that another human being picks up on.
A good example is at a job interview. There’s a lot of preparation involved prior to going to an interview and having conversations with the interviewers. If you have worked with recruiters, they will tell you several things such as having a firm handshake, or looking directly with a smile, and of course to “be yourself.”
What they don’t actually touch upon are the emotions that you as the potential candidate are “supposed” to be feeling. Or even the way you can actually show up in “presence.” These are all considerations, in my view, that need to be addressed prior to the actual interview because these will all influence the language that is available.
All the great advice about the handshake and smile and knowing the material will be ineffective if the emotions and the body shape are not addressed. Why? Well, because the emotions that you experience will shape the language that is available to you. Emotions also will generate a physiological response which may also lend itself to the language that is available.
Emotions Affect The Body
Again, taking the example of the interview, what if you are nervous? A potential physiological response may be of clammy hands. If you have clammy hands, you may experience the emotion of embarrassment because you “failed” to listen to the recruiter. You may feel self-conscious as you shake the interviewer’s hand which may result in them assessing you as “lacking confidence.”
And all this happened before the actual verbal communication. So again the emotions are being invoked—the interviewer’s, not yours! We talk loudly with our bodies with the way we show up. We actually even communicate loudly through our emotions because emotions result in a physiological change. So developing effective communication skills is not just about language. In fact we bring a lot more to it. We bring our emotions and our body into our conversations!
This is material that I share with my coaching clients and this is the material that we talk about during our coaching conversations. The outcomes within the coaching conversations aren’t necessarily about effective communication but communication is a must when we deal with other human beings.
And that brings me to the course that I have for you. 3 Steps To Improve Your Communication Skills. The course includes 41 lectures and over 5 hours of content! Learn at your own pace and develop skills to effectively manage conversations through a simple 3-step model. There are videos, downloadable MP3s, PDF transcripts and a community to support your learning.