Communication skills are definitely the most important skills required in anyone’s relationship whether it be intimate or family relationships, friend relationships or career relationships. So what we need is to find out what these skills consist of and start up with communication skills training. For building relationships that are good in quality, we need to be good communicators. Below I'll identify some areas of communication that most of us need to develop.

I'm pretty sure you've noticed that a lot of people don’t even answer their phones and others hesitates to reply to an email while others have problems with direct communication and are avoiding this by writing lots of emails instead? For some reason this seems more safe and more comfortable. But is it good communication?

Staffs in most businesses today are required more than ever to communicate with colleges and customers about things that are natural to communicate about in each business or industry context. But the sad thing is that our communication skills can be so much better. Based on this fact it's not surprising at all that many organizational experts claim that poor communication is the cause of a large number of organisational problems.

Most of us need to gain an understanding of what effective communication means and what is required to develop good communication. Besides that we must also pay closer attention to the fact that many of us have not given it much thought; communication with different types of people requires different ways of communicating. Below are the main issues that should be included in a general communication skills development program:

Define communication - We have to ask what communication really is, which purposes it has as well as identifying the fundamentals and various methods of communication

Communicating with Different People - People are different and our relationships are also different. You must learn to communicate effectively with supervisors, subordinates, colleagues, customers, vendors, your wife, your children and your friends etc.

Develop listening Skills - Training to be and active listener will develop a greater understanding of the other and thus improve your communication.

Developing speaking skills - to be a good speaker can be learned. Sometimes it is necessary to communicate by giving a speech.

Identify and avoid barriers to communication - We must also learn to adjust our communication to suit different knowledge levels

Improve communication via email - Effective communication via email is extremely important today as this way to communicate has grown tremendously, not only in working organizations but in almost all kinds of relationship.

Learn to build rapport with others

One-on-one or groups - Identify the differences with communicating to individuals and groups must be identified and practiced.

Using questions - come into the habit of asking questions to other when you're not absolutely sure what he or she is saying. This will increase understanding and thus improve your communication skills.

There are a huge amount of information on the internet about these issues and how to improve your different communication skills. Most of this information is available for free. You only have to do searches on relevant keywords and you will have access to big listings of websites and online documents.

Terje Ellingsen
www.1st-Self-Improvement.net