Improve your communication skills

You can't change. You are the way you are," you say in an ironic tone.

Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you. It is quite easy to improve skills that you already possess but do not develop. That phantom disability, in which you believe, has its days numbered:

• That's very easy for you to say- you say again, in an angry tone.

• It is not easier to say it, it is EASIER to do it. Do you have any notion of how many connections, areas of the brain or muscles: facial and speech, of the extremities and hormones circulating through our body, it takes to think and martyr ourselves over and over again? Many, many more than just thinking and doing.

Observe.

Don't feel guilty, if communication is not your forte. What do you need to converse with someone? Early on you realized that conversing was as simple as opening your mouth and uttering words. You just had to WATCH.

What are you up to date on when it comes to interpreting emojis or social media stikers? There it is, you practice constantly. The same thing happens when you interact face-to-face. The signal from their voice, gaze and body language is making you, as your brain processes it, more skilled and expert. The point is this, to allow you to understand and intuit behaviors and different types of communication styles, which by the way, what would they be?

Communication styles.

A style is a behavior used frequently.

Passive style: The person will be dominated by insecurity in his way of communicating, which will cause him not to verbalize his fears and to accept other points of view, even if he believes them to be incorrect. This type of style will be adopted by those who feel inferior.

Aggressive style: In this style, the person will feel a superiority with which he/she will be able to mistreat others, imposing his/her point of view, and will tend to use obscene, exaggerated and unempathetic language.

Assertive style: There is a relationship of equality, the person will analyze the criteria of others and decide whether it is sustained, according to their principles. He/she will have an empathic and social conscience.

Exercise.

Let's try with a sentence. The message we should send is: "if you do not make peace with your daughter, she will end up leaving home". A person, with a markedly aggressive style, would say it like this:

• Get over it, your daughter will leave home because of how you treat her and, period! -note the harshness and tactlessness in the words.
• A person with a passive style would say: "Look, really, try to talk to your daughter, please, they are both having a hard time.

• Do this type of exercise, rethink what you have to say and use a more confident and assertive style: "I understand that you must have your problems but if you don't talk to your daughter and clear it up she will probably leave the house.

Mistakes.

No matter the style of communication, at some point mistakes arise that must be corrected, such as the following:

• What do you want to tell me," I asked, almost at the edge of the precipice.
• That ....ehm, that is nothing, my aunt, when I was a little boy...-she pauses for a long time-, in the house, that children were shouted at when they said bad words, you know how important...so...important it is, well, my aunt used to give me a consoling slap to educate me.
• How strange you talk, really!
• I don't understand why...why...why you say that. I speak normally.
• And of course, the worst thing about these mistakes is not being aware of them. If you don't know where you're going wrong, you won't be able to diagnose and fix it.

• Has one of these mistakes ever happened to you? Most people, either when they get nervous, or are in too much of a hurry to finish an idea, or simply because of an inadequate education in vocal care, string together unconnected phrases or add new sentences without having finished the main idea.
• They use unwitting crutches, such as: ehm, i.e., i.e., i.e., i.e., i.e., i.e., i.e. They speak too fast or too slow, without articulating well. They may either not have an adequate vocabulary and therefore stumble when expressing complicated words, or simple, they pause more than they should. How do you think the receiver receives the message? Impatient, unreadable and without any foundation.
• What does it take to overcome this series of errors? Knowledge, practice and mastery of a vocabulary. If you had to talk about your musical tastes in front of a friend, would you get nervous? No, the conversation would flow without tension. A poor command of elephants in a social group where everyone is an expert on the subject would cause you to become blocked and anxious.

• So rehearse, facilitate a script to fall back on before going to the meeting. Repeat out loud. There is a 100 light years difference between what we think and what we say, and therefore when we get to the crucial moment, everything we repeated from memory, mentally, will not be easily articulated or in sounds. Think before you speak.

Techniques.

To have a better oral expression. Simple:

• Articulate: take a pencil and place it in your teeth, from there articulate as best you can.

• Breathe: exhale and inhale into a bag, holding the air for eight seconds. Continue until the breath slows down.

• Culturize yourself: Our vocabulary is always the same because we do not broaden the spectrum, read topics of your interest. Research, learn more.

• Look for connectors: Don't learn everything by heart. Use words that lead you to others, if you have to expose an argument that is difficult to memorize.

• Maintain a hierarchy in your speech.
• Connectors are used like this: first I apologize, I use a "I'm sorry", then I deepen my considerations for the situation you are going through with a "now I understand your position". The brain reacts when you associate and will not forget.

• Just as you associate words, it also visualizes other situations. Exposing a subject, with thousands of little eyes looking at it, can be invasive. Breathe, close your eyes and imagine that what you are saying is very important to the people sitting there listening to you. You are going to enlighten them, and they will visualize themselves to you as: family, friends or partners or people you know will not judge you. So relax and communicate in an assertive style: precise and clear.

The challenge.

The HOW, that's the big challenge we are going to face from today. Choose a number of people, as realistic as possible, to approach for conversation using an assertive style. I don't want excuses like "I'm lazy" or "I'm not good at it", I want to see ACTION and ACTIVITY. Stop complaining and take action. If you choose 30 people, make sure they are total strangers.

Where? In a park or at a bus stop. You don't have to start by telling them about your life, but start by addressing specific topics: ask them the time, talk about the weather. You can even praise the baker's work: "how warm the bread is today". The idea is that you start practicing more, it's just a matter of time.