How to Improve Your Verbal Communication Skills [VIDEO]

Having good verbal communication skills is essential for your career. Developing and perfecting these skills takes time and effort, so here are some tips to help you communicate more effectively.

Transcript

Verbal communication skills are an important soft skill all employees should possess, regardless of industry or practice area. This soft skill is so important that studies have shown effective communication can increase teams’ productivity and engagement, while poor communication can cause burnout and even hurt companies’ bottom lines. So, it’s not surprising that studies also show that communication skills are sought-after during the hiring process.

Since verbal communication skills can be critical to your career success, here are some ways to develop and improve these skills. 

1. Be Confident 

The first step to improving your verbal communication is exuding confidence, both in yourself and the ideas you’re presenting. Appearing nervous or using filler words will dull the impact of what you’re saying. On the other hand, showing confidence and speaking clearly allows your coworkers to trust your thoughts.

So, avoid phrases like this: 

“I was thinking that maybe it could be a good idea, but I’m not sure, that next year we might want to look into a different process for completing the project in a faster and even maybe a more efficient way. I could be wrong, so whatever you all think.”

Instead, use phrases like this, which make you appear much more confident:

“Next year, we should explore different and more efficient ways to complete the project.”

2. Be clear and concise 

Eliminating filler words will help your message be clearer and more concise. Attention spans are short, especially when working virtually and attending virtual meetings: 

So, instead of elaborating unnecessarily like this: 

“I really think our instagram feed could use some work. It’s, like, well, not so good. And in my experience, social media can be a really great tool to use when trying to get the word out there, and I think it would really help us do that for this project. It would be awesome to see us go viral, even though it’s, well, hard to plan a viral moment. But either way, I think it would be a really good idea if we look into improving our communication strategy.” 

This is how you can get the same ideas across in a clearer way: 

“Social media will be a valuable tool for marketing this project. So let’s take a look at our Instagram and LinkedIn strategy to see if there’s any room for improvement.”

Practice makes perfect when it comes to perfecting your verbal communication skills. Putting yourself and your ideas out there more often will allow you to learn from your mistakes and keep improving over time. Using these tips, you’ll have a strong soft skill in your arsenal of expertise. For more career advice, check out Vault.com.