Types of Communication Skill – Effective Communication Skills

Possessing strong communication skills involves the most accurate and proper way of sending and receiving information, news, ideas, thoughts, etc. in which both parties mutually understand and response. The different types of key communication skills are as follows:

Different Communication Skills

1. Listening skills

Listening is one of the most important key elements of effective communication. Successful listening means not just understanding the audio element or the information being communicated, but also understanding how the speaker feels about what they’re communicating. To improve interpersonal communication skill, we must learn to listen effectively. Effective listening gives us an advantage and makes us more impressive when we speak. It also boosts our overall human communication performance.

2. Verbal Communication Skills

Verbal communication skills encompass all word usage, so this means its common type, both oral communication and written words come under this category. People use and nurture these types of communication skills actively, although it can be argued that some people do not use it as much as others.

This form of communication skills can be learnt and developed in a variety of ways, and one of those ways is to converse with other people constantly. Actively engaging in conversation in daily life can help to encounter new words to enhance verbal communication skills, and paying close attention to mass media on daily basis is also a good idea, because it will aid advanced ability to know the correct pronunciation of a vast array of words.

In the case of writing, the best way to also help to enhance these verbal communication skills is to read a lot, because reading can give an excellent idea about the spelling of words, and their correct usage as a means of effective communication.

3. Nonverbal Communication Skills

4. Interpersonal Communication skills

Interpersonal communication is the process of sensing, thinking, perception, evaluating and interpreting events within the self mind of an individual. It occurs when two individuals are involved in exchanging information, ideas, opinions, feelings relating to the personal, social, organizational, national and international matter who are located in the same place. It is personal, direct, as well as intimate and permits maximum interaction through words and gestures.

For Interpersonal communication, different persons may respond differently to a single message because of their communication perspective and thinking. One example of this is transcendental mediation. According to the experts this type of communication encompasses communicating with the divine and with spirits in the form of prayers and rites and rituals.

5. Focused interactions

This communication method results from an actual encounter between two persons. This implies that the two persons involved are completely aware of the communication happening between them. It helps to build personal relationships as it is usually one-on-one conversation.

6. Unfocused interactions

This occurs when one simply observes or listens to persons with whom one is not conversing. This usually occurs at stations and bus stops, as well as on the street, at restaurants, etc. This is mostly a result of people’s active listening capacity. Possessing an active listening potential will help improve overall public speaking and interpersonal skills.

7. Mass Communication Skills

Mass communication is one of the major forms of communication in building relationships with a diverse audiences. It is a process of communication involving the transmission of information, opinions, or attitude through specific channels/media to a large number of heterogeneous audiences. This is generally identified with tools of modern mass media including social media marketing, which includes: books, the press, cinema, television, radio, etc. It is a means of conveying messages to an entire populace.

8. Managing Stress

Small doses of stress lead to some experience in career services of performing under pressure. However, when stress becomes constant and overwhelming, it can hamper effective communication by disrupting capacity to think clearly and creatively and overshadow emotional intelligence. Generally, stressed people possess poor communication styles; they misread other people, send confusing nonverbal signals, show bad expressive body language and lapse into unhealthy reactive patterns of behaviour.

9. Emotional awareness

Emotions play an important role on interactions of family and co-workers and the way we respond under the current situation. It’s the way we feel, more than the way of think that motivates the flow of conversation (how we communicate) or ability to make decisions even under difficult situations. The way of reacting to emotionally driven, nonverbal cues affects both how to understand other people and how they understand us. Emotional awareness provides the tools for understanding both ourselves and others.