Communication Skills for Career Success PDF

1 Describe how strong communication skills will improve your career outlook, strengthen your credibility, and help you succeed in today’s competitive digital age workplace. ▪ ▪ Employers hire and promote job candidates who have excellent communication skills; writing skills make or break careers. ▪...

1 Describe how strong communication skills will improve your career outlook, strengthen your credibility, and help you succeed in today’s competitive digital age workplace. ▪ ▪ Employers hire and promote job candidates who have excellent communication skills; writing skills make or break careers. ▪ ▪ Because workers interact more than ever using communication technology, even tech- nical fields require communication skills. ▪ New-hires and other employees must project a professional image and possess soft ▪ ▪ skills. Job challenges in the information age include changing communication technolo- gies, mobile 24/7 offices, flatter management, an emphasis on teams, and global competition. 2 Confront barriers to effective listening, and start building your listening skills. ▪ ▪ Most of us are poor listeners; we can learn active listening by removing physical and psychological barriers, overlooking language problems, and eliminating distractions. ▪ ▪ A fast processing speed allows us to let our minds wander; we fake attention and prefer to talk than to listen. ▪ ▪ Poor listening can be overcome as long as we stop talking, focus fully on others, control distractions, keep an open mind, and listen for the speaker’s main ideas. ▪ ▪ Capitalizing on lag time, listening between the lines, judging ideas instead of appear- ances, taking good notes, and providing feedback are other methods for building lis- tening skills. 3 Explain the features of nonverbal communication, and recognize the importance of improving your nonverbal communication skills. ▪ ▪ Be aware of nonverbal cues such as eye contact, facial expression, and posture that send silent, highly believable messages. ▪ ▪ Understand that how you use time, space, and territory is interpreted by the receiver, who also “reads” the eye appeal of your business documents and your personal appearance. ▪ ▪ Build solid nonverbal skills by keeping eye contact, maintaining good posture, reducing physical barriers, improving your decoding skills, and probing for more information. ▪ ▪ Interpret nonverbal meanings in context, learn about other cultures, and understand the impact of appearance—of documents, your office space, and yourself. 4 Name five common dimensions of culture, and understand how culture influences communication and the use of social media and communication technology. ▪ ▪ Culture is a complex system of values, traits, and customs shared by a society; culture molds the way we think, behave, and communicate both offline and online. ▪ ▪ Culture can be described using key dimensions such as context, individualism, time ori- entation, power distance, and communication style. ▪ ▪ Today’s communicators need to be aware of low- and high-context cultures, individual- istic versus collectivist societies, differing attitudes toward time, clashing perceptions of power, and varying degrees of reliance on the written word. ▪ ▪ Whether social media and technology can bridge cultural divides and erase differences will depend on the users as much as it would among strangers who meet at a dinner party. 5 Discuss strategies that help communicators overcome nega- tive cultural attitudes and prevent miscommunication in today’s diverse, mobile, social-media-driven workplace. ▪ ▪ Beware of ethnocentrism and stereotyping; instead, embrace tolerance and keep an open mind. ▪ ▪ When communicating orally, use simple English, speak slowly, check for comprehension, observe eye messages, accept blame, don’t interrupt, smile, and follow up in writing. ▪ ▪ When writing, consider local styles, hire a translator, use short sentences, avoid ambigu- ous wording, and cite numbers carefully. ▪ ▪ As the domestic workforce becomes more diverse, appreciate diversity as a critical busi- ness strategy. ▪ ▪ To communicate well with diverse audiences, seek training, understand the value of diversity, learn about your own culture, make fewer assumptions, and look for similarities.