I see verbal communication in simple terms of being articulate, and being skilled at the social aspects of communication, with the two halves being relatively distinct. The Bill Clintons of this world obviously excel at both, but being great at just one isn’t enough to communicate well.
I think it’s more common to meet the articulate poor communicators, rather than the other way around. I’ve not met too many sociable, confident speakers who mangle sentances and can’t speak clearly. Fluent, clear speakers who can express themselves well on a sentance by sentance basis, but are weak on knowing how best to use this skill; I’ve met several and would probably put myself in that category. It sounds like the OP might be somewhat similar given their qualifications.
Getting the skills together to interact superbly with people isn’t going to happen overnight for obvious reasons - Isamu is right in that most people do not have natural communication flair, so it’s not like you have some kind of disability to contend with here. And let’s face it, the majority of people struggle with both articulacy and having the social competence to get their point across.
I used to work with a guy who was intelligent, but was so chronically imprecise that I’d often have troubling understanding him. In a conversation, he would refer to “this” and “that” as if I should have known what “this” and “that” were, even though he never provided the context for what these things were. He’d walk into a room and ask me something like “Did you send that email to David?” and I’d be like “What email? And David who?”. I think this pattern of his reflected some mental disorganization, or maybe it was case of his brain getting ahead of his mouth.
In the first situation described in the OP, maybe your boss didn’t know what kind of experience you were talking about. Or maybe “experience” to you meant something different to him/her. Also, people who have been in the industry for a while may take a lot of stuff for granted and don’t realize the steepness of the learning curve. It’s not clear to me that this was a communication issue so much as a clash in expectations.
On like the third job I ever had… I think it was… I stupidly told my supervisor that was training me “It takes me a while to figure some stuff out, I’ll get it, just be patient” or something to that effect.
I mastered the basics of their computer system, at least what you needed to know for just about anything except some of the exotic orders you’d need a company book to figure out, in a matter of an hour or so and it was some sort of custom deal… not windows. I’m very computer literate and was offered a job to be fasttracked to management within a few months (thank Og I didn’t take it… the place went under two years later while I was in a far more secure job). They offered it to me because I went out and told a few people that had been there a year “hey, give me this space to move this stuff for half an hour and I guarantee I’ll save you guys at least an hour down the road, and that’s counting the overlap of fifteen minutes that it’ll hold your job up.” They were reluctant to listen to the 19 year old but I saved that place lots of time by starting that schedule for the beginning of each day.
Why did I say that it took me a long time to pick things up? I don’t know. I think it had something to do with me being socially inept in some ways… I’m afraid to screw up so I’d rather apologize for it in advance rather than go at it without apology and maybe screw up. I’ve gotten much better at this, and if I’m in a situation that’s similar I always think back to that time and say “I can do this, just show me how” and allow myself to mess up something and learn.
Sucks though, when you’re good at figuring out whatever it is you gotta and you sell yourself short and make yourself seem like a bumbling fool of a talker. Ya can’t get things going on the first impression and have to make up for it later with real effort you’d have all along anyway.
I have struggled a bit with whether to post to this thread - there is a difference between interpersonal communications and business communications. I have extensive experience with the latter - lots of training, expertise in facilitating corporate Board and other executive meetings, etc. I will make a few comments from a purely business communications perspective; to the extent you find them helpful for what you are trying to do, cool.
There are behavioral techniques that influence communication - adopting these behaviors can be hard and awkward, perhaps for a while, but once you incorporate them into your personal style, can be incredibly effective:
Structure your communications in a “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them” format. It was good enough for 5th Grade English comp, and it is appropriate here. As other posters have said, it includes a recap, but there is value in the intro, too - it prepares folks to receive information. “Bob, I need to check in with you about the timeframe my project, okay?” “So, my project is going to be 3 - 5 months” “Any questions or thoughts based on hearing that timeframe?”
Ask for confirmation - communication is defined when information is passed from one party to another. That means that the other party received the information and can work with it. So - confirm that they got the information, and if it is the least bit confusing, ask them to play it back for you. I know, it can be bizarre - “okay: what did you hear me say?” but it works. With folks I haven’t done it with before, I may say “since we haven’t worked together this way before, I really focus on staying coordinated. I may ask you to play back stuff - please do the same with me so we know we’re hearing each other.” Or, you can end a conversation with a question like “okay, so what is your biggest take-away from this discussion?” just to understand if they were of the same mindset as you.
Bottom line is that communication is a skill that can be acquired. It requires examination, decision on behavior and practice. It is life work, but as you point out in noting your deficiency in it, something worth focusing on. Best of luck in looking for ways to improve your skills.
I don’t think this is a stupid thing to say, especially if it’s the truth. I once supervised an intern who was a slow learner. She kept attributing her slowness to a lack of experience, when in actuality her problem was that she just didn’t learn new concepts easily and independently. If she had told me straight out the gate that she wasn’t super quick on the uptake, I probably would have been less frustrated with her. I would have also respected her for being honest with me about her weaknesses.
Yeah, but the problem was it wasn’t a weakness I actually had. I think I was covering for the possibility of “not getting” something when I was still able to pick up on it just fine… I just wasn’t confident enough and communicated this as “uh… um… I don’t know… I’m slow at this.”
I have to defend this man because to some degree I’m that way. Why? Because if I don’t have the answer on the tip of my tongue I will verbalize the inner thought process to arrive at the answer. It at least shows I’ve heard you and am trying to give you answerWould you feel any better if your husband stood there silently for 15 seconds and then said 10:45? No you’d be saying “Well, when?”
Yes! For the love of penguins, YES! My mother does the same damn thing and it would prevent SO much confusion, if she just said: “Let me think about it a moment… 10:45.”
From olive’s example, her husband started with 8am, them mentioned 15-20 minutes later, then mentioned some other time in the middle, then said 10:35… In my head as the listener, I just got three or four possible times, none which are not the final answer of 10:45.
Example: There is a funeral at a church on Main Street. You will ask my mother “Where is the funeral?” and she will start with: “Well, you want to take Mill Street to Peach Street, then turn onto Back Street…” by the time we get to the location of the funeral on Main Street, she has already mentioned 7 other street names to me. and I’m coming from the other end of town anyway, so her directions don’t mean squat.
When my girlfriend then asks me: “Did your mother tell you where the funeral was?” I’ll end up answering: “Mill Street, no wait! That’s not it!” because that was the first thing she said in response to my question.
Most folks can think faster than they can verbalize.
I’m with Oliver, I’ve got a friend that will take a half hour to tell a five minute story.
For example: Lets say the crux of the story is his washing machine broke.
Well my friend can’t just tell ya his washing machine broke he has to start off with:
“Well, I woke up this morning and made myself some breakfast. I made bacon and eggs… or wait…was it sausage? or bacon?.. No I believe it was sausage… yeah that’s right because I went to Kroger yesterday and sausage was on sale buy one get one free. Anyway I ate breakfast then decided to get my clothes together…(blah,blah,blah for about fifteen minutes until finally you get…) …And that’s how my washing machine broke.”
The fact that this guy stresses on stuff that doesn’t even pertain to the story drives me nuts!
People who take long preambles are often having an internal conversation to which the outide listener is not privy.
This means your listener gets part of what you intended to say. Sometimes you think you said something, but actually it was in your head, and you never said all of it.
It also happens that when you start explaining something, you keep on remembering things that you think might be relevant, so you try to patch them in, and in your own logic it makes sense, however to the listener it sounds disjointed, rambling.
Your tone makeS a huge differance, a drab and flat monotone will keep someone awake for…oooooooh…seconds, you really do have to be an actor, especially if you do lots of presentations, teaching or training to others. Modulate your voice, and raise and lower your tone, speed up and slow down, sometimes being brash and upfront, sometimes conspiratorial ‘Veeery interestink’
Make sure you keep the ears of your audience pricked, by including names, not too often or it seems presumptious, anything that you can get from your audience such as previous experiences is useful because you can tie in your point to them personally.
You can use the term ‘we’, but only when you have managed to get a common purpose between you the speaker and them, the audience.
You can often say something in the form of a story where some of your audience are charactors in it, this works great but you have to pick your target to have the most secure and confident person as the central charactor, so that you can maybe ask the rest of your audience where this main charactor went wrong.
Your hand gestures, such as fidgeting etc, may not be apparent you you, but keep your hands away from your face, don’t rattle stuff in your pockets, try to use your hands expansively, but only to emphasise a point, a bit of rhythym helps here.
Eye contact is always important, you can use your eyes to direct people to look at what you want them to look at.
I cannot remember the figures, but its something like 60% appearance, 35% body language, and it comes down to maybe 5% of what you say, this is the way you get messages across.
This are figures I pulled out of the air, but what is does mean is say little, keep it simple, and always plan to get fewer point across in any given period of time than you perhaps expect.
People tend to remember things more easily as images, rather than analytically, a picture paints a thousand words.
You also have to have some belief in what you are saying, not too much or you will seem like a pushy televangelist, you need to have a genuine concern that what you are saying of interesting and of benefit to your audience.
Be carefull about this link, or you can seem like a bullshitter, if someone else outdoes your conversation point, bigger, better, faster, harder don’t compete, you look too anxious, trying too hard, just chill out and seem interested, better still, be interested.
It does not hurt to suddenly break off for a moment, helps people suddenly focus on you, sometimes you can start a sentence and trail it off in such a way that the listener feels compelled to finish it for you.
This situation seems to me possibly due to a difference in background and starting points.
I work in a very specialised field (medical lab) with a lot of specialised knowledge and jargon and have noticed that after a while in the field some people just assume that what is to them basic, common everyday knowledge is the same for everyone and hence are very bad at explaining things to newcomers - maybe your supervisor was like this.
Borrowing Hello Again’s example, it might be that the supervisor often has students who have no experience in penguin feeding but do have some relevant background (e.g. experience feeding other birds, knowledge of ornithology etc) so were able to pick up penguin feeding quickly and easily, and she assumed that when you said “no experience” that you were like those students, rather than coming from a totally different background in widget manufacture. If this is the case I think there is some blame partly assignable to her in not checking precisely what you meant by no experience.
I know that I’m often not a good communicator and I think it’s partly due to being too wordy and partly having a sort of hummingbird brain that jumps from thought to thought extremely quickly, making it hard for people to follow, especially if they don’t have that sort of brain themselves, but it doesn’t sound like that’s your problem.
His little verbal issues are just a by-product of his personality. He is a very detail-oriented, meticulous person. I am more of a ‘‘big picture’’ person. Our verbal communication styles are quite different, which is why I find it so annoying. Whereas it will take him 15 seconds to figure out the answer, I am capable of using giant chunks of time estimates to come up with the answer much more quickly. For example, I know it takes me 30 minutes to get ready to leave the house from the time I wake up. I don’t have to go through the mental math, I just know. He has to go through the math. He has to be sure.
I just want to emphasize that was a well-intended, good-natured post on my behalf. I find it endearingly annoying of him.
Not a lot of people have really answered your question. Let me suggest one possible answer:
Maybe you aren’t listening to people very carefully.
This would explain both outgoing and incoming confusion. It goes without saying that if you don’t listen you won’t hear. But it’s also true that if you don’t listen well, you’ll say things people don’t understand or that aren’t relevant to their needs.
To use your OP example, you claim you told the supervisor you had no experience. But we don’t know what other questions she asked, or what information she may have been looking for. “I have no experience” is such a broad statement, it’s impossible to know for sure what it means. Does it mean you have no experience in that specific job, or in any related job? Does it mean your experience is so limited you will need very close supervision, or have you done a job vaguely comparable that will allow you to pick it up quickly?
For all we know your supervisor may have asked these things, but you weren’t listening.
I stress, though, that I am just guessing. You haven’t given us a bunch of word-for-word examples so it’s hard to know for sure.
You aren’t saying what the other person wants to hear.
The boss doesn’t want to hear “I have no experience.” She wants to hear “I have no experience but I’m a fast learner and I’ll figure out a way to do it.”
Obviously the posters who complain they get a speech when they want a simple declarative sentence aren’t getting what they want to hear. But we’re all guilty of it at one time or another.
The only defense against a listener not hearing what I’m trying to say is to ask them what exactly it was they did hear. That requires a level of repetition and social interaction that most of us just don’t want to bother with every time we talk to someone. “Do you understand?” isn’t going to cut it.
I have found when people are bad communicators it’s because they fail to realize not everyone has the same mental reasoning as they have.
For instance I was once hired by a company to explain HIV/AIDS to their employees. Now this is vastly complex, have you ever tried to explain viriology to people that have no idea where the world goes when you shut the door?
You need to break things down and then have people repeat it back to you. A lot of highly educated people have the attitude that “I don’t have time to explain things and people such just accept that I’m right.”
I used to have a boss who gave me some good advice by example. He’d ask a question, and I’d start with an explanation, and he would repeatedly stop me and make me start again, repeating the question, until eventually I got the message: “I don’t care about the reasons, just answer the bloody question!”
And I have a dear friend who tells stories that go:
Beginning middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle of a different story, middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle middle of a third story, middle middle middle middle, no end really.
I like to think that I’m reasonably succinct, clear and to the point, with a nice “beginning middle end”, but I do see people’s eyes glazing over occasionally. At which time I wrap it up and hope to regain their attention…
My father-in-law is like that, jjimm. His setup for the simplest of anecdotes can be 20 minutes of irrelevant, rambling “beginning.” But, not everyone communicates perfectly all the time; you’re going to get the glazed-eye look sometimes no matter how succint you try to be.
I guess I’d also challenge the OP to ask if she really is BAD at communicating, which merits attention, or just not perfect, which doesn’t.
Do you really feel, thinking as ojectively as possible, you’re bad at communicating?
Is the problem equally bad with written and spoken communications or is one worse than the other?
Is there a particular type of communication you struggle with?
It’s as much a cultural style as poor communication.
There are plenty of cultures (Irish, American Southern, etc.) where storytelling is deeply ingrained into society. When people say “how are you?” they’re actually DISAPPOINTED if you don’t explain how you didn’t have enough time this morning to boil water for oatmeal so you had to eat cheerios and it just put you off for the entire rest of the day…
The length of the answer, combined with the “non-linear” train of thought drives someone who isn’t expecting it completely nuts.
My father, a city boy, married a country girl from the Ozarks. To the day he died, he couldn’t stand how asking a question like “where’s the funeral?” ended up being a story about great-aunt Sarah’s christening.
The point of the conversation is, the conversation, not the answer.
