Are Communication Skills Important?
Hello and welcome to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast. My name is Roberta and I'm very pleased to be back this week with another episode on this platform. I hope you were able to enjoy last week's episode and that you derived much value out of it. So today we're going to answer the question, are communication skills important? Are communication skills important?
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This is a question that some of my introverted friends have asked me. Home buddies who hardly socialize or go to parties, they ask themselves, why should I? I like staying home, being by myself. I enjoy my alone time. Or when it comes to workplaces, especially since the pandemic, a lot of people have been made to work from home. So there's hardly much interaction with their colleagues like it used to be.
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they just focused on their work. So they asked themselves, why shouldn't I just focus on my job instead of developing these skills? It doesn't look like I might need them. So that's the question we're going to answer today. Are communication skills important? Tony Robbins has said, to effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide.
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to our communication with others. That's gonna be something we cover later as well, to see things from the other person's point of view, which is a very key part of communicating. Now here are some statistics. 7% of how you communicate is verbal. Only 7% is what comes out of your mouth. 55% is body language.
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55% is your body betraying you and being and giving a tell as we say, if what comes out of your mouth is not how you truly feel about the situation at the time. And 38% is tone. 38% is tone. So basically, 93% of how you communicate is not the stuff that comes out of your mouth. Isn't that amazing.
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Now, I remember when this divorce statistics were shared back in the day and the therapists and the marriage counselors would say, the number one cause of divorce. I was like, before you even answer, you finished that question, I just know it's finances obviously, everybody knows that. How wrong I was. The number one cause of divorce is communication or let there off.
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Communication breakdown is the number one reason why couples get divorced. Because everything else that leads to divorces, the number one underlying reason thereof is something that happened when it comes to the spouses in the marriage, having a breakdown in communication. Whether one spouse feels unheard by the other and seeks emotional support outside.
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or they feel unheard, unseen, not validated by the spouse, and then they blow up the finances of the family, or they feel unseen, unheard, not validated by the spouse, and infidelity happens because they wanted that, that. So the number one cause of divorce is communication or lack thereof. And therefore in relationships, that's where most
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of our insecurities, our fears are glaringly obvious, which means basically that's where most of our communication skills are tested. Because when we lead with fear, insecurity, that's where the brain, the survival instinct kicks in instead of leading from our heart and being open and vulnerable to how we truly feel.
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because that's such a scary idea, especially when we don't trust ourselves nor trust the other person to be vulnerable in their presence. So, be it marriage or even dating relationships, especially nowadays we are in this age of dating apps where we no longer develop conflict resolution skills because if something is in my teeth,
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and the guy is sitting across me, instead of telling me so I can fix the thing on my teeth, he's just gonna swipe. You know, what's the point of trying to work things out with me? So we never formulate these and develop these skills because we just keep moving. We keep looking for greener pastures, be it marriage or just dating. So relationships, it's very key that we continue to develop this.
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communication skills, because even in our families, over the years, more and more families are becoming distant conflict leads to siblings or parents with their children not talking for years, due to someone somewhere feeling unheard, feeling hurt, but not being able to articulate that, or feeling like those who hurt them.
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are not changing their ways or continue to hurt them. So the safest way for them is to just drift away. And then the second area in which communications and skills are important is obviously the workplace. I started working in the nineties after I graduated. And this was quite interesting for me to observe that my colleagues who were subject matter experts, who I considered
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the smartest guys in the room, they were not necessarily be the ones who get promoted to lead project teams or to lead divisions and be directors. It was usually the most outspoken guy. He would know his subject matter as well and be an expert in the field, but it was more so the fact that that person could bring a project team together, that they could motivate us.
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to work towards a common goal to accomplish whatever the client has appointed us to do as a company. The guy who was the smartest would usually just sit in front of this computer, give us his best work. And when we take it to a client meeting, because my boss was outspoken, he was the one well-known. He was the one that every client would call and wanna speak to whenever they wanted to appoint the company to do some work. And...
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There's never been a time when a client would sit and wonder, okay, I hear you, this is your project team delivering this, but who did this particular part? Who came up with this brilliant idea? Nobody does that. Nobody has time to do that. So if you are very good at what you do, but you are not able to communicate to clients, to prospective customers, it might set you back in the sense that
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Nobody might know who you are, no matter how good you are. Or you may just be stuck in that position because that's all you are good at instead of being asked to lead a team or manage a team in a project. So think about it. If you take the time to develop these communication skills, it will also benefit you professionally. And then.
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When we think about both in relationships and workplace, what are some of the things that we can do starting today that we can look at when it comes to these skills? Number one, listen without formulating an answer in your head while the other person is talking. Trust me, I've been guilty of that too. Listen without formulating an answer and actually really listen. Two ears and one mouth, use in proportion.
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And secondly, especially when it comes to personal relationships, go to your heart instead of your brain. Go to your heart and trust. Learn to trust because the other person will be able to feel that you speak from the heart rather than the brain. And they will be able to really get to know how you feel about a certain issue and you can communicate that authentically.
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And last but not least, Ms. Ian Levinson said, if you want a clear answer, you need to ask a clear question. If you want a clear answer, you need to ask a clear question. As simple as that sounds, it's not that simple when a real life situation happens. And the reason is, you know, when you are angry, frustrated and just fed up, whatever question you ask,
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ask in that moment of high emotion is not really the question you want to ask. And therefore you don't get the outcome that you were hoping for, which leads to more anger, frustration and being fed up. The person on the other end of that communication, all they see is the anger and the frustration and their defenses go up. And they also want to defend themselves from your attacks because you are coming at them with anger and frustration.
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You know, psychology today says people often harbor defenses that they think will protect them from getting hurt, but this can keep them from experiencing closeness with others. Jim Rohn said, I remember when he was alive, he said, if you build up walls to prevent the hurt, you are preventing the love as well. If you build up walls to prevent the hurt, you are also preventing love at the same time. It's gonna keep everything away.
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So start learning to communicate from the heart instead of the head when it comes to personal relationships. If you're a subject matter expert at work and wondering why other people get promoted and you are not, but you are really good at what you do, start looking at how you can be more outspoken, a better communicator with both your colleagues and clients and see how that works for you.
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And last but not least, if you want a particular answer to a question, try not to come with anger, frustration, and feeling fed up, because that's not how the other person is gonna respond to you in the way that you had hoped. I hope that this episode has been helpful in answering the question, are communication skills important? And I hope that you realize that they're important, both at work and at play.
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Thank you so much for listening. I hope to be able to be with you on the next episode. This was really enjoyable for me and I hope that you get to have more value out of it. Thank you. Goodbye.
