Discover how improving your communication skills can benefit your career, education, and life.
Communication is a part of everyday life, whether we communicate in person via speech or on countless digital platforms via text or images. Effective communication is a key communication skill, requiring us to be clear and complete in what we are trying to express. Being an effective communicator in our professional and personal lives involves learning the skills to exchange information with clarity, empathy, and understanding.
In this article, we’ll discuss effective communication in more detail, including ways you can improve your communication efforts. Ready to get started right away? Consider enrolling in the University of Colorado Boulder's Effective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation Specialization, where you'll learn how to write masterfully, design elegantly, and speak powerfully.
Effective communication is the process of exchanging ideas, thoughts, opinions, knowledge, and data so that the message is received and understood with clarity and purpose. When we communicate effectively, both the sender and receiver feel satisfied.
Communication occurs in both verbal and non-verbal forms, such as written, visual, and listening. It can occur in person, on the internet (on forums, social media, and websites), over the phone (through apps, calls, and video), or by mail.
While the effectiveness of communication can be difficult to measure, its impact is hard to deny. According to one study, surveyed companies in the United States and United Kingdom with at least 100,000 employees lost $62.4 million per year on average due to poor communication. On the flip side, companies led by effective communicators had nearly 50 percent higher total returns to shareholders over companies with less effective communicators at the helm [1].
For communication to be effective, it must be:
Clear
Correct
Complete
Concise
Compassionate
The benefits of communication effectiveness can be witnessed in the workplace, in an educational setting, and in your personal life. Learning how to communicate well can be a boon in each of these areas.
In the workplace, effective communication can help you:
Manage employees and build teams
Grow your organization more rapidly and retain employees
Benefit from enhanced creativity and innovation
Become a better public speaker
Build strong relationships and attract more opportunities for you or your organization
In your personal life, effective communication can lead to:
Improved social, emotional, and mental health
Deeper connections with people you care about
New bonds based on trust and transparency
Better problem–solving and conflict resolution skills
In face-to-face conversation, body language plays an important role. Communication is 55 percent non-verbal, 38 percent vocal (tone and inflection), and 7 percent words, according to Albert Mehrabian, a researcher who pioneered studies on body language [2]. Up to 93 percent of communication, then, does not involve what you are actually saying.
Positive body language is open—your posture is upright and receptive, your palms are open, you lean in when speaking or listening, and nod encouragingly. Negative body language can include biting your lip nervously, looking bored, crossing your arms, putting your hands on your hips, or tapping your foot impatiently.
Communication, like any other skill, is one you can improve upon with practice. Here are a few ways to start improving your communication skills, whether at home or on the job.
Who are you communicating with? Make sure you are aware of your audience—those you intend to communicate with may differ from those who actually receive your messages. Knowing your audience can be key to delivering the right messages effectively. Their age, race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, income, education level, subject knowledge, and professional experience can all affect how they’ll receive your message.
If you’re advertising a fast food restaurant, for example, you might want to deliver your message to an audience that’s likely to be hungry. This could be a billboard on the side of a busy highway that shows a giant cheeseburger and informs drivers that the closest location is just two miles away.
Or suppose you’re announcing your engagement to your family. You might host a gathering afterwards to celebrate, send them photos of the engagement in a group chat, surprise them in conversation over dinner, or tag your family members in your announcement on social media. Your chosen form of communication will depend on your family dynamics.
course
This is the fifth course in the Google Project Management Certificate program. In this course, you will explore the history, approach, and philosophy of ...
4.8
(13,729 ratings)
580,424 already enrolled
Beginner level
Average time: 20 hour(s)
Learn at your own pace
Skills you'll build:
Project Management, Strategy and Operations, Collaboration, Leadership and Management, Communication, Entrepreneurship
Active listening is the practice of giving your full attention in a communication exchange.
Some techniques include paying attention to body language, giving encouraging verbal cues, asking questions, and practicing non-judgment. Before executing your communication, be sure to consider your audience and practice active listening to get to the heart of their needs and desires. This way, you can improve your communication as a counselor, social worker, marketer, professor, colleague, or friend.
Here are some examples of active listening in practice:
If you work in marketing, you might engage in social listening to gather consumer data on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
If you are a professor, you might take advantage of end-of-semester feedback forms and act on your students' needs by hosting one-on-one meetings during office hours. Likewise, your students might choose to participate in discussions after your lecture or at least sit attentively and ask questions.
If you are a team leader, you might read Slack messages from your teammates, gauge that they are frustrated with the workload, and respond by resetting priorities for the next few weeks. This communicates to the team that their voices are heard.
If you are a parent, you might have a disagreement with your child about finishing their homework, but if you probe deeper with open communication, they may confess that their teacher made a discouraging comment that left them unmotivated.
course
Get started with using Agile Development and Scrum with this self-paced introductory course! After successfully completing this course, you will be able to ...
4.9
(2,262 ratings)
96,491 already enrolled
Beginner level
Average time: 11 hour(s)
Learn at your own pace
Skills you'll build:
Software Engineering
Once you have successfully identified your audience and listened to their intentions, needs, and desires, you may have something to communicate. To do this effectively, turn to the 5 Cs of communication to ensure your message is:
Clear
Correct
Complete
Concise
Compassionate
Prepare to communicate in a way that achieves most of these characteristics.
Using the right medium or platform to communicate matters. Effective communication requires you to consider whether you need to meet in person or if Zoom would suffice. Is your message casual enough to use WhatsApp, or would a formal email be more efficient and thorough? If you are catching up with a friend, do you two prefer to talk on the phone or via old-fashioned letters? Whatever you choose should be intuitive and appropriate for you and your current situation.
You might assess the priority level and the type of communication needed. In a marketing campaign, is there a visual component on Instagram or is it a spoken podcast ad? Will the platform be a Facebook post, product placement in a film, or a printed poster hung in cafes? For a university lecture, do students prefer to be online or meet in person? Will there be a discussion afterward, and would it be fruitful to conduct it in a pub, cafe, or in a field outdoors?
By considering your audience, practicing active listening, clarifying your communication, and choosing the right medium or environment, you are well on your way to exercising communication effectiveness.
Hone your written, visual, and verbal business presentation skills with the University of Colorado Boulder's Effective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation Specialization. Over four courses, you'll learn how to write well-organized, clear business documents; design elegant presentation slides, reports, and posters; and present and speak with confidence and power.
PRovoke Media. "The Cost Of Poor Communications, https://www.provokemedia.com/latest/article/the-cost-of-poor-communications." Accessed November 14, 2024.
The University of Texas Permian Basin. "How Much of Communication Is Nonverbal?, https://online.utpb.edu/about-us/articles/communication/how-much-of-communication-is-nonverbal/." Accessed November 14, 2024.
Editorial Team
Coursera’s editorial team is comprised of highly experienced professional editors, writers, and fact...
This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work.
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalization. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly.