Personal Growth Archives

Are You Living Up To Your Potential?

If you’re ambitious, I’m sure you’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking about strategies that will help you achieve greater levels of success – whether it’s a more impressive job title, higher compensation, or responsibility for larger revenues, profits, or numbers of employees. The interesting thing to reflect on is whether this definition of success is yours’s or is it heavily influenced by family, friends, and colleagues.

Do you sometimes feel that despite all your efforts and accomplishments, you lack a true sense of professional satisfaction and fulfilment? Do others see you as successful but you still don’t feel you are successful enough?

For someone like me who transitioned from client-facing investment banking to a non-profit and then to set up my own personal development company, I know what I’m talking about.

Do you have fleeting thoughts that your career is not really turning out the way you’d like? Do you feel trapped sometimes by your own success? Are you afraid of losing your stature and don’t want to let anyone down, but at the same time you don’t want to keep doing what you are doing?

A possible reason for this could be that you’ve been so busy trying to reach specific milestones and impress other people that you’ve lost sight of what you really enjoy doing. It’s never too late to re-examine your career and focus on achieving success as defined by you and not by others.

The question you need to ask yourself is “Am I reaching my potential?” and not “How do I rise to the top?” or “How can I be successful in my career?”

It’s about taking a very personal look at what success means for you in your heart of hearts and then finding your path to get there. Needless to say, talking to a coach like me, who’s experienced it personally, can help you find your answers quickly. So reach out and let’s talk! Click on the Request Consultation button above.

How Resilient Are You?

Leadership, Personal Growth

Resilience refers to our ability to adapt and bounce back when things don’t go as we planned or as we hoped it would. It’s not that resilient people don’t feel bad when things don’t go their way, but they don’t spiral out of control as well. Resilient people don’t wallow or dwell on failures for long. They acknowledge the situation and their feelings, learn from their mistakes, and then move forward.

Resilient people view the difficulties in a situation as a challenge, not as a paralyzing event. They look at their failures and mistakes as lessons to be learned from, and as opportunities for growth. Their self-worth does not take a knock when things don’t work out as planned.

They continue to be committed to their lives and their goals and have a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning. They spend their time and energy focusing on situations and events that they have control over. Because they put their efforts where they can have the most impact, they feel empowered and confident.

Want to figure out how resilient you are? Knowing this is the first step to working towards becoming more resilient. Here is an assessment to help you figure out how resilient you are.

How Resilient Are You

Start Your Year With A Bang With These New Year Resolution Hacks

Personal Growth

Do you feel you are unable to stick to your new year’s resolutions or habits that will help you be more productive? And how does that make you feel about yourself? Not great, right? But instead of giving up on yourself, wouldn’t it be better if you tried to figure out a way to stick to your new year resolutions?

Fortunately, there are ways you can make your habits stick…

Your habits are a defining part of your life. Your habit thus shapes you, makes you or breaks you.

Come New Years eve and nearly everyone has a moment when they reflect on where they wanted to be and where they really are. This leads to some optimistic goals and resolutions that they intend to follow. But most of these are left halfway due to lack of motivation and determination. Thus, building the right habits and sticking to productive ways to achieve these New Year’s resolutions can go a long way.

If your resolution is based on a goal that needs to be achieved, break down your goal into small achievable steps. Form habits to help you achieve those goals. When we develop productive habits, we do not have to worry about leaving our resolutions halfway through. We develop behaviours that will help us achieve our dreams, resolutions and goals in auto-pilot.

Thus a good way to start would be choosing the habits we want to adopt, and you will then be amazed as these will help you achieve your goals one step at a time and help change your life.

Follow these hack to make New Year resolutions stick

1. Trust Yourself to build new habits

When we try and don’t succeed in sticking to a habit such as waking up on time, working out or even doing a set number of chores daily, we give up thinking we are just not capable. Believe in yourself and try again each time you fail. By strategising and implementing these strategies, we are all capable of building new habits. It only shows that if we are unable to build a new habit, we may be just strategising incorrectly and need to come up with new strategies to build productive habits.

2. Start Small

We usually tend to focus on the big picture and forget that it is impossible to reach our goals by first creating a blueprint and determining the small steps required to achieve a greater goal. When we set our bar too high right at the beginning, failure is guaranteed. For example, people think they should start exercising by jogging around 1 hour daily from the first day itself. A good practice would be starting with 10 minutes daily and building up your stamina and speed as you proceed.

3. Associate it to a trigger

Associate the habit you want to form with a habit that’s already been formed. For instance, if you want to build a habit of sleeping at a set time right after you read a book daily, start switching off your light at the set time regularly. After a point, your mind will associate switching off your light after reading at that time with sleeping and in no time, it will become a habit.

4. Gift yourself

Gifting yourself once you are successful in inculcating your habit for a certain period time will reinforce the habit and it will then be more likely to stick. Soon your brain will start to enjoy doing the habit itself, but first, you need to put incentives in place to motivate yourself to do it.

5. Don’t be harsh on yourself

Putting ourselves down and giving up because you could not achieve your set target is actually counterproductive. We should instead be kind with ourselves and allow ourselves minor setbacks. We can then focus on the next step and resolve to not skip the habit again.

5. Tell a friend about your goal

Tell a friend who you trust about the resolution or goal. They may help you focus more on the goal. They will also provide support and help you with ways to overcome challenges in developing habits to achieve these goals’ if you find yourself wavering. They can also help you ensure that you do not give up midway.

Having the right strategies in place will help you achieve almost any goal that you set for yourself. It all comes down to the grit, passion and perseverance with which you pursue your goals.

Do let us know if you are able to achieve your goals by forming productive habits today!

Unlocking Mental Blocks To Achieve Excellence and Happiness

Personal Growth

Every time you read or hear about a successful person, one common theme always emerges – they have somehow learnt to control and leverage their subconscious mind. This control unlocks a fount of positivity, efficiency, creativity, and motivation for them and drives their achievements higher and higher.

Can we all do it?

Yes, but it takes time, effort, and practice. Our subconscious mind controls so much of our lives, yet we have very little control over it. It has been famously likened to a wild monkey that runs unchecked all over, but once given the right stimuli or direction can use its raw energy to help us succeed.

Unfortunately for us humans, our subconscious mind leans more towards negativity. One of the ways this is manifested is with mental blocks that develop over time. A mental block is a deeply held belief, which is created through personal experiences and influences how we approach certain situations. For example, many people feel they are going to fail, as they are not good enough. This thought starts them off on a negative note, making success slightly more difficult. So in case the person then actually fails, it would reinforce his/her mental block. And the never-ending cycle of negativity would continue.

At best, living with mental blocks can stop you from living life to the fullest, and at worst, it can dominate your life and hinder you professionally and in your relationships.

How can we break down our mental blocks?

The first step is to identify our irrational beliefs; by being aware of our blocks, we can change our approach towards life in general. This understanding also helps us to determine what and in which direction we need to improve.

The best way to identify mental blocks is to listen to your inner thoughts. Every time your mind starts drifting from work or towards a certain conflict, you need to consciously listen to the monologue in your mind to find what you are thinking about. Over time a pattern could emerge that would point you in the right direction.

At SoaringEagles, we carry out detailed self-awareness exercises that can uncover core values or personality traits that could point you towards your mental blocks. You can also do simple activities such as asking yourself a series of questions about your feelings or actions. Why am I feeling like this? Why did I behave like this? What do I want from this particular action? And so on. You can scan your list of core belief systems, values, and motivational drivers and look for conflicts. For example, you might have a highly extroverted and friendly nature but are in a job that requires secrecy, or you could be highly ambitious professionally, but at the same time are an introvert who finds it difficult to network or play politics. These personality-value-belief misalignments often result in mental blocks.

Once you have identified some distinct mental blocks, it is time to find out more about them. With an understanding of what they are – fear, anxiety, anger or insecurity, lack of interest, or an inability to concentrate – you can catch yourself when they surface. It’s time to find the source of these problems and to bring them to light. Ask yourself again and again why you feel a certain way or when it all started? Write down exact thoughts that pass through your mind when these blocks come up. Some that appear unreasonable will start disappearing once brought to attention, and only the core problems will remain.

To counter their effect in your life, you need to face them head-on. Here are some tried and tested ways to remove or at the very least limit the influence of the blocks –

– When you start sliding down a familiar path, and an oft-repeated monologue begins in your head, cut it short right there.

– Another useful trick is to turn your negative mental block into positive action. For example, if you find yourself doubting your abilities, then take a break and call a loved one or chat with a friend. Develop coping mechanisms that help you negate the effects of your block.

– If you see that certain blocks are triggered by a situation, then keep an eye on the situation and take action before it goes out of hand completely. For example, if overloading your daily to-do list leaves you feeling anxious and reduces your productivity, then schedule breaks to reset your anxiety levels and keep up your morale.

The Bottom Line

Every single one of us has mental blocks that are hard-wired into our minds. Built over time and reinforced by repeated experiences, they are almost like muscle memory. They become your default way of reacting and acting. Changing or eliminating these blocks can transform your whole life! In this journey of transformation, understanding yourself and identifying your mental blocks is the first and the most crucial step. This tiny bit of introspection can lead to some giant changes.

At Soaring Eagles, all our coaching and training programs start with a detailed module on self-awareness. Understanding yourself and your subconscious blocks are the strongest foundation for long-lasting change. If what we discussed here strikes a chord, then don’t hesitate to pick up the phone. We would be happy to help!

Being Self-aware Makes You Confident

Personal Growth

Have you ever felt completely at odds with your job or your organization?

Have you felt unsure of your abilities and place in the office? Maybe your personality, values, or likes and dislikes don’t really fit with what your job demands? However, most of us are not able to articulate what the problem is or even that there is a problem!

That is because

a) most of us expect to be uncomfortable at work (after all, why would someone pay you if it was easy!) and

b) we don’t really have a clear enough understanding of ourselves to pinpoint the misalignment or put the finger on the root cause of our discomfort.

What is self-awareness?

Simply defined, it means having a deep understanding of your inner norms, drivers, motivations, beliefs, and preferences, or intuitions. You understand what is happening in your mind in each situation. You can analyze, monitor, or control your reaction to situations and external stimuli.

Ultimately, being more self-aware will give you the ability to express yourself in the best possible manner during any situation. You will act consciously, instead of reacting uncontrollably.

It will also help you make the most of your abilities. When you know who you are, you will use that knowledge to place yourself in situations that align with your innermost being and remove yourself from circumstances that don’t.

At Soaring Eagles, we firmly believe that EVERY single change (no matter how small or insignificant) must be authored by you yourself! And that is only possible when you know who you are to start with. Only when you know your starting point can you then fix a goal for transformation.

Can being self-aware help you grab the right opportunities and steer your career in the right direction?

Clarity

Imagine knowing exactly what type of work, professional environment, or process suits your personality! All that time spent bouncing from one unsatisfactory job to another can be completely cut down. With an awareness of your nature, beliefs, and key drivers, you can tailor your job search – and your entire career – to maximize your core strengths.

Confidence

Knowing your self allows you to bring a heightened sense of confidence to your career. It will enable you to make career choices with complete confidence. No more second-guessing your abilities or your interest in a particular area; being self-aware will help you analyse your professional options and make decisions based on knowledge rather than gut feel.

Emotional Intelligence

Self-awareness leads to developing emotional intelligence. When you have the ability to be in touch with your emotions, it will automatically make you more aware of and empathetic towards the feelings of others. This amplified EQ will help you achieve success in all phases of your career – from your first internship to your last leadership role.

Longevity

When you work at what you like, or in an atmosphere that aligns with your core beliefs – you are already on the way to long-term success. Understanding yourself allows you to find work that you enjoy and are good at – this, in turn, ensures you do well at it!

It’s clear …

That you could land a job that is the envy of your peers or get nominated for a role that puts you in the big league, but if it doesn’t match your core temperament or your belief system then you will not be able to sustain yourself in it in the long-run and more importantly, you will not be happy in it.

Are you looking to jumpstart your plateauing career? Or maybe you are looking to bring some clarity into your career plans? Then do consider one of SoaringEagles’ training sessions. We have several that focus on building skills useful for different stages of your career. Do call us to find out what fits your needs.

3 Major Stress Drivers At Work And Tips On How To Manage Them

Personal Growth

That sinking feeling in your stomach; that unwillingness to get out of bed; dragging yourself at work; increased heartbeat, sleepless nights, sweaty palms, hair turning grey, and stomach problems – this is all STRESS!

Sadly we don’t know anyone who hasn’t suffered from it all! In fact, it would be safe to say that stress is on the rise, especially in workplaces. We can blame it on the faster pace of work and life or more competition or the corporate rat race or even our personal relationships – whatever may the reasons be, the bottom line is that STRESS seems to be GROWING!

Here in this article, we will focus on some of the main stress-inducing situations in an office scenario AND some tips to help you reduce it (or at the very least manage it better) –

Interpersonal Conflict

One of the most significant sources of stress is the BOSS (a US-based study reported that over a third of surveyed workers cited their boss as the primary source of their work-related stress). As your boss or senior management has the most control or say in what you do at work, how well you are treated, and your long-term career prospects, it is not surprising that difficult bosses can become a major source of worry.

Apart from team leads and HoDs, conflict with colleagues can also lead to a toxic work atmosphere, which will undoubtedly increase the stress in your daily work life.

What can you do?

First off, keeping quite and bottling it all up is NOT going to help. The stress will only keep increasing, and it is better to be upfront about your problems when they are small and manageable rather than when they get out of hand.

If your boss is inadvertently causing stress but is intrinsically a nice, reasonable person, then it might be useful to sit down and have a simple chat. It would also be helpful to chat about your problems with some close colleagues and enlist their help when things start getting stressful – for example, with late-night shifts or deadlines. It might seem a bit aggressive, but setting some boundaries can be helpful in the long run – for example, if you have to get back home at a certain time, but long meetings or last-minute work always creates difficulties, then talking about your time constraints openly is best. Try to find a flexible way to manage work such as coming in early, taking on a different role, or working from home.

If, on the other hand, your boss’s personality is difficult to deal with, then there isn’t much you can do to change him/her or your situation. The short term solution is to learn to deal with moods, predict personality traits, and keep yourself calm. In the long-run, moving to another department or a different company altogether is the only permanent solution.

Unrealistic work expectations

Too much work, impossible deadlines, long work hours, and working with too few resources or staff are all unreasonable situations at work that induce stress.

While you might be able to manage working beyond your capacity or abilities for a while, it is bound to create a problematic situation when it becomes a long term expectation.

What can you do?

Setting expectations and time limits are the only ways ahead. Every job has situations where you will be asked to extend yourself to do more – peak season in retail or a new project or client with a tight deadline. All employees understand this and are generally OK with it too. The problem only starts when you go from one stressful project to another and from one deadline to another; when the team size remains small, but the workload keeps increasing. In these situations, you have to speak to the senior management and present your problem along with solutions.

Work-life imbalance

In the current work culture where working long hours is a badge of indispensability and almost a status symbol signaling one’s importance in a company, personal life usually suffers. This competition to work extra-long starts when most people are young and can sustain this lifestyle, but when families come into the picture, it becomes challenging to maintain a balance.

What can one do?

First and foremost, get a sound support system in place to manage whatever home related work you can outsource. Spend extra to get better and more reliable help. With external help in place, set your limits. This could be how many days a month you will travel or sacrosanct family times such as weekends or late evenings.

Career-wise you might have to re-evaluate how you can cut down or accommodate your family’s needs with your work schedule. Ultimately every person must decide their priorities themselves. But it’s important to sit down and plan what you want to do, what are your life’s must-haves, and what you are willing to let go off. Once you have that clearly defined, the next step is to go about finding the smoothest path to achieve the best work-life balance.

The Bottom Line

Stress will always be there! Whether you are the CEO or the new intern – everyone has some problems they are dealing with and some tensions they are living under. No one is exempt, but some do manage to seem less stressed and happier. This is only because they have the mindset and the drive to change their situations. Stress is a symptom of loss of control; when you feel that you can’t change a bad situation and are stuck in it. Always know that YOU have the reins of your life; YOU are in the driver’s seat, and the choice to change is YOURS.

Approach your problems with a positive attitude and look for solutions – they will seem less stressful.

If things seem overwhelming and you need to reduce stress immediately, then learning ways to de-stress from a professionally trained coach is the best way forward. Request a complimentary consultation by clicking the button above.

3 Ways To Develop A Customer-Oriented Mindset

Personal Growth

Have you ever held a job that required you to interact with customers all day long? Chances are that before you hit the floor, you underwent extensive training about the “how to” deal with customers.

You would have been trained in how to deal with angry customers, how to communicate fluently with your customers. You may have also been told to act cheerful around your customers. However what happens when a particular client need exceeds the limits of your training?

Customer orientedness is going beyond the call of duty to take care of the needs of your customers. It goes beyond all the technical skills you may have picked up. It is not just about remaining calm and positive in front of the client.

Customer orientedness stems from a deep desire to understand and help the customer. While everyone can be good at customer service, what sets some people apart is the mindset with which they interact with their customers.

Improving Customer Orientation

Here are a few tips on how we can improve our customer orientedness.

1. Recognizing the responsibility

When an employee recognizes that irrespective of whether they could actually fix the problem for the customer or not, they need to go above and beyond to make sure the customer has a great experience while interacting with them.

2. Always learning

The best of the best are continuous learners – and not just about their own products and services. They learn about competitors, what’s the latest and greatest in the industry, and general knowledge about many things.

They continuously seek to upgrade their skills and grab every opportunity to learn. Every customer interaction for them is a learning opportunity and they continuously strive to become better with every customer.

3. The desire to care

Not every employee has that mindset coming in. Even after basic customer service training, they may still not get it. Sure, they may understand the techniques to deliver service, but don’t get the essence. A customer-focused mindset includes the desire to serve.

It includes the desire to put oneself in the position of their customers and then take actions. Great customer-oriented professionals can empathize with their customers and often feel the need to go beyond their call of duty and feel responsible for their customer’s experience.

To conclude, customer service is not an easy job and it’s not particularly easy to get everything right on the first go. However, creating a positive mindset is important and critical, and to do this, it’s necessary to put the right training in place and to ensure that the employees are happy overall.

A happy employee is one that’s much more inclined to show the empathy that good customer service needs. After all, its very rightfully said that when a business takes care of its employees, the employees take care of the customers.

Speak to us if you want your employees to develop customer orientation that results in superior customer experience.

How to Maintain a Positive Attitude at Work

Personal Growth

Sometime or the other most of us have had a job where bringing yourself to work seemed like the hardest thing to do every morning. Most of us still dread Monday mornings and need to be reminded constantly to plaster a smile and act professionally.

Have you often felt unappreciated at work? Have you often felt that your boss and colleagues are trying to bring you down? Having a negative attitude not only robs us of our productivity, but it also affects our overall mental health and often has a long-lasting negative effect.

That brings us to the question, what is a positive attitude? How does one maintain a positive attitude?

Not every work comes with a great working atmosphere. So how do we cope with negativity around us? A positive attitude is something that goes above and beyond being cheerful. A negative attitude is often a result of having a fixed mindset. No one should live in a constant state of “fight or flight”, but negative attitudes create exactly that scenario.

Here are some easy ways to help you change and imbibe a more positive attitude at work

1. Control your language

Be nice to others. It’s important to be mindful of the words we use. During conflicts, using “I” statements help us articulate our thoughts better. It takes the blame off the other person and allows for an explanation. Also, when we might be tempted to say something, it always a good thing to hold our tongue in cheek. The language we use every day has a great effect on how we think about ourselves, our work, and those around us.

2. Be nice to other people

There is a huge difference between criticism and constructive feedback. Try to give feedback about the behavior and less about the person. If you are being targeted mindlessly because of your membership to a particular age, race, gender, sexual orientation, language or region, do not stoop to the level of the others. Stay above and focus on the outcome of your work. Let your success make the noise.

You continue to stay in your own lane and keep up the great work. Choose your arguments wisely. Not every provocation requires a retaliation. Stay away from gossip. Maintaining a positive attitude at work means that you are a team player who treats all team members with respect. By refraining from joining a gossip circle, you can ensure that you maintain that level of respect. Stay away from the rumor mills and hold yourself back from passing that personal comment to someone you dislike.

3. Assume responsibility, and choose your response

How you respond to a situation depends on who you are. While it’s easier to get carried away with the situation and react strongly, it takes self-control to not react. Instead, respond to the situation with élan.

Every day is not a good day – but don’t let issues back home affect your work in the office. You may have been stuck in standstill traffic that morning or experienced a 45-minute delay on your train ride, but you can’t let those frustrations affect your work. If you are in a foul mood, ensure you walk it off before you get to the office. That way, instead of ranting to your colleagues about how terrible your morning was, you can poke fun at your bad luck and give everyone a chuckle. Laughing at your unfortunate circumstances will keep the work environment positive, where ranting will add negativity.

4. Look to long-term instead of short-term

When the situation is difficult in the short-term, adjust your vision to the long-term. Short-term situations tend to be heavy on the emotion. Making decisions or taking action based on that is not only a bad idea, but tends to feed negative attitudes. Viewing things in the long-term, on the other hand, make the challenges of the now seem much less terrible because the bigger picture reveals an exciting outcome.

5. Express Gratitude

Despite the rough days, there’s always something beneficial about holding a job, and it’s important to remind yourself of that. Take time each day to write a list of what you are thankful for. Research shows that expressing gratitude each day helps rewire the brain to think of more positive thoughts and improves overall mental health.

Hence I would like to conclude by saying that while it’s true that we can’t choose our colleagues or our supervisors. We can definitely choose the attitude with which we approach each day. After all, we can’t choose the cards we are handed. However, it’s our obligation to play our best game with what we have been dealt with.

For more information click on the Request Consultation button above.

5 Ways To Become An Effective Communicator

Personal Growth

We all know communication is an active ingredient for any kind of success in life – personal or professional. There is absolutely no doubting the power of good communication skills!

So the question is – how do you polish and sharpen your existing communication skills? How do you become a good communicator?

With thousands of man hours of teaching communication skills and interacting with hundreds of learners through our training sessions, we have narrowed down some proven ways that can help you become an effective communicator –

1. Use all your senses

Communication is more than just talk, so it’s important to use more than just your mouth; engage on several levels – listen attentively to understand what the other person is trying to communicate, look and feel for nonverbal cues and go beyond speech.

2. Be clear, be concise and be precise

Less is more is one of the unspoken golden rules of communication! To be an effective communicator, you need to keep things simple, straight and short – avoid jargon and long-winded sentences, speak slowly, remember to pause and wait for a response.

3. Be present

It’s impossible to feign interest beyond a few minutes – people always come to know when someone is not paying attention! To make sure you stay attentive you have to actually listen carefully and engage with the other person. Ask questions, offer suggestions and participate in the conversation fully – also please put your phone down and stop multi-tasking.

4. Be nice and be polite

A smile goes a long way – it smoothens out tense situations, starts you off on a good note, relaxes the other person and ensures cooperation. Be sure to always be polite and positive in your interactions.

5. Be genuine

Just like inattention, people can sniff out a fake pretty quickly. Don’t try to behave like someone else or put on an act – not only is it exhausting to keep up, there is a real chance that you will be perceived (or branded) as someone untrustworthy. Always make sure your actions match your words, follow up on your promises and be straight forward with your words.

Communication is not rocket science, a lot of it are things that are already accepted as good manners and age-old social behaviours. So, you might ask – whats all this fuss about learning communication skills?

Well, we can tell you from the point of view of communication trainers!

Most people already have some communication skills – a training or a session would hone these, remind them about some dos and don’t and fix some obvious problems.

Some others are stuck in negative patterns of speech and body language – our programme can help them see their weaknesses and fix them too.

And then there are some skills like public speaking and presentations which you can learn really well with the help of experienced coaches and facilitators.

If you frequently feel that your communication skills are letting you down or if you feel you need to become a better communicator at work, then training will undoubtedly be beneficial!

Get in touch with us to find out more details by clicking on the Request Consultation button above.

6 Easy Ways to Improve Your Communication Skills – From the Pros!

Personal Growth

From Steve Jobs quotes to funny memes of miscommunication – every day we are bombarded with the message that good communication skills are critical to success. And to be honest, they absolutely are!

There are countless stories and examples of how failure to communicate resulted in losses and how leaders with exceptional soft skills lifted companies out of staggeringly bad situations by motivating their teams.

While our daily lives might not be so dramatic, common sense suggests that when you are surrounded by people then communicating with them is a skill that must be paid attention too.

So, if you feel you are lacking in the communication department, then these easy-to-follow suggestions put together by SoaringEagles trainers are just the thing for you:

Communication Skills Tips

1. Tailor your conversation to the person and the situation:

Cracking a mistimed joke in a serious meeting; being overfamiliar with a client or laughing after missing a deadline – these are just some of the examples of how not to communicate!

The first step to improving your communication skills is to tailor your talk to who, where and when of any conversational scenario. Try to find out as much as you can about what’s going on with the person or the situation before you jump into a conversation.

2. Never skip the listening part of communication

Nothing is as off-putting as talking to someone who is not paying any attention! Communication is a two-way process, and you have to learn how to listen actively to practice it successfully.

3. Be brief but clear

Most people like to talk – its true! We tend to overcommunicate; give extra information; spice up facts to make them more interesting or just digress from the actual point of the conversation. All of this ultimately dilutes the main message we want to put across.

To improve your communication, you need to start practicing brevity today. As you go along, you will find that people understand you more clearly.

4. Pay attention to your Body language

A lot of your communication happens non-verbally – everything from your eyes to how you stand and your gestures convey cues that are picked up and decoded subconsciously by people. And it all adds up with your verbal message to make up the whole package.

To improve your overall communication skills be aware of your non-verbal cues; observe the same in others and try to project a body language that is confident and friendly.

5. Be Positive and cheerful

Do you want to be someone who always criticizes, cribs or complains? No? Well, neither does anyone else. While everyone has bad days, and no one expects you always to be grinning ear-to-ear, a smile and a positive attitude will certainly make people around you happy.

6. Think it through

Whether it is a text message or a pitch deck, always keep some time aside to check and recheck very piece of communication that you send out. Even in conversations, curb your enthusiasm and think before you speak.

Communication is a part of every single interaction we undertake, so there are plenty of examples of good and bad communication methods all around us. To improve your communication skills, you need to, first and foremost, notice how others are communicating around you – that should be enough to get you started in the right direction.

Sometimes the DIY approach (do-it-yourself) to improving communication might not be useful in your situation. For example – if you are starting a new job or getting ready for entrance exams. If you need results fast, then we recommend getting hold of professionals – like us!

For more details, click on the Request Consultation button above.