Good communication is the essential to:
- Increasing your chances of gaining a promotion.
- Helping you effectively get your point across at meetings
- Influencing your mangers decision makings
- Getting on with colleagues and managers
Good communication is essential in all areas of your life, especially at work. If you fail to communicate well, you can often be left behind while others move up the career ladder.
Use Good Communication Skills to Pass Interviews
Effective communicators have the power to influence meetings and conversations, without others realising. Confidence and self belief grows as you learn to communicate to others with greater levels of success.
One of the first lessons to improve your communication skills is to listen to other peoples language, we generally converse using one of the following language patterns:
- Visual,
- Auditory
- Kinaesthetic
Once you can recognise a person’s VAK language pattern, you can use their language to communicate more effectively with them.
Learn which VAK learning style you have?
How does this work?
As we hear words, our brain quickly uses these words to create images in our mind and the image creates emotions in our body.
If I tell you to think of a dog, you may picture an old pet and this may bring about happy childhood memories that make you feel happy as you begin to reminisce whereas the same instruction for another person may provoke more negative feelings as a memory of a dog attack is recalled.
Depending on our own individual persuasion Visual, Auditory or Kinaesthetic verbal patterns can be used in order to influence and alter the strength of these emotions.
# We all use all 3 types of language (V, A and K) but most people have a persuasion towards one most strongly.
- If you’re Auditory, words such as Sound, Noise, Volume, Tune, Pitch, & phrases such as “..Will help to get your bell ringing.”
- For Visual people words such as Image, Overview, Sketch, Fade, Haze, & phrases such as “..Will help you create better picture.”
- and for Kinaesthetic words such as Touch, Feeling, Temperature, Cold, Gut Feeling, Weight & phrases such as “..help you have a feel for the situation.”
As an example, if you were to asked someone about a recent holiday they may respond with:
V “It was a Bright idea to get away, the views from the hotel were so picturesque!”
A “I was in tune with the relaxing sound of the sea, it left me absolutely speechless.”
K “It felt good to get away from work and recharge my batteries“
Once you have diagnosed a person’s language pattern you can used their VAK language pattern to improve the power of your conversation, by communicating using their language.
Think back to a time when a conversation or meeting did not go well no matter what you said. When it just seemed that no matter how much you explained things the other person just couldn’t seem to understand your point. This can happen when one person communicates using a language pattern with someone, who has a difference preference. By changing your language to match the other persons, you will quickly see better results as the other person quickly grasp what it is you are trying to get across.
Practice makes perfect with this one, first spend time listening to peoples language and then change your language to match theirs and notice the difference it makes with rapport building, influencing and communication. This works well during job interviews, for hints and tips on improving your interview technique, VAK in Interviews and how Your Personality Type can influence your career choice, follow this link: Secrets of Employment.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you will also enjoy reading:
Fantastic article. Fantastic.
Today, I went to the beachfront with my kids. I found a sea shell
and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said
“You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell
to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside
and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is totally off topic
but I had to tell someone!