Many organisations invest in a communication skills training: a day out, a good trainer, lots of energy. Two weeks later, most of it has faded. Not because the training was bad, but because communication is a skill, and skills only grow with regular practice.
So instead of one big event, try small weekly exercises. Here are six communication skills that matter at work, each with an exercise you can do in fifteen minutes.
1. Listening to understand
Most of us listen to reply: while the other person talks, we prepare our answer. Listening to understand means staying with what the other person says, and checking whether you got it right. It is also the basis of good selling, as we explain in why listening makes you a better salesperson.
Weekly exercise: in one conversation, summarise what the other person said before you give your own view.
2. Asking good questions
Closed questions get yes or no. Open questions (what, how, which) get information, ideas and involvement.
Weekly exercise: in your next meeting, ask at least three open questions before you make a proposal.
3. Giving clear instructions
What is obvious to you is often not obvious to the person doing the task. Clear instructions say what needs to happen, why, by when and what good looks like.
Weekly exercise: play back-to-back drawing with a colleague: one describes a simple figure, the other draws it without seeing it. You will find it in our team building games for adults.
4. Giving and receiving feedback
Useful feedback describes behaviour, not character, and is given soon after the moment. Receiving feedback well is just as important: listen, thank, and decide afterwards what you do with it.
Weekly exercise: give one colleague a specific compliment and one specific suggestion, both about something that happened this week.
5. Telling a clear story
People remember stories better than lists of facts. A good work story has a situation, a problem, what was done and the result.
Weekly exercise: explain one recent success or setback to a colleague in under two minutes, using those four steps.
6. Adapting to your audience
A customer, a new colleague and a manager need different words for the same message. Good communicators ask themselves first: what does this person already know, and what do they need from me?
Weekly exercise: rewrite one important email for a different reader, and notice what you change.
From training day to habit
A communication skills training works best as the start of a routine, not as the end of a project. Pick one skill per month, agree on the weekly exercise as a team, and spend five minutes in your team meeting on what you noticed. That is how knowledge turns into behaviour.
Want ready-made material? Our Sales Superhero magazine and Supermarketeer e-magazine are full of cases, quizzes and assignments for communicating with customers. Explore more on our Skills page, or ask our Studio to develop communication training media for your own organisation.