Communication Skills for Career Growth

I come across many working professionals who struggle in communication. It could be written or verbal communication.

When you want to put across your thoughts, your communication skills play a major role. Technical people are good at writing technical things but struggle to communicate with peers and other cross functional team members about Projects.

Communication is very important skill to become a highly successful Project Leader. As per some studies, Project Manager is communicating 90% of the time.

The basic question is, how to improve communication skills? Here is my take.. I often ask team members to practice this.

Written Communication:

In any skill building, practice is the key. Many working professionals struggle to write a simple 10-line email which can convey things properly.

To improve written communication, practice writing…that’s the only way.

How to structure an e-mail communication:

Start with properly addressing your email to receiver (with usage of mobile devices, it is a fashion these days to write one line email without it addressing properly, I don’t recommend it)
Give reference of prior communication or write precisely why you are writing this email (keep it short),
Write the main content preferably in bullet points or tabulated matrix,
At the end write clearly what action you need from receiver and by when. If it is just for information, mention it clearly.
Close by clearly mentioning your name and contact details (remove that ‘get outlook for iOS or Android’ 😊)
Similarly, in application or cover letter, write Subject clearly.
Other factors to be considered are punctuation, proper line spacing and selection of simple but apt words.

One thing I always recommend to improve English written communication is reading English newspaper. It helps in improving vocabulary and sentence formation.

Communication through Presentation:

Preparing presentation:

Whatever may be the position you operate at, creating presentation is one of the must have skills these days. The presentation could be related to – project update, marketing or sales presentation, report or findings, training and many more formats.

Many people find it difficult to structure the presentation, which is to the point, easy to read and easy to understand by audience.

Few things which have worked for me are mentioned below (I am still figuring out how to improve further).

How to structure a presentation:

While preparing presentation, first thing you should think about is who is the audience, medium of presenting (face to face or virtual) and time allotted to you for presenting.
After giving lot of presentations and trainings (30 minutes webinar to 35 hours training) thumb rule which has worked for me is, the number of slides should be half the number of minutes allotted to you. It means, if you have 15 minutes to present, your ppt should have 7 to 8 slides excluding title slide and thank you slide.
The theme of ppt should be selected depending on your audience and type of presentation. For formal presentations, stick to ppt template of your organization. If there is no corporate template, choose the one having simple fonts and maximum white space and neutral colours.
The structure of ppt should be like this – title slide, agenda slide, main content, thank you slide and Annexure wherein you park supporting slides to be referred or presented if required.
Title slide should clearly mention heading of your topic, your name and date.
Agenda slide should contain headings of topics you will be presenting.
Strictly no long sentences in main content. It should be bullet points with one image per slide if required. Bullet point length should not be more than one line.
Avoid animations as far as possible.
ppt should be such that it works for face-to-face presentation as well as virtual presentation (hence avoid heavy graphics in slides)
Instead of creating animations, I prefer adding number of slides for each step which can be run one after another to create animation effect. Choose regular fonts like Arial or Times New Roman.
On Thank You slide, mention your name, email and contact number so that people can reach out to you for clarifications if any.

When presenting in front of executives/management, ensure that you present high level information in crisp format (mostly they will not have time to get into minute details). Talking in terms of numbers and percentage works best (but ensure that all numbers are true, because you should be able to explain it in detail if asked).

Anticipate type of questions you may be asked and prepare supporting material slides and put them in Annexure. Generally, people would like to know basis of calculations, source of data, detailed working etc.)

Delivering a Presentation:

In today’s world, presenting is the must have skill. I have seen many people (juniors to senior executives) fumble while giving presentations.

Issues which I mostly observe are- people read the sentences without explaining, there is mismatch between time allocated and no. of slides, people don’t read and rehearse their own presentation, cannot talk in proper English even a single sentence, use lot of filler words like uhh/aah etc, keep repeating same words again and again, no eye contact with audience in face to face presentation, folded hands or hands in trouser pockets, showing back to audience, cannot handle questions, no proper tone and pace of talking, no feedback from audience in between, don’t know when their ppt ends, not setting ground rules at the beginning of presentation, casual dressing, bright light from back when presenting online with video on…and many more.

Following tips may help in delivering good presentation (I don’t claim to be great presenter, but these things should be good enough to present well)

First thing is practicing and rehearsal of your ppt. For that, you can use rehearsal tool within PowerPoint. It helps in anticipating time you will need to present and also you should prepare notes on piece of paper about what you will talk during each slide.
When presenting online, have a dry run before hand to ensure that your screen sharing and video works. Light should be from front side, not back side.
When you present title slide, take feedback from audience whether they can see your screen, see you and hear you. Also set some ground rules like Q&A only at the end so that your flow of presentation is not disturbed.
read your presentation at least 5 times and visualize what types of questions might come for each slide and know the numbers properly.
Even if ppt is prepared by your assistant, you should know logic behind each word and number on slides.
Do not read the sentences. Otherwise, it is better to send ppt by email to audience because they can also read the sentences. Your role as a presenter is to elaborate each bullet point in the ppt.
when giving face to face presentation, do not stand with folded hands or hands in pocket and always ensure that you are always facing the audience.
Treat each presentation as the most important presentation hence dress well..casual dressing generally shows casual approach.
In between, take feedback from audience whether they are with you.
Practice alone as if giving presentation in front of 100 people. That will boost your confidence.
Practice speaking in English..avoiding mixing other languages and those unwanted fillers like aah/uhh.
Keep eye contact with audience in face-to-face presentation and don’t present just looking at one person sitting in first row.
Prepare well for the probable questions which can be asked.
Learn to handle weird questions and have your strategies ready without getting nervous.

Hope you enjoyed reading. Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

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