How can we make our communication more crisp and clear?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
How can we make our communication more crisp and condensed? I think there are two main factors in this. See, there are thoughts in our mind. And communication essentially means the thoughts have to come out as words.
And second part is that the words have to be understood by the other person. So, here, when there is some sort of either slowness or imprecision in communication, you have to see where is the problem. Is it that our thoughts are not clear? Or is it that we are not able to find the words for the thoughts? Or is it that we are not sure whether the other person is understanding or not? And that is why we are trying to repeat the things.
So, we will have to evaluate this. So, sometimes, usually if it is in the case of interviews or any other important occasion, we usually prepare our thoughts properly. We know these are the things which I want to speak at this time.
So then if the thoughts are prepared properly, that we have to take care. In general, we cannot take care for all situations. But at least major situations in our life or major expected questions or whatever, we should have the thoughts clear.
And if we have the difficulty in putting the thoughts in the right words, then it is better to write it down. Not for memorizing it. We may not.
Memorizing will make things artificial. But just writing things down will help us. This word I could use for saying this properly.
This word can be used better. And putting in that thought into words will enable us to get the right word later quickly. So especially important points, writing them down helps a lot.
So over the years, I have been writing articles. So every day I write a Gita Daily article. I make sure that no article is more than 310 words.
So that I write the article in 10 minutes. But to get it to the word limit, it sometimes takes me around 30, 40 minutes. But that has helped me in making my speech a little precise.
Although sometimes I could tend to become a little long winded. But writing things down is a sure way of making things precise. And third is if sometimes we feel unsure of the other person’s understanding or not, then there are two, three things we could do.
We can ourselves ask. Don’t say, do you understand? That makes the other person feel a little, a little put down as if they are not intelligent enough to understand. You can ask, putting the onus on us, am I making myself clear? So it is not your problem that you’re not understanding.
Maybe it’s my problem that I’m not making myself clear. Then we say like that, then it works out. And they will, they will, they will, without feeling, without being made to feel unintelligent.
Yes. What are you saying over here? That that way you can do that. And another thing which you could do if you feel the other person is not understanding or may not be understanding, then we could, instead of speaking on, pause.
So if we pause, usually that pause will give us time to collect our thoughts also. And then we shouldn’t pause with a filler sound. That makes people think we don’t know what we think.
But just pause completely. Pause for a minute or two. They will say something.
And if they ask something at that time, then we’ll understand in what direction their thoughts are going. That way also we can make out, OK, means I was saying this thing, but they’re thinking like this. So usually even while giving classes, if we have open class questions, sometimes speaking one thing, then people ask questions.
Oh, they understand. Oh, they’re thinking this way. So it helps.
So basically clarifying our thoughts and finding the right words for our thoughts, either by writing or preparing in the mind. And third is by either asking whether I make myself clear or just pausing. You can buy this.
Overall, you’ll make sure that the communication will become both not just crisper.