How To Gain Confidence In Communication

How to Gain Confidence in Communication

Can you imagine communicating with people who have zero Confidence in Communication? It makes you feel like you need to say more and change your expectations of how much you can trust what they say. For a child to communicate with no confidence, you immediately wonder if everything is okay at home.

Confidence is the degree  of which you are sure of yourself - your abilities, capabilities and being. If you are a confident person, it means you are stead-fest in your thoughts, actions and decisions.  If you do not have Confidence in Communication with people, how can you expect them to hold what you are saying as true? People with low self-confidence exude the idea of having personal issues, don’t trust themself or know better to do better.

Communication is by different mediums whether it be by talking, writing or sign language using the 6 human sense.  Effectiveness of communication is also affected by the confidence in the context of the communication. Here, we are talking about Confidence in Communication both physically and virtually in person.

10 Benefits of having Confidence in Communication

1. People will want to listen and be attentive to you more.

2. People will have more confidence in what you are conveying to them.

3. People will have the perception that you are knowledgeable and mature.

4. You'll communicate more effectively. Confidence allows you to speak concisely and with clarity.

5. You will have better social and professional advancement.

6. You will have higher self esteem because of how well you talk to yourself.

7. Overcome fears. Many of us have this fear of asking and questioning. Ask as many questions as you like as long as you ask the right way. When you do this, you gain more knowledge and clarity.

8. Have a voice. Many of us also struggling with having a voice especially with people who are more dominent in nature. It takes alot of courage but just know you have the right as long as you say it with respect. It is not what you say most of the time but how you say it.

9 Tips to gaining Confidence in Communication

1. Learn to listen. When you hear other peoples concerns and the topic of conversation then only can you have a conversation  honestly and selflessly.

2. Care about the subject matter. If you don’t care about the topic, you will automatically show lack of concern and confidence on the subject.

3. It is not always about you. People want to listen to what they can relate to and affect them, try to get that in your perspective when you are feeling like the audience is not interested and brings your confidence to speak down.

4. Relax . Get good rest the night before, do the daily breathing exercise.

5. Be yourself. You do not need to be chirpy or formal if that’s not who you are. Just be yourself and people will relate to it. You cannot control personality but you can control character and confidence. Be comfortable in your own skin.

6. Eye contact is everything. Even if you don’t feel confident, you will slowly built it through eye contact because you are regularly assured the people are attentive to you.

7. Accept differences of opinion. Not everyone is going to like your personality, what you are saying or even how your face looks. This is out of your control and please do not go through life being a people pleaser, you will end up very unhappy. People’s opinions of you don’t matter as long as you are not harming them too. Control what you can. Sometimes we offended someone, just apologise and leave the ball on their side of the court and accept that not everyone is going to like you and what you say.

8. Practise. Speak to people more and have more ‘play dates’. Confidence in communication and everything in life worth learning will require alot of practise and experience. The more you do it, the better and more comfortabl and confident you will be at it.

9. Ask the right questions. Don’t ask questions that receive yes or no answers like ‘Have you ever rode a bicycle?’. Ask questions that are open ended and can prolong and gain more interesting conversations.

Open-ended questions tend to start with;

a) What.. 

b) Why.. 

c) Where.. 

d) When..

e) How..