Lesson 1: Why does communicating effectively matter?

Communicating effectively can change your life, as can communicating ineffectively. Nothing is more important in today’s world than being able to communicate the message you want to get across, to the people who need to hear it, and get the results you want.

Whether you are a business owner, individual contributor or leader we all have a need to communicate effectively – and that means we need to communicate with:

• Clarity – if we don’t deliver a clear message, it can cost time and money
• Confidence – if we don’t have confidence in our own message, how can we expect others to have confidence in it.
• Conviction – speaking with conviction is about showing you believe in what you are saying and allowing just enough emotion to show through to impact your audience in the way you want.

People often believe that we are either born good communicators or not. The truth is everyone can learn to communicate more effectively. It is possible to change the way you communicate and change the results you get.

The more skillful you can become at communicating –ultimately the better results you will get and the better quality of life you will have.

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.

Brian Tracy

I’ll go into more detail later about why I think being able to communicate with clarity, confidence and conviction impacts the whole quality of your life.

In the meantime, grab and pen and paper and try this task out before you move to the next lesson.