Communication: How to Communicate with Anyone

Author: Gill Hasson

To become an effective listener, you must learn and practice what is known as "active listening." Active listening requires some effort on your part, but you will always reap the rewards of this effort. Active listening facilitates the communication process and helps you practice it with others in better ways. Among the advantages of active listening is that it enables you to focus on what the other person is saying and prevents you from interrupting them. It helps you ignore your assumptions, enhance your understanding of what is being said, develop empathy for the speaker, build a kind of connection between you, respect different viewpoints, and establish transparency between you regarding what you agree and disagree on. However, it is not limited to what a person says; what a person does not say verbally, and expresses through various forms of nonverbal communication, can tell you a lot. Nonverbal messages can confirm and support what you say, and they can also contradict what you say. Chapter 5 explains how you can increase your understanding of the background of the person you are talking to and how you can read between the lines. You will learn that you cannot rely on a single gesture or a single facial expression, etc., to confirm what a person means or does not mean, what they feel or do not feel. You will need to learn how to read specific clusters of nonverbal cues. This book consists of two parts. Part one deals with the principles of effective communication, describes what hinders this effective communication, and explains how you can achieve it. When talking to the other party, you can do this in a way that makes it easier for them to listen to you and understand what you mean. Part one also teaches you ways to better understand what others are saying.