Hard reality about Soft Skills

I take it as a privilege to share my knowledge and understanding about Soft Skills and Managerial Effectiveness.

Communication is often looked at as ability to speak error free fluent English. For me it is just a part of the whole skill called communication and not the be all and end all of it.

Communication can be ideally split into various smaller entities and all these entities working together is the key to effective Communication. First is the idea or the fact. It depends on the individual as to how well one understands the aspect about which one is communicating. For Example, Socrates has the idea and understanding of the facts about philosophy; Harsha Bhogle has the idea and factual understanding of the game - cricket. This is the foundation to communication. If you would ask me about the contribution of Vincent Van Gogh to the medieval art of Italy, My communication would be flat on its back as I do not have the basic idea of art or medieval Italy.

Next is the Expression. This can be the medium which you are using. The medium can be a language or gestures or facial expressions. Dwelling into an example, when you sip coffee and it is hotter than you have expected it to be, there is an immediate stimulus that is involuntary; Anger, Excitement, Disappointment, Happiness...essentially everything can be expressed without uttering a word. Language here forms the packaging to our idea. Vocabulary is the key to expression, when somebody does a great job you say "Awesome" and you end up sending a negative expression when you say "Awful". The need to express idea gives way to a medium and this medium is the language.

Language is further divided to three issues - Vocabulary, Semantics and Syntactic. Semantics is rules to proper construction of words which are in sync with the expressions of a human being. Syntax is the rules to constructing a meaningful sentence which can be universally understood as the same way which the communicator intends it to be understood. In short, communication errors could be Semantic or syntactic.

For strong communication skill, one should always have Idea supported by vocabulary, semantic and syntactic understanding of the language being used.

One of the myth about communication is that there is good and bad communication. I differ with the idea; I would say there is strong and weak communication and not good and bad communication.

We would discuss more on the methods, ways and means to develop strong communication skill in my forthcoming posts

Signing Off
Sairam