How to Communicate Effectively

I'm gonna tell you a secret of How to Communicate Effectively for enhancing your relationships and career.

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Whether you communicate with people face to face or behind the camera like what I'm doing now, there's no doubt that communication plays a vital role in human life.

It not only assists in facilitating the process of sharing information and knowledge but also helps people improve their relationships with others.

Hence, the importance of communication cannot be underestimated.

In fact, many people believe that the quality of our life would depend on the quality of our communication.

Communication, particularly VERBAL COMMUNICATION, is not just about the words we speak. Here's why.

Research says that when people meet and communicate, what influences them to change their feelings, do something different, or affect them the most is usually NOT THE SELECTION WORDS they say, but HOW they say the words that matter.

This is why most business people, negotiators, and marketers spend an enormous amount of time learning not just on what to say, but more importantly, HOW TO SAY to get the response they want from people.

Words, in human communication, represents only 7% of what actually influence someone to change how they feel. That's ONLY 7%.

38% of how we influence people would be "voice quality."

So what is voice quality? Well, it consists of...

• TONALITY, or the tone of your voice.

• TIMBER, the quality of the sound.

• VOLUME, it's how loud or quiet the sound is

• and TEMPO; it's the rate of speed of you talk or speak.

So voice quality can radically affect how we feel.

If someone says - "I LOVE YOU!" (loud and strong), it feels different if someone says - "I love you." (gentle)

Different feeling. Different experience. Just by the quality of the voice.

Now, what affects people even MORE, which represents 55%, is PHYSIOLOGY, or what we call "body language".

This would consist of your FACIAL EXPRESSIONS, MUSCULAR TENSION, meaning if your body is relaxed or not, GESTURES or movement of your hands and head.

So, if someone looks at you like this and says - "I love you".

Well, you would think that the voice sounds OK but the face gives you different feedback.

This is because our brain is trained to look for what we call - "incongruencies".

INCONGRUENCY is when the voice, the body, and the words, DON'T MATCH. And people can notice that.

So even if you say "sure" (unsure), they'll notice that the inflection, doesn't match the word.

Compare that to "sure!" (in a confident voice)

Even if people don't notice it consciously, they will still notice it "unconsciously".

Therefore, you got to communicate "congruently", making sure that the words you say should equally match your voice and body language in order to communicate effectively.