Communication Strengths and Weaknesses and Tips

What are your biggest communication weaknesses? And what are your strengths in communication? Knowing your communication strengths and weaknesses can help you develop more effective communication skills.

Introduction

Communication can be simply defined as the process through which people interact to share information, ideas as well as personal feelings. The main forms of communication are written and spoken; however, there are others such as body language, signs, and mannerisms or rather anything meant to send a message. The basic communication elements include the sender, medium, and receiver of the information. Communication plays a vital role in people’s life as it is considered to be the main tool for interaction between people (Scott, 2010, p.1). Despite this, everybody is bound to have some weaknesses in communication and strengths in communication that come about due to factors such as psychological and personal differences. Communication patterns also affect one’s strengths and weaknesses in communication.

My strengths in communication

Given that communication is a basic necessity for all human beings; it is evident that there are areas in which one will be perfect regarding communication. Some of my strengths in communication include the following; To begin with, is the reality that I have been endowed with very strong verbal communication skills. This is evidenced by the fact that I can spend much time chatting with friends through the internet without getting tired.

I am always willing to know what they are doing and how they are going on as I also tell them about me. This leads to my other strength of being able to communicate with many people at the same time thus saving time. This is one of the qualities that are rare among most people and most yearn to acquire it to apply it in their professions. For instance, people working in the hospitality industry are required to be able to accommodate the communication of many people at the same time without getting tired.

When it comes to written communication, my recipient would understand my message because I always ensure logic and concise are well observed during writing. It is because of this quality that I have no doubt being performing well in my academics.

My communication weaknesses

Regardless of having strengths in communication, weaknesses are also part of life and should be welcomed if any. First of all, become nervous when addressing people even in front of my class. In most instances, I end up mumbling instead of passing the information. My Inability to practice restraint because I am an honest and open person is proving to be one of my communication weaknesses.

This is because I always find myself disclosing even the privacy issues in my life or even speaking so openly about my feeling. Also, I am one person that is greatly affected by cultural and social barriers. I have difficulty communicating with people not from my tribe or country because I find it odd in the way they handle communication. Thus I am always not sure of the behavior patterns to follow. This is mostly seen when communicating with strange people or those in authority.

I have a weakness of disliking written communication based on the fact that I do not see the people I am communicating with. This is something that puts me off sometimes to effectively communicate through writing.

Grammar is also a problem when it comes to punctuating, tenses as well as wordiness, and sentence structure. Last but not least, I have also noticed that Body language is also one of my weakest points in communication. I am not able to efficiently communicate through body language since I cannot pass the message myself and not able to interpret clearly what the other people try to communicate to me.

Tip Sheet on ways to improve your weakness in communication

• Use of good eye contact.
• Listening to others before speaking.
• Tone concentration of voice during speech.
• Use of signals in non-verbal communication.
• Context consideration.
• Think before speaking.
• Improve vocabulary through much reading.
• Interacting with many people so as better communication skills.
• Avoid passive sentences during the writing.
• Preparation before giving a speech.
• Learn to appreciate other people and their cultures.
• Pay attention to non-verbal signals.
• Check out behaviors that do not correspond with their message especially in non-verbal communication (Kendra, 2011, p.1).
• Ask for help when in need.

Personalized Tip Sheet

1. Nervousness- It can be avoided through proper preparation before the issuance of any speech. Being smartly dressed also gives some confidence.
2. Grammar- More reading of literature such as magazines and novels will improve my grammar in no time.
3. Lack of restraint- I should learn to limit the things I say to other people.
4. Poor handwriting- More practice on writing skills to make it legible.
5. Social and cultural barriers- Learning to accept people and their different backgrounds and social settings.
6. Misinterpretation of body language- I should learn to properly interpret body language before reacting to it. If not able, I should ask for help.
7. Spellings- Put more practice on frequently misspelled words for example ‘indigenous’. Or rather I should have a pocket dictionary to countercheck spellings.
8. Punctuation- More practice through writing and reading literature written by professional authors.
9. Poor listening skills- I should learn to first listen to people before uttering any word. It is also important that I concentrate on what they say.
10. Shyness- This can be overcome by having good eye contact during speech presentation such that the audience will have confidence that you are not shy.
11. Fast speaker- Have a paced tone during communication so that I talk less but give the desired response.
12. Poor perception- I should make sure that I properly perceive whatever is being talked about so that I can be able to give my view.
13. Choice of words- Good choice of words will be facilitated by the increased reading of literature as well as being conversant with the message or topic.
14. Emotional influences- I should learn to avoid the influence of communication by external or internal environment causing emotions.
15. Language barrier- There are many languages in the world which I cannot understand all; however, I should look for an option whenever there are instances of a language barrier. Such options could be sign language (Hahn, 2011, p.1).

Conclusion

Having looked at communication weaknesses and possible solutions I can be guaranteed that my communication skills will be up to date thus effectiveness.

Reference List

Hahn, M. (2011). Overcoming Communication Barriers between People. 

Kendra, C. (2010). Top 10 Nonverbal Communication Tips. Web.

Scott, E. (2010). Communicate: Improve Your Relationships with Effective Communication Skills. Web.