For a lot of those who are introverted and not the best at displaying their communication skills, understandably, it can be daunting to interact with others. You are nervous about stumbling over your words or feeling that what you are saying could be misconstrued. But, now, you want to take the time to improve your communication skills and are researching some workshops and courses online to better yourself.
Best Online Workshops to Improve Communication Skills :
- Udemy – Public Speaking and Presentations Pro
- Vital Learning – Essential Skills of Communicating
- LinkedIn Learning – Effective Listening
- Udemy – Write Better Emails: Tactics for Smarter Team Communication
- Udemy – Smart Tips: Communication
- Virtual Speech – Essential Public Speaking with VR
- MasterClass – Robin Roberts Teaches Effective and Authentic Communication
There are many great online workshops to improve your communication skills. These can vary from Udemy’s Smart Tips: Communication to LinkedIn Learning’s Effective Listening. However, there is more to it than just taking an online workshop, as it Is good to understand why it is so important.
Let’s continue reading to learn more about why communication skills are essential, their benefits both in-person and online, and seven of the best online workshops to improve your communication skills.
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Why are Communication Skills so important?
Communication skills are essential because socializing and building trust with others who have mutual respect for one another can make the world go round. A part of life coincides with communication because it will help you operate in your day-to-day life.
However, there are plenty more benefits that coincide with day-to-day life for improving their communication skills.
Let’s continue reading to learn more about other benefits of improving your communication skills.
What are the Benefits of Improving Your Communication Skills?
There are many benefits when it comes to improving your communication skills. Among others that will be mentioned, the act of socialization is one of the single-most essential aspects of life and forming new relationships with others along with learning more about yourself and maintaining more positive thoughts. For this reason, there are other significant benefits to why developing your communication skills is so important.
Let’s continue to read more and learn about the six different benefits of improving your communication skills.
Building a Rapport
There is the benefit of building an honest rapport between you and the people you are making a relationship with to have practical communication skills. When you create a connection, you listen attentively and have different perspectives instead of one biased opinion. This is especially beneficial when you are in the workplace.
Build Relationships
To communicate, along the way, you are building a relationship with others and healthy ones at that. Being attentive and giving feedback at appropriate times and giving quality ones. Having someone else you are corresponding with taking in your feedback in an understanding manner, and there are no misconstrued elements, there is respect between both parties.
Ability to Problem-Solve and Handle Conflict
You can problem-solve and know how to handle conflict under pressure when your communication skills improve. The ability to problem-solve is beneficial in the workplace because you are, as the leader, going to ensure that everyone is being heard and based on that and further research to determine how to resolve the problem.
The ability to handle conflict can be beneficial in personal settings and within the workplace. Train your brain and thoughts to be more positive so when the dispute arises due to poor communication between parties, so a part of preventing that is a good line of communication between everyone, listening to them, and ensuring that this will not happen again and create a positive and healthy environment for all.
Encourages Teamwork and Increases Productivity
Improvement in communication will help encourage teamwork in the workplace, which will increase the chances of productivity within the workplace. Strength in collaboration shows trust among co-workers, and clear communication has been conducted, lowering the chances of improper contact.
Increasement in productivity is beneficial for those who understand the work you have to do. Having this understanding increases fewer issues and more focus on your work.
Promotes Creativity Within the Workplace
You become more creative the more that you use effective communication. In the workplace, with improved communication, you and your team are likely to openly communicate and come up with creative and innovative ideas and also have the ability to compromise. There is a comfortability to speaking up about your thoughts in coming up with ideas together.
Creates a Better Communication Line Between Parties
Improved communication skills help create a healthier work environment and a better communication line between parties. This will help prevent any form of miscommunication between anyone and promote honesty between everyone, which will lessen issues in the workplace and life in general.
With these benefits of improving your communication skills, you can implement them to improve your communication skills online.
Read more to learn about how you can improve your communication skills online.
Creates a Better Communication Line Between Parties
Improved communication skills help create a healthier work environment and a better communication line between parties. This will help prevent any form of miscommunication between anyone and promote honesty between everyone, which will lessen issues in the workplace and life in general.
With these benefits of improving your communication skills, you can implement them to improve your communication skills online.
Read more to learn about how you can improve your communication skills online.
How can I improve my communication skills online?
Communication skills are essential for in-person conversations, but it is also necessary for online. There are many ways that you can improve your communication skills online, which can include:
- No Sarcasm: Not everyone responds well to sarcasm, nor may they not understand that it is sarcasm. When communicating online, it is easy to take something that is used for irony as an insult at the moment, and it can be hard to rectify that.
- Write a Well-Thought-Out Response: Write an adequately thought-through response to whoever you correspond with. When communicating online versus in person, you have more time to think through and draft what you want to say to ensure that nothing is getting misconstrued.
- Avoid All Caps: Avoid the use of all caps. All caps, for many, can be implied as yelling when that may not be the intention at hand.
- Listen More and Understand: Listen or read more and try to understand what the other person is saying before assuming anything. Ask questions or do your research before thinking through a proper response.
In working to improve your communication skills online, some activities can be used to help improve your communication skills, as well.
Let’s continue reading to learn about the different activities that you can use to improve your communication skills.
What activities can improve communication skills?
One of the best ways for people to effectively learn how to utilize their communication skills can be through the act of activities or games. Activities are beneficial because you are visually learning about improving your communication skills first-hand. Still, you are also implementing something fun that will further pique your interest and, hopefully, the lessons that you learn to stick with you later in life.
Let’s continue reading to learn more about eight different activities that you can use to improve your communication skills.
Guess the Emotion
Guess the Emotion is a simple activity that involves guessing one’s emotions that are being acted out in front of them. For this activity, you are going to be in two different teams. Next, put on a flat surface a packet of cards with other written emotions on them.
One of the groups will act out the feelings, and their team members will try to guess the emotion. If the sentiment is correct, the group will receive ten points and vice versa. Based on the total number of points between the two teams, that will be the winner of the game.
This activity aims to improve on becoming more empathetic and better understanding the people surrounding you.
Telephone
The telephone exercise is a class activity used among many participants. You will split into either two groups or stay as one group, and at the opposite ends of the lines, one person will begin by saying a phrase or short sentence to the person next to them. The goal is to try and have each person repeat this exact phrase or short sentence to the next person and the person after that until the last person is reached.
While this activity is commencing, white noise will be created as a form of distraction. After the phrase or sentence has reached the first person, they will repeat what they heard and compare it to the last person who initially stated the word or sentence.
The point of this exercise is active listening and learning to conversate with someone while having distractions. Distractions, such as noise, music, etc., are typical in everyday life, especially when conversating in public. So, with this exercise, you are, hopefully, going to improve on becoming a better listener.
Listener and Talker
Listener and talker is an activity that showcases the importance of improving the elements of active listening between both parties and giving people a chance to talk in front of you comfortably.
For the activity, you will be in pairs of two, where one person is the talker, and the other person is the listener. One person, the talker, will talk about what they want from a dream vacation. Still, they are not specifying the destination, and the listener is to listen to what is and is not being said and demonstrate this active listening through their behavior.
After listening, the listener will summarize what the talker was talking about when it comes to their dream vacation, following up with convincing the talker of a destination. Then, the two participants will switch roles, and the same activity will apply.
The point of this exercise is for the two people to talk about what they want and need out of life and use active listening while getting to know the person.
Stand Up for Fillers
For many people, there is a tendency to use filler words such as “like,” “um,” “uh,” etc. These filler words are not needed but are natural if you are stuck on what to say next and uncomfortable with your surroundings. For this activity, you and others will be given a topic and speak about it in between one and three minutes. As each person speaks, the other participants will listen out for any of these fillers being used.
The purpose of this activity, the person speaking and the people listening will be hyper-aware of how they say and the fillers they use. This will help people become more mindful about what they are saying and, in turn, get more comfortable over time.
Memory Test
The memory test activity is as simple as it sounds. You will give the participants a list of words to read aloud. Their goal is to listen as carefully as possible, but they are not allowed to write any of the terms down. The point of this portion of the activity is to test the participant’s memory.
Next, after reading all of the words aloud, for one minute, you are to talk about something else completely irrelevant that will distract them. After you are done talking, you will have the participants write down as many words as they can remember.
The point of this exercise is to showcase the importance of paying attention to what the person in front of you is saying. Paying attention to what a person is saying gives you a better chance to recall them.
Body Language Activity
This activity focuses exclusively on body language skills. The object of this exercise is for you to give those who are participating some instructions for them to follow as quickly as they can. Next, you will call out several actions while engaging in them. For example, notice who is copying what you are doing instead of saying, touching your shoulder, stomping your feet, clapping your hands, etc.
After completing this activity, you will then share with the group what you observed. The point of this activity is having a basic understanding of body language and how it helps us understand it and the reactions you give. Once you know that what you see and hear can interfere with verbal communication, you will become more effective in communication and understand body language a bit more.
Minefield
Minefield, in concept, is a communication skills activity and a trust build exercise. With this game, you will be partnered with one person and a lot of space where this will be conducted. You will be blindfolded in this surrounding area, and within this space, there can also be an obstacle course where you will need to navigate where to go based on what your partner is saying.
This game is strictly verbal communication only between you and your partner, and the point is to trust them and build a rapport with them. Naturally, it can be frustrating being blindfolded and guided on where to go; however, this is a great way to recognize these issues within communication between you and another person and identify the strengths.
In identifying these issues and strengths, you will recognize what you need to improve on when communicating with others.
Twenty Questions Times Two
Twenty questions is a simple game that everyone is familiar with. However, there is a catch. The concept of this communication game is that you and another person create twenty questions for yourself. Set some time to spend together, without any distractions. Each person will take turns to ask each other their twenty questions. After going through the twenty questions, you will reverse the questions you asked them.
For example, suppose you ask your partner, “What is your favorite hobby?” after finishing all of the twenty questions. In that case, you will reverse that question and ask, “What is my favorite hobby?” as will the partner reverse their questions onto you.
The point of this game is to have a basic understanding of the person you are playing this game with and will, hopefully, help to improve your communication skills and build a relationship with the person.
Along with these activities and games, there are other ways to improve your communication skills through online workshops.
So, let’s continue reading to learn more about the seven best online workshops to improve communication skills.
The 7 Best Online Workshops to Improve Communication Skills
There are many ways to gain more knowledge on how to improve your communication skills. Taking online workshops can be, for many, more convenient and comfortable from the comfort of their own home.
Let’s continue reading to learn about the seven best online workshops to improve your communication skills.
1. Udemy - Public Speaking and Presentations Pro
This course from Udemy offers the ability to learn secrets to public speaking and how to captivate an audience, further keeping them engaged. Along with keeping an audience engaged, you will also learn how to overcome your fear of public speaking and other beneficial elements within this course.
2. Vital Learning - Essential Skills of Communicating
Essential Skills in Communicating is an online course from Vital Learning and is a one-hour course that focuses on clear communication between people and active listening. This course is designed specifically for those who are in high-power positions, i.e., manager, CEO, supervisor, etc.
3. LinkedIn Learning - Effective Listening
Effective Listening is an under two-hour course that teaches you about attentively listening and having intention behind it. This course from LinkedIn Learning is beneficial for those planning on having a job interview in the first place or needing to speak in front of co-workers or any other event publicly.
4. Udemy - Write Better Emails: Tactics for Smarter Team Communication
This course from Udemy aims to help with improving your communication skills through email and effectively communicating with your co-workers. This is beneficial for those likely to correspond through email versus face-to-face communication in the workplace.
5. Udemy - Smart Tips: Communication
This course from Udemy will help you communicate with others and give and receive practical and valid feedback from others, and how to manage a difficult conversation. The ability to think on your feet, in many cases, is needed, so this course will be beneficial in teaching you that, as well, and to appear confident in your leadership role.
6. Virtual Speech - Essential Public Speaking with VR
This course from Virtual Speech is unique in comparison to other communication courses. This course, in particular, implements VR (virtual reality) into the learning course. Practicing your communication skills through VR will place you in realistic settings to help you become more confident and help manage your nerves a bit more when it comes to public speaking.
7. MasterClass - Robin Roberts Teaches Effective and Authentic Communication
This course offered by MasterClass is hosted by Robin Roberts, co-anchor of Good Morning America. In this masterclass, she will teach you how, through effective communication, you can build human connection, whether in person or through an audience and embrace vulnerability.
When improving your communication skills through these online courses and improving your communication skills, you are likely to be hired for jobs that rely heavily on good communication skills.
Let’s continue reading to learn about jobs that you can consider if you have good communication skills.
What Jobs to Consider if You Have Good Communication Skills?
Having good communication skills is beneficial in many career areas. Some of these jobs, if you have good communication skills, can include but do not exclude:
- Therapist
- Doctor
- Lawyer
- Teacher
- Content writer
- Tutor
Final Thoughts
So, again, if you want to improve your communication skills, you can consider one of these seven reputable online workshops. Also, among this, you have learned about what it means to have good communication skills along with its importance and benefits. You have also known about how you can improve your communication skills online and what activities you can do to help improve your communication skills, along with job considerations that coincide with good communication.
