What's your natural Communication Style?

You communicate in your own particular way - we all do. Over the years you've developed your own natural communication style. To feel confident and in control, it helps if you are aware of this style. 

People with good communication skills know what's good and what's bad about their communication style; in other words, they know their strengths and weaknesses in terms of how they communicate.

Some people like to be the centre of attention and to talk, others prefer to watch from the sidelines and to listen. Decisions such as these are determined both consciously and subconsciously through your natural communication style. This style is your own personal way of communicating, the way you come across when you don't consciously think about it. It will suit certain situations but not others. That's why it's so important to get to the bottom of it ....

Otherwise, there's a good chance that, just by being your normal self and communicating in your natural way, without even realising it, you'll;

• Make someone feel uncomfortable.
• Distract them from your message.
• Appear rude to them.
• Appear boring and disinterested.
• Look like a person who lacks confidence.

Once you know your natural style, you can make sure these negative perceptions don't arise. 

The secret is to think about adapting your communication style when you find yourself in a situation it doesn't suit. That's exactly what people with good communication skills do.

In fact, this is one of the main reasons why people lack self-confidence and self-belief; they don't know when or how to adapt their communication style.

Before you can work out how to adapt your style, you need to establish what type of communication style you have. You need to know if it's helping you or hindering you in relation to effective communication skills. Most people think 'communication' is merely about talking. It's not though; talking is just one element of what it means to communicate. 

Try thinking more widely about the concept of communication. For example, have you ever considered that how you say something might be just as important as what you say?

There are numerous models and theories that can help to identify your personal communication style. There are also a variety of communication tests you can take.  Try my free communication style test http://www.think-confidence.com/registercs.html. 

Don't worry, it's not a complicated psychometric test - in fact it's not even a 'test' as such; it's a straight forward multiple choice communication questionnaire. In short, it's a simple way of improving your communication skills by working out your natural communication style.

Loads of people complete the questionnaire online every day. Tell me what you think of it! 

Mike

How do others perceive you?

How Do Other People Perceive You?

Have you ever thought about how people perceive you? I mean seriously thought about it? It's true that we all wonder what people think of us every now and then. But it's also true that we tend to wonder this through curiosity rather than for any constructive reason.

Getting to the bottom of how people perceive you is one of the essential elements of understanding how you come across to them. Once you know this, you can start to think about adapting your behaviour so that their perception of you is what you want it to be. 

To feel confident and come across assertively, you need to know how you look and sound; you need to know how you come across. You need to know how to control peoples' perceptions of you.

So - Does it really matter what others think of you?

'Who cares what people think of me!' - These might sound like the words of a confident person and to an extent the person is right to think like that. It's true that confident people don't worry as much as others might about what people think of them and how they come across. It's fine to think like this and be independent-minded but it's dangerous to discount other peoples' perceptions of you completely.

People who disregard others' perceptions of them are missing a trick. It really does matter what people think and how they perceive you - but it shouldn't be the be all and end all. The reality of life is that most people can't help but be affected by other peoples' impressions of them and therefore how people react to them. This in fact is a positive thing if considered constructively. 

The important point to remember is that if you can control others' perceptions of you, you can control how they react to you.

 

Consider also that the way other people perceive you may be very different to your self -perception. In fact, it's often the case that your self-perception can differ quite radically to the perception others have of you. In some cases it's quite striking because a person's self-perception is that they lack confidence but the perception of others is that they are confident.

There are numerous personality tests and questionnaires about self-esteem and self-confidence you can complete to help clarify whether your self-perception matches the perception others have of you.

http://www.think-confidence.com/ has 3 free questionnaires; communication style, conflict style and the Reality Check (this is an questionnaire that others complete on you anonymously - you'll have no doubt about whether your self-perception is the same as others' perception of you once they've completed the Reality Check).

Good Luck! It would be great to find out how you get on ...

Mike