Advanced Communication Skills

The ability to communicate effectively with colleagues and peers is essential in the workplace. It is a core competency that supports managerial effectiveness and plays an important role in the success of any organization.

Whether in the boardroom or in the classroom, strong communication is at the heart of effective leadership. Leaders must be able to listen, speak and write with confidence and clarity. They must be able to build and sustain open lines of communication that support teamwork and collaboration, and help employees feel valued and supported in their work.

Developing Advanced Communication Skills

A cornerstone of Advanced Communication Skills is listening, which is both a critical component of a leader’s ability to drive change and a challenge for many leaders. Bell Leadership’s Communication program delves deep into this key skill, helping participants learn how to listen better and use the other communication forms — verbal, nonverbal, written, and visual — to enhance their ability to understand and convey their messages well.

In addition to the ability to understand and interpret the meaning of other people’s words, an advanced communicator can also read cues from body language and eye movements. These include a person’s rate of speech, the direction of their gaze, the way they move their hands, and even facial expressions. They can also recognize the use of projection, a sub-psychological defence strategy that some individuals employ by ascribing their own feelings to another person or situation.

A high level of interpersonal communication allows individuals to maintain healthy relationships both personally and professionally, and to resolve conflict constructively. It is therefore no surprise that recent studies have shown that employee engagement is strongly correlated with the quality of communications in the workplace.