HOW TO HAVE CLARITY OF THOUGHT IN COMMUNICATION
To ensure that your message is being passed across in a good, comprehensive way, you need to have clarity of thought.
In this article, I will show you ways through which your thoughts can be sent as a message to your listener without issues of misunderstanding, conflict, and other related problems.
There are numerous reasons why you want to learn how to communicate effectively, but the main categories are clarity, credibility, and confidence.
You are either concerned with all three or at least one of them. It takes more than just saying your words straight from your thoughts to communicate correctly to your listener, as communication is deeper than just saying words.
DEFINITION OF COMMUNICATION
Communication can be defined as the process of transmitting and receiving information with either verbal, non-verbal or visual means. There are other means of communication, like the media, this is a type of communication that involves a large number of people from different locations, receiving the same information from a source, for example, the mass media like the radio station, News on the television or newspapers are means through which a piece of information can be circulated to a larger group of people.
Good communication is essential for every relationship, be it personal or formal; the need to be understood with ease is great.
Clarity is concerned with how your thoughts are structured and organized before passing out a piece of information or communicating to an audience or listener. Meaningful communication is more than just saying a word or sentence, and it has to do with how the listener perceives and accepts your word.
You don’t speak without processing your thoughts and expect people to understand you. You will end up saying a lot of things without fully achieving your goal, which is to communicate to your audience. The key factor here is to make sure your listener receives and comprehends the message you passed.
When you have mastered the skill of clarity in communication, you will be able to say things easily because your mind has already processed what you want to say and brings it out in a clear manner for your listener to understand without issues. Never think or assume you’re being comprehensible just because you said the words.
There are some obstacles that can prevent clarity. Tackling these problems will guarantee that your communication skills will get better, thereby improving consistent understanding.
- Quick Speech
This is a common problem or cause of vague speech. Words become disorganised or mixed-up consonants when vowels are shortened due to fast speech. Dropping your speech rate and taking a much slower one can enable your listener to digest what you’ve said.
It also helps in giving you time to wrap your head around what you’re about to say before you say it. Taking deep breaths before proceeding is one of the effective ways to slow down your speech rate. When you speak very fast, you will find it hard to say words fully because your mouth is in a hurry to produce several words at a go, so most words would be incoherent and difficult to grasp.
- Low Voice
This also causes a lack of clarity in communication. When you speak in quiet tones, the possibility of your audience hearing and understanding you, is slim. When you’re not using enough sound when speaking, your listeners have no chance to catch up with the things you said, leaving them nothing to work with.
Allowing your voice to penetrate around a room, and feeling the vibration that comes with the energy, will create more sense of power and energy without restraints. It is important to note that your voice will always seem louder to you than to your listener, meaning that you’ll hear your own voice better than an audience would.
- Using an Accent
Using a different accent from your listeners is one of the factors of unclear communication. This worsens when you combine it with a low voice and quick speech. In cases where you cannot change your accent, you can easily reduce clarity problems by speaking slowly, so that’s a good listener can easily grasp what you are saying.
Ways You Can Use to Have Clarity of Thoughts in Communication
- Be Specific
Being exact with what you want to say is a good way to ensure clarity in communication. Do not make it difficult for your listener to comprehend your information or whatever you’re trying to say, by using unnecessary words or terms they may find complex to understand. The whole point of communication is to pass a message to gain positive reactions or feedback from your listener.
- Think Thoroughly
Slow down, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, “what am I supposed to say?” What message are you about to give? How do you convey your message? Teaching people to slow down is the easiest thing, but usually the hardest to follow yourself.
Thinking things through before saying them is a great step to clarity in communication. Without thorough thinking, there will be no moment of self-questioning, where you have to digest what you’ve said or are about to say. Make yourself comfortable, then take notice of your thoughts and how it flows in a non-condemning manner.
- Learn to Express Yourself
When you can express yourself, you can also express your thoughts without difficulties. If you are an expressive person who can easily describe things and how you feel, you are most likely to express your thoughts in an understandable way. If this is a problem you have, you have to fix it but remember it is a gradual process, but with time, you will get past this stage.
Part of being clear is asking your listener questions based on the information you gave to know if he or she understood you. It is important to carry your audience along. I hope this helps in gaining clarity. Good luck as you communicate clearly!
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