No matter what you do, good communication skills will always help you out. Starting from communicating with your parents for food to making friends in school to sending applications and giving interviews for college and finally joining the professional field, you have to communicate with people. Apart from that, you also have to communicate to complete your day-to-day activities. That is why communication skill is a vital aspect of human life. And it is necessary to maintain good communication skills throughout your life to lead an easy life. Effective communication helps in building healthy relationships, boosts productivity, and improves overall well-being. Therefore, it is essential to engage in practical and interpersonal, communication activities.
However, being said is easier said than done. That is why we have picked 3 practical personal and interpersonal communication activities that you can do for improvement.
3 Practical and Interpersonal Communication Activities to Do
Improving communication skills is not that difficult if you know the right process. But the main problem is most people don’t know the process. That is why we are going to explain the three tips that you can practise in everyday life to build good communication skills.
- Active Listening Exercise
Communication is not a one-way thing. You have to listen, understand, and reciprocate in a language that your listener can understand. Active listening helps in building trust, promotes understanding, and avoids misunderstandings. For active listening exercise, follow these steps:
Step 1: Find a partner and sit face-to-face. One person is the speaker, and the other one is the listener.
Step 2: The speaker will talk about a topic of their choice for 3-5 minutes while the listener listens actively without interrupting or providing any feedback.
Step 3: After the speaker finishes, the listener will paraphrase what they heard to ensure they understood the speaker’s message correctly.
Step 4: The roles are then switched, and the listener becomes the speaker, and the exercise is repeated.
Initially, you can start with easier topics. As you get familiar with the process, you can change the topics to the difficult ones.
- Collaborative Problem-Solving Exercise
Collaborative problem-solving is another practice that helps to build great communicative skills. This exercise involves a group of people working together to solve a problem. The exercise promotes teamwork, critical thinking, and effective communication. To practise collaborative problem-solving, follow these steps:
Step 1: Form a group of 3-4 people and identify a problem that needs urgent solving.
Step 2: Assign roles within the group, such as a facilitator, a timekeeper, a note-taker, and a presenter.
Step 3: Brainstorm possible solutions to the problem, and encourage all members to participate.
Step 4: Evaluate the proposed solutions and select the most feasible option.
Step 5: Develop an action plan that outlines the steps needed to implement the chosen solution.
Step 6: The presenter should present the solution and the action plan to the rest of the group.
Repeat this exercise with different problems and groups to improve collaborative problem-solving and communication skills.
- Role-Playing Exercise
Role-play is an effective way to practise effective communication skills in different scenarios. Practising this will help you to function quickly in reality. Role-playing helps to build confidence, empathy, and problem-solving skills. To practise role-playing, follow these steps:
Step 1: Choose a scenario where communication skills are essential, such as a job interview or a difficult conversation.
Step 2: Assign roles to two people, one as the interviewer or person initiating the difficult conversation, and the other as the interviewee or person receiving the message.
Step 3: The interviewer or initiator should provide feedback to the interviewee or receiver on their communication skills.
Step 4: The roles are then switched to repeat the exercise.
Repeat the exercise with different situations and partners to gain ultimate confidence in communication.
These three exercises have a long term effect upon practical and interpersonal skills. Repeating these activities over time will help you to identify the right answer and the response. As you get better at this, you will be able to handle any critical situation effortlessly.
