Guides, Ideas, Insights You NEED So You Can Communicate More Effectively

Since communication is part of everything we do at home and at work, it turns out that many of our communication articles, guides and tips are scattered about a number of websites.

This page brings together these articles in one place, and makes it easier for you to find ways to improve your communication.

Note: If a link to an article exists outside of this specific site, it will open in a new window so you don't lose your place.

NEW For 2016: The Presidential Election Campaign, Leaders and Communication

As of this writing it's March 2016, and the USA is in the midst of an election campaign, party primaries, that will determine who runs to become the President of one of the most powerful countries on Earth.

And up to now the political rhetoric has been nasty, often resembling the communication of four year olds, and often hitting the lowest standards of human behavior.

We can learn a huge amount about communication, both cooperative and confrontational, how leader communication can shape the approaches their observers take and a lot more.

Even if you are NOT politically inclined you can learn a lot from the articles, which we've tried to keep as non-partisan as possible.

Click here to access the politics, leaders, and communication section

Improve Your Communication Effectiveness

• When Praise Is Toxic Most believe praise is a good thing, unless its fake, but praise can also be toxic because it can suggest that the giver is "one up", or superior to the receiver.
• Improving Communication: Making Less More We often think that talking is the important part of communication, and that the more we talk, type and emit attempts to communicate, the better we will be better to get our points across. Not true.
• It's Not What You Say. It's What You Do NOT Say That Makes a Huge Difference with Conflict and Communication: Yup, it's true. Are you often surprised at the negative reaction you get when communicating? Read this.
• The Language of Peace and Inter-Personal Harmony In an era where we are bombarded by aggressive communication in our politics, television programs and so on, it's easy to lose site of the EFFECTS of adopting those ways of communicating in our lives. In truth what surrounds us -- verbal abuse, becomes normal and accepted.
  
  Here's a look at the opposite; the language approach that creates interpersonal harmony and peace.
• Applying Bacal's Law Of Meaningless Utterances: Strip Away The BS To Uncover A Hidden Agenda You may have noticed that people often say things that, once you think about it, mean virtually nothing. We tend to accept these meaningless utterances as benign quirks of human communication when we think about them at all.
  
  What interesting is that many times meaningless utterances have a real purpose -- to manipulate you in ways so the speaker gets his or her own way.
  
  Or, they signify something a bit less negative; that the speaker has an unstated or hidden agenda (even from him or herself). Fortunately, there's actually a trick to identify when this is happening in a conversation that is important to understand.
• Using Positive Language To Change The Way People See You Even if we put aside things like tone of voice and body language for the moment, we find that we can be far more effective communicators by adopting a positive stance, or positive language in our conversations and the written word. Words DO make a difference. Positive language paves the way for better relationships, without sounding politically correct or weak.
• Public Speaking - Getting The Attention of Your Audience Don't be roped in by the myth that people's attentions spans are limited to a few seconds or minutes. In fact, it's quite possible, when giving a presentation, to get and keep the attention of an audience or group for quite long periods of time. Learn how to do it by reading about the principles of attention based on how the brain really works.
• Getting Heard By Your Boss We all want our ideas to listen to our ideas, whether we're talking about why we deserve a raise, or a great innovation that could save everyone some grief. Unfortunately not getting heard by the boss is a common complaint.
  
  It's true that some poor managers are also really bad listeners and disinterested to the point that nothing can get their attention. However, there are a number of techniques you can use -- strategies -- to get your boss to give you his/her attention and consideration. Here's some of them.
• Listen Up! Real Listening & How To Practice It There's listening, and then there's LISTENING, and you can't get better out it without practicing. The good news is you can practice even by yourself (strange, isn't it). This article explains how you can hone your listening techniques to create better relationships at home and at work.
• Understanding "Conversational Cons" _Protect Yourself Conversational Cons are communication and the use of language that wrap or enclose things like hidden agendas and manipulation.
  
  Their use is quite normal and many of us use them unintentionally without malice, but they can also be used to pressure, persuade, confuse, and son on. By learning what they are and how they are used you'll be better able to spot them, so you won't be unduly influenced.
• Improving Communication By Eliminating Insinuation Insinuation is a passive-aggressive cowardly way of making comments, but we've all done it. Learn more about removing it from your verbal catalog.
• Exorcise Blame For Success One of the major and most common communication blunders both at home and at work is to use blaming as a way of protecting one's own self-image and to try to manage the perceptions of others about you. It's the fast way to create toxic workplaces, and damage your credibility.
• Cooperative Communication - What Is It? Why Is It Important Tone and body language DO make a difference in how we come across to others, BUT we tend to underestimate the critical importance of the words and phrases we do. In this article we look at a form of communication called "cooperative communication" that build positive relationships, rather than its evil brother "confrontational communication" which creates unnecessary conflict and bad feelings.
• Person Centered Comments - Path To Poor Relationship In a disagreement, the best way to really damage the relationship is to make person centered comments. A small change in your language can smooth disagreements out quickly.