Improving Communication Skills to Boost Your Business
As a famous saying of Richard Branson “Being able to effectively communicate is what separates a person from others.” This means communication skill is what helps people earn the trust of others to choose him/her as their leader.
Nowadays, good communication plays an important part in the success of a manager in the workplace and in their personal life too. Leaders who have great communication skills will see better productivity and enhanced relationships in every circumstance of their lives.
Communication is not only about talking but it's also about knowing how to listen attentively. It's the ability to show empathy, open-mindedness, and useful feedback depending on what others say. Moreover, a friendly demeanor, confidence, and good nonverbal communication will also help you to develop relationships with the members of your team as a leader.
If you are looking for a way to improve your communication skill, this “Improving Communication Skills” course is definitely what you need right now.
This communication course is taught by Maurice Schweitzer who is an award-winning Wharton professor and best-selling author. This course is created to provide you with both the tools you need to improve your communication skills and the most successful strategies for using them to get what you want.
After joining this course you will find out how to realize when someone is lying and how to react to that, how to develop belief, the best technique of communication for negotiation, and how to apologize. You will also learn when to collaborate and when to race, how to persuade effectively, ask thoughtful questions, focus on listening, and choose the right way (face-to-face conversation, video conference, phone call, or email) to send your messages.
After finishing this course, you will be able to know what others want, react strategically to their wants and demands, create convincing and clear messages, and enhance the critical communication skills you need to get ahead in business and in life.
What you will learn from this course
Cooperation, Competition, and Comparisons
First of all, you will learn when to support each other and when to compete to gain success. You will discover the three key principles of cooperation and competition: scarcity, sociability, and dynamic instability and learn to decide which way to use depending on your circumstances. You will also find out how to use comparisons to boost motivation and how to avoid "invidious" comparisons which can cause discouragement or unethical behavior. By the end of this module, you will be able to earn a better balance between competitive motivation and cooperative satisfaction to make your interactions more productive and successful.
Belief
In this part, you will learn how to gain and build trust to enhance partnerships and understand why this vital step can be so challenging. You will explore the factors that take part in developing trust in relationships: showing vulnerability, raising rapport, and expressing warmth, and learn how to increase trust by revealing common goals, common enemies, and interdependence. You will also learn how to talk to team members, friends, and opponents in a way that builds trust. When you finish this module, you will understand how to gain trust in relationships to achieve cooperation and mutual satisfaction.
Deception
This is one of the most exciting parts of this course: you will learn what deception is, how to detect it, and how to react when you know it is happening. You will check the most common cues that show deception and discover practical steps to take when you find out the deception. You will also gain the ability to estimate deceptions and transgressions to decide whether they are core or non-core violations. At last, you will examine the components of successful apologies so you can make your own if necessary. At the end of this module, you will be able to detect deception better and provide an appropriate reaction that will help you achieve your goals.
Effective Communication
This module was created to teach you both the key principles of effective communication and how to use the power of setting goals to improve your performances. You will learn how to make interesting and compelling messages, ask thoughtful questions, engage in active listening, and pick the right way (face-to-face conversation, video conference, phone call, or email) to send your message. You will also find out how to use goal setting for maximum benefit while avoiding the common traps of overly ambitious targets. When you finish this module, you will have the ability to communicate effectively using the right method and use goal-setting to optimize your productivity and increase your performance.
Viewer reviews
Skills to learn
“This course surpassed my expectation. I can not only apply what I have learned in my professional life but also can help me to improve some personal aspects, like communication with my family members.” – MG
“I loved the course, it is simply clear and shares a critical view on how we can communicate. The examples and teaching helped in understanding and diagnosis of each problem in communication.” – DJ
“Great overall course, multiple nuances, and insights presented on a variety of subjects related to communication. On the negative side, the evaluation could be more interactive, not only consisting of multiple-choice quizzes but maybe include some written task or even video exchange.” - César A d F R
“I particularly like Prof. Schweitzer and you can actually download most of the papers he authored and co-authored from his university website. After reading at least the abstract and discussion/conclusion of most of his paper (and with some already quite a lot more) published after 2000, I noticed that this course really does distill his work quite well. A lot of the practical implications can be learned in this course and whoever wants to dive deeper has his papers, for free.
I found most inspiring so far that negotiator self-efficacy moderates negative effects of anxiety on negotiator behavior (Schweitzer et al., 2009), which very much motivates me on learning even more about negotiations than learned in this course already. Apparently, the University of Michigan just started offering a specialization in Coursera.
Working in the Customer Service Industry I found the whole course very illuminating. I use some of the concepts already but learning about the context and theory behind them certainly will aid me in further developing on my tactics and influencing others in my company so that we can offer better service to our customers.
Thank you, Prof. Schweitzer, University of Pennsylvania, and everybody involved. Cheers” – Max P