Barker Alan. Improve your communication skills

Creating Success — 3nd edition — Kogan Page, 2010 — 160 pages — ISBN10: 0749475757, ISBN13: 978-0749475758.About this bookIf you’re not communicating, you’re not managing.
In 2003, the American Management Association asked its members what skills make an effective leader. Number one skill – way ahead of the others – was communication (84 percent). Interestingly, numbers two and three – motivating others (56 per cent) and team building (46 per cent) – also rely on effective communication. What’s more, 60 per cent of executives who responded listed lack of collaboration as their top leadership challenge.
Command and control is not the core management style it once was. Managers must now work with matrix management and networking, with outsourcing and partnerships. Our organisations are networks of conversations; the quality of our work depends directly on the quality of our conversations. The new technologies have been a mixed blessing. IT helps us keep in touch but can reduce our opportunities to talk to
each other. Many of us have become ‘cubicle workers’, spending most of our day interfacing with a computer screen. Corporate communication can, of course, still be remarkably effective. The MD’s efforts to communicate his or her latest corporate change programme may fall at the first
hurdle; but rumours of imminent job losses can spread like wildfire. If only formal communication could achieve half the success of gossip and chat!
How can we communicate more effectively? How can we begin to improve the quality of our conversations at work? This book seeks to answer those questions.
The process of communication
How conversations work
Seven ways to improve your conversations
The skills of enquiry
The skills of persuasion
Interviews: holding a formal conversation
Making a presentation
Putting it in writing