If the desire to live in peace is true for all or most of us, we should be able to express ourselves effectively enough to each other to convey our thoughts and concerns.
Many well to do business owners and managers would tell you that it is important to connect with people in order to ensure success.
In the Business World.
There is a limit to how far skills and expertise may take us. We must interact with other human beings to build productive relationships. What is also very important to note is that relationships should be or at least be perceived to be genuine because as human beings we build them based on trust.
Speaking to people who have been in positions of interviewing prospective employees, there is a general unspoken sentiment that beyond the skills required for the proposed job, they need to have a certain feeling about the person and their fit into the organisation. This is a subjective attribute based on what some call a “vibe”. This attribute can also not be learned, but in general people are quite perceptive of a lack of genuinity.
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Everyday Living
These communication and relationship building skills are even more important in our everyday lives where we have to coexist with other human beings. And if the desire to live in peace is true for all or most of us, we should be able to express ourselves effectively enough to each other to convey our thoughts and concerns and find solutions to areas or issues that we are not completely content with and in some cases, agree to disagree in peace.
This may sound simple, however many people struggle to communicate effectively. This is not to say that we must all become best friends. After all, the fact remains that we are all of different characters and are from different backgrounds. But if cordial coexistence is desired, we must communicate effectively and build positive relationships.
The interesting thing about these skills is that they cannot be taught directly. There is no class or session that teaches people how to be effective communicators or relationship builders. These skills are dependent on our environments and experiences; and it all begins from the home, regardless of people’s natural tendencies to be introvert or extrovert, friendly or shy. The underlying factor is gaining enough exposure and building the confidence to interact with and understand people, unless of course there are underlying mental issues, which inevitably impair social skills (psychopaths, sociopaths, etc).
Early Years.
Taking this right to the very beginning of a person’s life, communication starts from the womb. Before babies are born, they do quite a few things that they do just after they are such as swallowing, sucking their thumbs, sleeping and breathing. So they are alert, just confined to the walls of their mothers’ wombs. Hence, they are still somehow connected to the external world and can respond to stimuli from their mothers’ emotions and other surrounding activities. So this makes the fact that many women are going through various lengths to communicate with their babies even before they are born quite intriguing. There are numerous studies and books that have been created for the sole purpose of connecting and communicating with children right from before they are born.
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This mindset of building early connections is what triggers the concept of creating a safe environment for children to communicate and express themselves effectively; and this leads them to eventually become better communicators and build more effective relationships when they become adults. When we start to encourage or stimulate communication from the early stages of life, children become more aware of themselves, their environments and the people around them. There are various ways to optimise their experience in doing so whilst interacting with the people around them. Some examples include:
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Making time: This sounds simple but how many parents actually make room for family time in their households, where they sit down with their children and talk about how their day went? Setting this time aside gives room for interacting through speaking and listening.
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Patience: Paying full attention to children and allowing them to finish their thought processes is very important because they will feel that they are heard and cared for. This therefore helps them learn how to express themselves better over time and triggers them to listen to and become more perceptive of others as well.
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Expression: While what we say is important, how we say it takes us that extra step further. This is not to say that we should pretend to express a different emotion from the way we feel, but through body language and expressiveness, real emotions are revealed.
The list goes on…
Start Early.
If these tips above are applied to our interactions from early stages, people will eventually learn these very important life skills and have that extra edge of building effective relationships.
Written by Oyin Egbeyemi.
Oyin Egbeyemi is an engineer-turned-consultant-turned-educationist, runner and writer.