Before taking you to the main topic, let me tell you a small incident.. real incident. Two girls came to my company for interview in the Marketing department. They had a significantly similar profile. They were about same age, with similar internships, similar kind of experience history and both were MBA in marketing from equally reputed universities. However one of them became Marketing Manager, while other became Marketing Executive. Why? Because that was what each applied for. The one who became Marketing executive felt that she is probably not ready or good enough to take the responsibilities of Marketing Manager, and secondly, she wasn’t sounding as confident about the role. While the one who became Marketing manager was sounding very confident and excited. She believed in herself and that reflected from her speech and body language. It is very hard to make others offer you some responsibility unless you do not believe that you will be able to live upto it. And, if you believe, you must show that you believe, otherwise it is too hard a guess work to know that you are worth it, or even interested.

I am sure you can find a vast resource to improve your communication skills, but I don’t think I will commit a Google crime if I share my experience about it. Here are few points which I learnt over the time and helped me develop better communication skills.

• Learning English language, not because Britishers ruled us, not because its trendy to speak western language, but because its a Global language.
• Think before you speak, listen while you speak.
• Speak slow, so that others can comprehend.
• Use specific words, because there are hardly absolute synonyms.
• Use simple words, because not everyone is as brilliant as you are.
• Use short sentences, because long might be boring or might not make sense.
• Make eye contact while you speak, don’t hesitate, they won’t bite you.
• Smile.
• Stress on the stuff you must stress upon.
• Avoid talking controversial stuff.
• You didn’t get something, you fumbled, you stammered, stop; say sorry, and repeat yourself. Make yourself clear.
• Speak only if you know what you are speaking.
• Make a habit of using disclaimers like “I think”, “Correct me if I am wrong”, “Maybe we could” etc.
• Take a break and have a glass of water when you get tired of speaking.
• Allow others to give feedback on your speech, acknowledge it and then move on to other topic.
• Allow others to speak.
• Don’t hesitate to ask questions.
• Read often and read useful stuff.
• Talk often and talk sense.
• Don’t Try to be funny.
• Write blogs, and then read them a day later.

I guess all the points I stated above should be helpful to someone looking to improve over their speaking skills. If there is something that you feel like adding to this list, comments are open.

If you are someone who is pretty persistent in making wrong decisions and then regretting about it over and over again, here are two simple ways of avoiding it.

You must be having some people who may advise you from time to time, who tend to be your well wishers, those who don’t mind spending time talking to you and discuss your problems. You can choose few such people and test their advices and intentions for you. Once you find that they are trustworthy and reliable, given to the intensity of it, you can totally give yourself to them. You can start relying them blindly and do as they suggest you. It will help you prevent making wrong decisions considerably.

Secondly, if you are totally aimless, or have an aim but do not know how to perceive it, make an Idol. You can choose anyone successful from your stream and follow them blindly. Do whatever they did, copy them completely. This will not take you to the top, but it will certainly take you closer to where you want to be.

The advice above are more suitable for aimless teenagers rather than grown ups, but I know many people who may benefit from this advice. However, if you want to be the best, you got to be yourself. There is nothing called second best.

If you are regular to the blog, you must be able to notice various changes in appearance and performance of this blog. I had been making several changes to better the user experience recently. Even though I am still not as regular in updating the blog, neither I am doing anything to promote it, I feel pretty content for being regular at posting, and I am loving it. I can see that finally I will be able to express my views more clearly and comfortably on the blog.

I will be launching four more websites this month itself, out of which one will specifically deal with SEO career culture and advice. I have a lot of ideas for it which I will be putting in. So thanks for staying tuned and best is yet to come.

We can see many people and politicians standing to discourage westernization of India. They call it sinful and they want to preserve Indian traditions and languages.

I find it ridiculous.

We can’t switch to new unless we leave the old. Languages and traditions, are not compulsions, they are a kind of lifestyle and medium to make our lives systematic and easier. They are supposed to help us flourish, we are not supposed to help them survive. Now that we have a newer and better way of doing something, it doesn’t make any sense to stick to the old one, just to show respect. Anything which is easy, fun and adaptable, people will choose it. They say Sanskrit is perfect fit for computers? But I can’t imagine how will it fit onto a keyboard? Being fit for computers is not enough, it must fit the users too right? Users are more important than computers, right? Right! Sanskrit has had enough time to be world’s popular language, but people rejected it, English succeeded. Because that is easier.

This is Globalization, not Westernization.

..and if that is too hard to understand.. then..

Dear Key Opinion Leaders.. please STOP telling us what is right for us. If you want to be helpful, show us options, and we will choose many or one or none.

The other day, I went to this small restaurant. It is one of the many of its kind, located in a heavily crowded industrial area, such restaurants focus more on quick service than quality. You shouldn’t expect good customer service in such places. Such places expect their visitors to be in hurry, looking for some inexpensive and quick solution, like fast food. This is their target audience, and that is what they expect their visitors to be.

Minutes after I took a seat, a young waiter of my age came to take my order. He seemed pretty busy. What I feel funny about such people is that they are too busy to do their job. His face was stoned and he was sounding monotonous. He didn’t even bother to make an eye contact. I asked him in a friendly tone about what would he suggest in starter soup; he wasn’t expecting it. He suggested tomato soup, I asked him to add some extra toast to it and gave a thankful smile. Next series of happenings were totally different. He turned out to help me with my main coarse pretty nicely, and gave me a five star treatment in that small restaurant with that warm smile on face. I was delighted by the service as well as treatment, and ended up leaving a decent tip for him.

Points to note:

1. He didn’t know that I will tip him if he give me better service.
2. I had no prior intentions to tip him for his services.
3. I didn’t bribe him with tip because it was given post service.
4. Tip wasn’t necessary.

A smile was a signal to let him know that “I will appreciate”, which is what most of the customers don’t do. It was just a motivation and not the actual reason. By doing such a simple thing, I made him go that extra mile for me, only to experience such a nice service that I ended up offering him an above average tip. I wonder how many times, he has missed such tips due to lack of signals.

So many times companies let go their prospects who could possibly turn clients if only they would go that extra mile. So many times people are not able to get most out of the outsourced company because of their rigid behavior with them. Just by letting the other person know that you WILL apprciate, you get inside their good books, differentiating you from all other sad clients they had. Until recently, I didn’t know that “thanks in advance” was far more effective than just “thanks”.