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.