Skill Series #1: Communicating with Confidence
We, at Lean In, had been planning to initiate a series of workshops on varied topics. When a lot of girls voiced out concerns regarding presenting their thoughts in a cohesive manner and improving critical thinking, we decided to start with conducting a session on communication skills in the next meetup.
Aradhana Kumar and Ruchika Bhatia, former governors of the Debating Society , IIT Kharagpur helped all of us dissect our issues with communication and moulded the session so that everyone learned from the concerns girls raised.
Starting off with how body language is a key determinant of the way conversations proceed, they explained the different styles. Being better aware of the occasion helps us to be a better judge of our words and underlying tones. This lets us navigate the much scared territories of coming across as aggressive or timid with relative ease.
The discussion soon moved to continuous assessment of the way we are speaking. We really don’t need to wait till the end to realise whether the communication activity has been productive or not. The kind of engagement we are garnering from the opposite party — both verbal and non-verbal cues are indicators of attention. This can be interpreted in quite a few ways. We might realise that we are not speaking enough information relevant to a certain group of people by looking at poor engagement from their side. This can also be utilised to find out about a dedicated audience for our idea.
The next theme involved looking at communication from a structural point of view. One of the best ways to build upon an idea involves logical breakdown of the idea or argument and arriving upon the most fundamental expression of the same. This process helps us sift out the irrelevant information which might be tough to defend later and doesn’t align well with our primary burden.
Reading helps us acquire the matter to sustain most of the conversations we want to be a part of. Critical reading is essential to ensure that reading is being done in an active manner. This involves thinking while we are reading something — the same way we would have had someone delivered that speech right in front of us. Discussing what we have read with people around us often adds value to the process and exposes us to the points of view we might have failed to consider.
There were a couple of intriguing questions regarding problems we all face. Being able to defend your stance in the most nuanced of conversations was a recurrent theme. We often hold certain views very close to us and hence, feel the need to justify them in all possible situations. Aradhana and Ruchika tackled this by first asking us to go back to our primary compartmentalisation of ideas and identifying which bucket or theme is being questioned. This helps direct our efforts efficiently to the issue at hand. We now have to provide a logical breakdown of thought supporting our ideas without getting intimidated by the blanket statements or biased notions. We have to be mentally strong to combat confirmation bias around us and make our peers realise the same. That being said, it is completely okay to realise that the other person has a more legitimate foundation or that the correct point of view should probably be an amalgamation of your ideas.
Even when we are in our best prepared states to tackle a situation with all of our homework done, there will be people who might just not want to listen to us. We cannot go through our lives making the other person listen to us or agree with us. We just need to be assured of the fact that we are presenting our opinions in a sound manner.
We should never stop speaking our minds and communicating with confidence.
Huge thanks to Aradhana and Ruchika for taking out time for the session at this crucial time of their placement semester and making it so useful for all of us!
This is our first session of the Skill Series and we plan to have more of such sessions on varied topics. Keep reaching out to us regarding skills you wish to improve or acquire. Happy Leaning In 🙂 Cheers!
