Words are sharper than swords and if misused, could cause a lot of problems for both a speaker and a listener. For effective communication to take place, it requires all parties to be actively speaking and listening. Right now, the art of communication is a skill that I am working on in order to better myself.
In the working society, I receive first-hand experiences on the wonders of what effective communication can bring about. From my perspective, some of my strengths in communication are brief understanding of my listener and the ability to convince. With knowledge about my audience, I have a rough concept of how to attract their attention and win them over with my idea. Some weaknesses of myself are my short span of attention and tendency to get driven by emotions. Sometimes during a conversation, I zone out in the middle of a conversation or get caught by distractions in the environment. Due to that, I often missed out important details mentioned by the speaker. Because I am an emotionally oriented person, I tend to react quickly to provoke or sarcasm without giving too many thoughts.
Once, after joining Community Service Club (CSC), I tried to convince several of the classmates who were also at the CCA booth to join. Looking into their eyes, I can feel their minds are clouded with concerns that they will not be able to manage the workload of school works along with club participations. I went on to explain to them that how low commitment the club required and yet with so many fruitful activities we can participate together. In the end, I am glad that I win them over as they signed up for the club with me too.
Even though it may just be a small matter, being able to convince them feels like a tiny battle won. I learnt that the act of persuasion requires understanding and patience. A great salesman I know once told me “For someone to buy your idea, you must know what they want. After that, let them know how your product will change their life for the better.” At this moment, I had opened myself to knowledge and experiences for self-enrichment. Right now, I see myself as a “Work in Progress” and my mission of my life is to learn and improve on my Interpersonal Communication day by day.
Last Updated: 12th April 2016
WELCOME 
Hi JS, Thank you for sharing your experience from joining CSC and elaborating on how effective communication can help you to get the job done. I sometimes find myself that I could not start a decent conversation with my friends and I failed to get them engage in the conversation. Your post shed some light on my weakness which is to aware more about the people that I am talking to. I am sure you do have strong communication skill so I would like to see more stories on effective communication from your working experience, your weakness and how do you overcome your weakness. I hope it will also help others to improve their skills. All the best!
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Communicating opens the path to understanding. Learning to initiate a conversation and keep it going will open your life to a lot of possibilities. Will work on the lapses you mentioned. Thanks for commenting!
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Hi JS, you posses a great skill in that you are able to deduce what is the other party thinking through the eyes.Our eyes always show our innermost emotion and I feel you can be a good adviser to people. It is human nature to get driven by emotion, you can try to collect your thoughts in the midst to calm down and think about what kind of message you are trying to get across.I do think convincing is the hardest as you have to know which things to say to hit the right button and it is not an easy feat!! I admire that you have the convincing skills as I find it hard to convince people. Do share more experiences and knowledge to enrich your readers!
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‘In order to convince others, convince yourself first.’ I think my naive personality make it easy for me to be convince myself!(Haha!) Being a emotionally driven person, I often made rash decision that left me in regret. That is something that I am working on right now.
Thank you for commenting!
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“Words can be sharp; words can be blunt.
Blunt words could cause trauma;
Sharp words could remove tumors.”
~ Use words Wrong Lee.
Is it a coincidence that “words” is an anagram of “sword”?
To sharpen a sword, engage a swordsmith.
To sharpen your words, engage a wordsmith.
Like swords, swordsmanship is required too.
A swordsman’s swordplay could still be elegant.
Like swordplay, wordplay (communication) is a
skill that takes a lot of practice to perfect.
And in present day, the moment it gets perfect,
the rules of the game may change.
Practice Practice Practice!!!
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I acknowledged my own strengths and limitation hence understood that there are so much things to work on myself.
“Practice make Perfect,
I couldn’t more agree with that.”
Thanks for your comment!
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Thank you, JS, for this concise and fairly clear initial post. You provide a decent intro for the discussion of your strengths and weaknesses in communicating. What I find less than satisfactory is the ‘blending’ together of strengths and weaknesses, meaning, that it would be better if you don’t cram all this info into one sentence.
Separating, for example, strengths from weaknesses would allow you to elaborate through the discussion of your anecdote on the CSC in a more cogent, detailed manner. I appreciate your self disclosure, but it would be better if the communication situation were ‘broken down’ into what works for you and what doesn’t in more focused yet separate descriptions.
There are some other issues in this post with language use;
1) Words are sharper than swords and if misused, could cause a lot of problems for both the speaker and listeners. >>> Words are sharper than swords and if misused, could cause a lot of problems for both a speaker and a listener. (I use the indefinite article “a” since we don’t know who these folks are; they are not defined.)
2) the arts >>> one or many?
3) some of my strengths in communication is … >>> (subject-verb disagreement) some of my strengths in communication ARE…
4) Even though it may just be a small matter, able to convince them feels like a tiny battle won. >>> (sentence structure) Even though it may just be a small matter, BEING able to convince them feels like a tiny battle won.
5) I tried to convince several of the classmates who are also at the CCA booth… >>> (verb tense error)
I tried to convince several of the classmates who WERE also at the CCA booth…
As I have mentioned, the blog is a good medium for editing and rewriting since nothing here is etched in stone.
I look forward to your rewrite.
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Noted Brad! Give me a little more time and I promise I will make necessary adjustments to my previous post. Thank you for all the pointers!
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I’ve posted a comment but can’t see it. Can you disable the moderation function?
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I had just made some changes in the Setting and hope that the moderation function had been removed. Will notice the changes in the next comment I receive.
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Hi JS,
Being able to know that you manage to convince your peers to join the same club as you is an achievement! I would also feel happy knowing that my friends are together with me in the same club. You can probably be of a great help to someone if anyone ask you for advice as i believe that you, being able to convince people would let people change the way they think. From the quote that you have given, I feel that it is so relatable. To be able to convince someone, we have to first know and understand their problems before we sympathise and give advice that will benefit them. Hope that you can continue to make a change in people’s life! Cheers!
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Ultimately, I believe I still have lots of room for improvement in my communication. Thank you for your support!
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