The Zone Gathering

When I was a kid, I was painfully shy. Ridiculously shy. In fact, I was so shy that I was scared to answer the phone. I’m not kidding. It probably comes as a shock to many of you, but I promise that is the absolute truth. Fast forward about 20 years and I have no problem standing in front of hundreds of people talking.

What happened?

I believe that communication skills can be learned.

In Marcus Buckingham’s Now, Discover Your Strengths, communication is listed as one of the 34 themed strengths. Communication did not rank in my top 5. It didn’t rank in Pastor Mark’s top 5, either, and yet he is one of the most gifted communicators I know.

What does that mean?

A few people are naturally skilled at communication, but most people have to practice and develop their communication.

I think a lot of things contributed to my communication journey. When I was in elementary school, I jumped into local community theatre and began performing on stage regularly. That definitely helped me feel more comfortable in front of people. Also, God enables us to do the things that he calls us to do, so I think that some of my comfort level and communication gifts developed as I stepped out in faith in obedience.

For the past 8 weeks, we have been exploring different topics related to communication because we believe it is an essential skill for leaders. Whether we enjoy communicating or not, we need to recognize its importance. Whether we are good at communicating or not, we need to practice and develop those skills. Today, I want to share a few things that I think might be helpful as you seek to be a better communicating leader.

Practice Makes Perfect
Whether it’s verbal or written communication, you can perfect it by practicing it. You learn by doing. When I was a kid, my sister and I “played church.” Some kids play house. Others play school. We played church. And I preached to my stuffed animals. That’s kinda silly, and although it wasn’t intentional, I was practicing verbal communication at a young age. Over a year ago, I started blogging. One of the primary reasons I started blogging was to discipline myself in written communication. Journaling has also helped me practice written communication.

Ask God to Help
Ask the Holy Spirit to give you guidance. Moses recognized the importance of communication and tried to convince God that his skills were not up to par. Exodus 4:10, “But Moses pleaded with the Lord, ‘O Lord, I’m just not a good speaker. I never have been, and I’m not now, even after you have spoken to me. I’m clumsy with words.’ ‘Who makes mouths?’ the Lord asked him. ‘Who makes people so they can speak or not speak, hear or nor hear, see or not see? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and do and I have told you. I will help you speak well, and I will tell you what to say.’”

I began following Christ when I was six years old and got baptized a few years later. In high school, I began to learn about the person and the work of the Holy Spirit. I learned first-hand how the Holy Spirit can empower someone in their abilities to communicate.

The Holy Spirit changed Peter from a man who denied Christ to one who preached Him boldly on the day of Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit changed me from a person who was scared to answer the phone to a person who loves to preach and teach. Some of that can be attributed to different environments that helped me develop those skills, but much of it must be attributed only to a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

Ask God to give you boldness, confidence, and the words to say.

Turn Nervousness Into Energy
No one likes a boring speaker. And no one likes listening to a nervous speaker. But there is a way to channel nervousness into energy. I learned this trick on the stage, and it is primarily helpful in verbal or public communication. When I first became involved in theatre, my stomach would be flooded with those little butterflies of nervousness. Our director would tell us to “turn them into energy.” I made a conscious decision to do that and found it to be extremely helpful. It is a little more difficult to do when speaking publicly outside the mask of a character, but you can still harness nervousness and turn it into an energy that gives your communication life and enthusiasm.

Keep a Lock on the Tongue
I dedicated a couple of different posts to the topic of keeping the mouth clean and communicating according to God’s standards, so I won’t rehash those again. You can read them here and here. But based on Scripture and my own experience, I believe that our effectiveness as leaders and communicators is directly proportional to how well we guard the everyday stuff that comes out of our mouths.

Listen to Others
In general, there are two camps of people—those who like to talk and those who like to listen. Both camps are generally thankful for the other camp (except when the listeners get tired of listening to the talkers). But talking is not necessarily communication. Talking can be one-way. But communication is by nature a two-way activity. When you listen to people, you can communicate better. Listening can help you better understand you audience, and I think about ninety-percent of communication is knowing your audience. Listening can reveal what people are actually picking up or comprehending. Listen carefully and you can find out if people are actually “getting it.” Listening can also teach you the vocabulary of your audience. I communicate in different ways to different people because they have different communication styles. The only way I can learn a person’s communication style is by listening to them.

Those are a few of the life lessons I have learned about communication. I’m sure many of you have lots more you could add. Please feel free to use the comments thread below to share how you have developed and improved your communication skills.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 11:24 am and is filed under Communication, Leadership Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.