If you want to grow in your career, it’s essential that you dedicate time to skills such as active listening, direct communication, and giving and receiving constructive feedback.

Today’s guest post is by Dr. Laurie Moroco—Certified Business Coach, Keynote Speaker & Corporate Trainer.

For many of us, the career ladder feels like a slippery slope. You might feel like you have no control over your career and that the decisions being made over your head aren’t always in your best interest. 

However, one skill puts the rungs on the ladder of success within your reach. That skill involves how well you communicate with other people on an interpersonal level, and it can make all the difference in growing as a professional.

How communication skills promote career growth

It’s difficult to find a job description that doesn’t list “excellent communications skills” among its listed requirements, but this is because strong communication skills are crucial in so many aspects of your career. Whether you’re trying to connect with your coworkers, manage a team, or build strong relationships with clients, mastering interpersonal communication will help you on your way.

Since childhood, we have found ways to talk with the people around us — yet, somehow, it’s still something that many of us struggle with. When we learn to practice active listening, speaking directly, and how to accept and apply feedback, we can start improving our interpersonal communication skills and positively impacting our professional growth.

Start by practicing active listening

The first quality that marks strong communicators may be somewhat surprising. Rather than talking, this marker involves knowing when not to talk.

Active listening is a skill. It’s not simply about hearing what another person is saying, it’s about understanding them and connecting with the person — the individual — who is speaking to you. Active listening shows respect for the speaker and allows both parties to learn from each other.

We’ve all had moments where we felt like someone was talking over us, or perhaps too involved in their own thoughts to properly listen to us. And while learning how to master active listening does require practice, especially for those who have been misled into believing that talking is more valuable than listening, anyone can become better at it with the right effort. 

To improve your active listening skills, practice being present when talking with someone. Try not to let your mind wander and focus on what the other person is saying, instead of forming your own opinions, then ask questions when they are done. Repeating and restating are very effective techniques to use. You can say things like, “what I think I heard you say was…”

Active listening involves empathy, meaning you have to understand the emotions and meaning behind another person’s words and be willing to look at the story from their point of view, learn new information, and connect with others.

Effective communication requires being clear and direct

The second marker of a master communicator is honesty. When you are able to say what you mean, you will immediately see yourself becoming a better communicator.

This requires you to resist the urge to be overly polite and indirect when speaking with others, especially in professional settings. For instance, if your boss or a colleague asks you a question, don’t leave them with a noncommittal answer, as vague statements leave things open for interpretation. While you may feel you are being polite or deferring, these statements only lead to confusion and miscommunication. 

Instead, find ways to convey your message in a manner that is clear, concise, and lets the other party know what you want (and why) without being overly emotional or aggressive. If there is something that needs to happen outside of your control in order for you to do your job effectively, such as equipment and training, communicate those requirements upfront so they are made known.

Learn how to give and receive professional feedback

Mastering interpersonal communication in a professional setting involves learning how to both give and receive feedback. Whether you are an employee or a leader in your organization, the constructive feedback you receive is critical to your professional development and growth. It enables you to clarify expectations, learn from your mistakes, and become more confident in your role. 

Similarly, being able to deliver positive feedback to others is not only vital to your professional growth, but is also extremely easy. The next time you’re in a meeting or on a call with your team, make it a point to tell someone they’ve done a good job by highlighting something they excelled at within the past week or two.

Negative feedback, on the other hand, is notoriously more challenging to deliver. Few people want to have difficult conversations with their peers, and may feel the urge to soften the message or delay the discussion altogether. However, doing so leaves issues unaddressed and allows issues to fester and worsen. The more you practice delivering timely feedback, the more confident you will become in your communication.

Feedback is a two-way street, and being open to receiving it — without taking it personally — is the fastest way to learn from other professionals in your field. When someone takes the time to offer feedback, it doesn’t mean they are criticizing you or thinking less of you as a person, it may simply mean they want what’s best for the organization as a whole

Interpersonal communication skills are crucial for professional growth and success

If you want to grow in your career, it’s essential that you dedicate time to skills such as active listening, direct communication, and giving and receiving constructive feedback. Mastering these skills will completely change the game of your professional life for the better. If you want to build relationships with colleagues and clients, communicate your ideas confidently, or ask for the promotion you deserve, start by learning how to communicate effectively with others.

Dr. Laurie Moroco has always been an advocate of competent and effective communication. As a solopreneur, her businesses have been featured on Rachel Ray, MSN and Working Mother, and the Republican National Convention. Dr. Moroco became a full-time tenured professor and communications chair, and she is now an assistant dean of instruction at a Colorado institute. In addition to being a professor, Dr. Morocco is also a certified master business strategist, a corporate leadership trainer, and a working mom of four children. Laurie is passionate about mentoring other entrepreneurs and encouraging them to ELEVATE their success to the next level.

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Discover the role of community in tackling loneliness, underlining the need for leaders to foster relationships, enabling team members to find their people.

Today’s guest post is by Dan Pontefract, award-winning author of Work-Life Bloom.

One of the first events I participated in when I joined TELUS in late 2008 was the annual Retirees Holiday Lunch. Despite its current-day international prowess across multiple business lines, TELUS started in 1904 as a British Columbia–based, publicly run telecommunications company. Given its history, retirees are an essential part of the culture.

The Retirees Holiday Lunch is just as you might expect. In a very large room that accommodates hundreds of people, former TELUS team members arrive just before noon to be feted and served by current executives and leaders. The meal is turkey—with all the trimmings—complemented by holiday goodies, eggnog, and hot chocolate. The current leaders revel in the opportunity to put on festive aprons and ridiculously oversized oven mitts, taking orders and delivering hot plates to the retirees’ liking. Lovely thank-you gifts are distributed at the end of the shindig.

During my inaugural Holiday Lunch, I had a conversation with an older woman that sticks with me to this day. It was a festive gift that keeps giving.

After a few small-talk questions and answers, I realized that I was talking to a 40-year veteran of the company. She was a former director who had held several different roles and responsibilities over her tenure. She had been retired for over a decade. Somehow, we then got onto the subject of networks and relationships. I’m paraphrasing, but the end of the conversation went something like the following:

“I love coming to this lunch every year. It reminds me how important my friends were to me at BC Tel [former name of TELUS]. I was busy but happy. There was a lot going on. But I was never bored, never lonely.”

And then, without prompting, she offered me some advice, knowing I had only been at the company for about six weeks. “Find your people: it’s the best thing you’ll ever do.”

I often think about that exchange. I wonder if today’s leaders fully comprehend how important it is for team members to “find their people.” Perhaps more significantly, are leaders aware of the impact they can have when they help to create such an outcome?

Research suggests, however, that large swathes of people are lonely. Many individuals have no network, not even a small one. We might construe loneliness as the opposite of finding your people. If a person doesn’t have a vibrant network—when there are no strong relationship ties in their orbit—the chances for loneliness increase. If strong ties are lacking, the likelihood of the next tier of contacts—oftentimes referred to as one’s weak ties—dramatically diminishes too.

Not only does loneliness create negative consequences in one’s life, but it also creates deleterious workplace effects too. The whole situation is about as encouraging as occupying the middle seat on an airplane, sandwiched between two obnoxiously intoxicated first-time flyers during a five-hour flight. It’s that bad.

Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton discovered through their 2010 research, for example, that loneliness was one of the top factors preventing life happiness and satisfaction. Unsurprisingly, people who are lonely demonstrate a high incidence of sadness, stress, and anxiety. In addition, research conducted by the University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo in 2014 suggested that loneliness can increase an older person’s chances of premature death by 14 percent.

A massive 2017 study of thousands of U.K.-based employees conducted by New Economics Research indicated that loneliness costs employers roughly £2.5 billion annually. Cigna, a U.S. healthcare and insurance company, suggests loneliness costs U.S.-based employers more than USD$ 154 billion annually in stress-related absenteeism. The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre says it costs Australian employers AUD$ 2.7 billion. Wherever you look, loneliness and a lack of relationships cost organizations billions.

Unsurprisingly, in May 2023, Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, released an 85-page advisory declaring loneliness a new public health epidemic in the United States.

“Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation has been an under-appreciated public health crisis that has harmed individual and societal health. Our relationships are a source of healing and well-being hiding in plain sight—one that can help us live healthier, more fulfilled and more productive lives,” Murthy stated.

He went on to write the following: “Given the significant health consequences of loneliness and isolation, we must prioritize building social connection the same way we have prioritized other critical public health issues such as tobacco, obesity and substance use disorders.”

One thing is clear: leaders must create a sense of community at work because that may be all an individual team member has in their life. It is vital that you—as the supporting leader of your team—create the conditions in which people can build and nurture both strong and weak ties inside and outside the organization.

Your leadership in the context of building relationships is crucial. It’s time to curb loneliness. It’s time to truly help team members see that their network can also be part of their net worth.

It’s time to help your team members “find their people.”

This is an edited excerpt from Work-Life Bloom: How to Nurture a Team That Flourishes by Dan Pontefract (Figure 1 Publishing, 2023).

Dan Pontefract is an award-winning author, keynote speaker, and leadership strategist who helps organizations and leaders to bloom. You can find out more about Dan and his books at www.danpontefract.com

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