Effective communication skills are essential for everyone in our daily life. For me, effective communication skills are what I need to improve on.
Frankly speaking, I do not feel comfortable when expressing myself to others, especially strangers. During a conversation, I usually find nothing to say and turn out to be more a quiet listener than an active speaker. When asked some questions I often respond with a one-sentence answer and that is it, making the conversation like one between a pupil and a teacher. Sometimes even when I felt like saying something, I just thought that what I intended to say might not be that necessary or useful so I just kept silent. Perhaps the rigorous training in science makes me believe that everything said must have a reason for saying it.
But just as what my mother reminded me many times, people did not know what you thought unless you spoke it out. In addition, keeping quiet will take others a long time to know what kind of person you are: you might have good personality, but without effective communication, this cannot be discovered unless people have spent a long time working with you. Nobody has the patience to wait for such discovery before they leave you and work with someone who is easy to communicate with.
At first, I did not take her point seriously, thinking that it would be fine as long as in the future I am not in a career which involves a lot of communication. Now, I start to realize that effective communication is such an important tool that everyone must be armed with regardless of what career he is in.
