Why effective communication skills are important to me!

During my course of internship as a sales intern at Lucenta technology during the 3 months vacation I realized how important communication skills are. To be honest, I don’t find myself to be afraid of approaching someone or starting a conversation. Nevertheless I realized there is more to communication then just being confident and not afraid of speaking.

During my internship I met with many clients, gave many presentations. During these presentation/meetings I was very comfortable to be standing in front of a number of staffs and executives and convey my message clearly. Hence I was well appreciated for being a good speaker. However, this was not the case of the first impression I gave my supervisor.

The internship itself was a very different experience. Firstly, the working environment and the people were very different to those I meet in school or my family and friends. Hence when it came to communicating with the staff, I was rather hesitant and afraid of offending them or saying something wrong.

On my first day, I started off being as formal as possible and talked little. As the days went by my supervisor was under the impression I was a rather quite person… However when I started my meetings with my clients and presentations my supervisor was rather taken aback… and he said to me I was like a mouse that suddenly went boom (I don’t remember the exact phrase)… But what he really meant was that my first impression was that of a person who was very quite and shy. But when he saw how I did my presentations and led my meetings he realized that his impression of me was very wrong. I believe this was because of the wrong image I portrayed during the first few days of my internship. This could have been due to my lack of knowledge on how to communicate and behave in different environments. This case of an office environment is just an example, there are bound to be many other scenarios. Hence it is very important to understand the different modes of communication and how to communicate with different people. This is the reason why I have taken this module and why effective communication is important to me.

Cheerios:D
Keerth