Communication - 13 letter word (Blessing In Disguise)

Communication - it starts at home. It is of most importance as it affects your business and your personal relationship too.

Most problems or fights are caused due to mis-communication or mis-understanding. So if some one wants to learn how to communicate effectively, then he should first learn to listen.

Recently I got lucky and was interacting with 2 clients. And got to learn a few things out of the interaction.

When I was interacting with an international client, the most important aspect for me was to listen correctly and clearly over a phone. Here are the points that I had to follow every time.
 - Listen clearly
 - Understand what was said
 - Know what kind of answer is being expected
 - To know clearly what we can deliver
 - And finally, demonstrate to the client effectively, the delivered features

So what are the preparations you would need for the above scenarios.
 - A good and clear telephone line. And a willingness to listen.
 - Understanding a language (English in this context) and understanding of the project you are working on and knowing what the client needs.
 - Assuming that if you were client what you would expect (I personally feel that this develops, as you get experience)
 - You need to be clear about your project limitations.
 - Convincing power - Making a point that the net result delivered by you is what the client has asked for.

One more thing that i would like to include is "FeedBack". Communication starts from "Listening" (listening to other people, your thoughts, your heart....) and ends with "FeedBack" (FeedBack to a person). Feed back can be just informing or it can be thanks giving.... It's must. It gives a feeling to a person of being important.

I think there is no special way or process that defines "Communication". Probably, if an idea strikes my mind and if I'm able to put the same idea in some other individuals mind and we both work towards it then i declare to have great communication skills.

Acknowledgements: Sameer Ranade, (my better half), Pat Greene, and the RiskSpan Team (www.riskspan.com), all of who are great communicators.