Mastering a Skill

Mastering a Skill

Throughout of lives we will learn and master many skills. The one skill I feel we all should become masters of is communication. Communication is the most important of any skill we can learn. The ability to communicate verbal and non-verbal can make a world of difference in how we perceive others and in turn how they perceive us. We focus so much on teaching our children the importance of good behavior but what about good communication skills. It is evident in today’s society that communication is becoming a lost skill. Our society is customer service orientated; yet, communication skills are declining. I recently went into a fast food restaurant for lunch; I greeted the associate with a friendly hello before placing my order. The young woman’s response was “What’s Up”. It was clear to me that her employer does not stress the importance of good communication skills for greeting customers. In a setting of her peers, her response would be acceptable. In a business setting regardless of how casual, it is important to reflect a professional presence to the customer. It seemed as if her employer was more interested in profit generation than customer satisfaction. While employees were taking orders, the manager was keeping time of the orders and barking out commands to get the employees to move faster. His actions are a good example of bad communication. The lack of good communication skills throughout the process reflects in the type of service provided to the customer and the level of professionalism of the manager. This is an example of bad communication; we often do not recognize. This type of communication is normally accepted, because we make excuses for this type of behavior. We often say the associate is working for minimum wage so he/she is not motivated at their job; the manager is under pressure to keep the lines moving and to maximize profits. We set standards for when we will accept bad communication and good communication. If the same example were to occur at a five star restaurant, our level of understanding would not be the same. We would want to speak to the owner of the establishment because the behavior of the greeter and manager were unacceptable. The level of service and communication we find acceptable is determined by the price we are willing to pay for it.

Good communication skills can be attributed to our successes and failures in life, yet we do not place enough emphasis upon it. I think there should be mandatory classes given in the workplace. The focus of business today is productivity and financial gains. When sales drop we look at economic factors, why not look at how the product or service is being communicated to the consumer. Companies spend millions of dollars on advertising and promotions to have the product misrepresented on the sales floor, yet no one looks at