How to Grow in Your Online Communication Skills
Are you wanting to grow in your communication skills? We want to pass on some questions, that we use as a personal form of reflection that we ask our team to consider when chatting to our Explorers online. These questions may also help you in your everyday communication too.
If we want to connect well, it’s important that we continually grow our skills for good conversations. A great way to do this is reflection, to look back and review the conversations that you’ve had.
Ask yourself these questions:
Do I feel happy with the way this conversation went? Why?
What would I do differently?
Is there anything I can do to improve my practice?
Self-care:
Do I need to process anything (has this triggered anything in me that I need to deal with)?
Do I need to gain clarification on anything or ask for further training?
Should I speak to my mentor/prayer partner about any issues and get some support?
Here are some other questions to reflect on when assessing your conversations:
Did I grasp the context before replying?
Did I find out where the Explorers were at with their thoughts and beliefs before I tried to help them?
Did I assume things about the Explorer, or did I ask questions to help clarify?
Did I ask questions that related to what the Explorer was sharing?
Did the Explorer feel I was listening to them?
Did I use any ‘Christian’ language or words that I need to avoid? (See our blog ‘Weird Words Christians Use and What They Mean’ for some insight on this)
Did they ask for prayer, or could I have offered prayer - if so did I pray for them/with them?
Did I discover their pain point?
Did I share my personal experiences in a way that has helped the conversation to move forward?
Where in the conversation did the Explorer soften?
At what moment in the conversation did things start to turn (for better or for worse)?
Have I followed procedures correctly (when talking with a person who is at risk)?
Did I finish the conversation well?
Reflection is valuable as it fosters self-awareness, learning, and growth by encouraging you to analyse, assess your strengths and weaknesses, and identify areas for improvement. Sometimes you might need to get a friend to help you with this, as it can be easy to be blinded by our own ideas and thoughts. Reflection can also help you to gain insight into your emotions, and behaviours, and facilitates improved connections by promoting empathy and understanding.
