50 Communication Strategies
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Here are a few useful strategies for giving specific advice. Listen. This is the first rule for advice giving. Listen to the person’s thoughts and feelings. Listen to what the person wants—the person may actually want a supportive and concerned listener and not advice. Or the person may simply want to vent in the presence of a friend. For more on listening see the Listening and Listening Actively chapters. Empathize. Try to feel what the other person is feeling. Perhaps you might recall similar situations you were in or similar emotions you experienced. Think about the importance of the issue to the person, and, in general, try to put yourself into the position, the circumstance, or the context of the person asking your advice. For more on this see the Empathy chapter. Be tentative. If you give advice, give it with the qualifications it requires. The advice-seeker has a right to know how sure (or unsure) you are of the advice or what evidence (or lack of evidence) you have that the advice will work. Ensure understanding. Often people seeking advice are emotionally upset and may not remember everything in the conversation. So seek feedback after giving advice, for example, “Does that make sense?” “Is my suggestion workable?” Keep the interaction confidential. Often advice-seeking is directed at very personal matters, so it’s best to keep such conversations confidential, even if you’re not asked to do so.
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About the Book
From advice (both giving and receiving it) to workplace communication, 50 Communication Strategies provides you with an arsenal of practical skills and tools for making your communication more successful in personal relationships, in work environments, and in the written word—both face-to-face and online.
Author Joseph A. DeVito presents a range of strategies that includes managing anger, becoming more assertive, thinking more critically, engaging in small talk, increasing your own attractiveness, detecting deceit, expressing politeness in conversation, and talking with the griefstricken. DeVito discusses simple principles to help you apply the fifty strategies more appropriately and effectively. Each chapter has a simple,straightforward structure and contains a communication goal, a brief explanation, bulleted strategies for achieving the goal, and a reminder to try this technique in your own communications.
The ideas discussed in 50 Communication Strategies show you how to improve your skills and make your communication more effective, more persuasive, more powerful, and more memorable.
About the Author
Joseph A. DeVito is professor emeritus of communication at Hunter College–CUNY. He is the author of numerous research articles and more than seventy-five college textbooks and revisions in communication, psycholinguistics, interviewing, interpersonal communication, public speaking, and nonverbal communication, many of which have been translated into Standard Chinese, Greek, Czech, Indonesian, and French.