Christians, how good is your communication?

One of the things that all communicators need, if we're serious about getting better, is good feedback. We need the help of others to sharpen our gift and improve our craft. Often others are better placed to be able to spot things we do well and the things that need work.

But receiving feedback can be painful. Sitting down in a room with others, often when we’re feeling vulnerable, isn’t always something we’re keen to embrace.

The good news is there is one way of reviewing ourselves that is a little less exposing.

I want to share with you a three-point way to review yourself. To be transparent this isn’t mine; I picked it up from an online presentation given by a communication teacher called Vinh Giang. You can find lots of videos with tips and tricks from him on YouTube (he’s not a Christian, but he has lots of common-grace wisdom on what good communication looks like).

Here is his suggested three-part self-review.

The first thing you need to do, before you start the process of review, is find (or create) a video clip of yourself speaking. It only needs to be 4-5 minutes. It could be taken from your church’s livestream if you have one. If not, you’ll have to find a way to record yourself speaking to your phone. Perhaps ask a family member or friend to capture a few minutes on a phone. Once you have this here’s what you do:

1. Play the clip but only listen to the audio.
   Don’t watch the video. Listen out for things like your pace, tone, pitch, pronunciation, etc. Take note of how you sound. Are you easy to listen to? Do you speak too fast or too high? Do you sound like a machine gun rattling away or is it all just a bit slow, low and sleep-inducing?
2. Play the clip again, but this time turn the sound off and just watch yourself.
   Notice your posture, eye-contact, movement and gestures. Do you wave your hands around like you’re conducting an orchestra? Do you bounce up and down on the spot like a toddler needing the loo? Do you stand rigid in one place? Do you put your hands in your pockets? Again, take note of anything that may be hindering good communication.
3. Get a transcript of the clip.
   If your clip is from YouTube, it can provide a transcript for you. A transcript is a helpful tool in helping you to really see wasted words, unnecessary repetition, ums and uhs. Work through it looking for ways in which you can clean up your communication and remove unhelpful idiosyncrasies.

Now, if you’re feeling really brave you could do this in a group setting. Others will likely pick up on more things, but this isn’t always possible, and you may not feel quite ready for this.

Once you’ve done this exercise, and hopefully learned something from it, try and put your learnings into practice next time you speak. Then repeat the exercise to see how you are making progress. This isn’t something you need to do every time you speak, but if you do it once every three to six months, I’m pretty sure you’ll start to see some benefits.

Hopefully this simple and relatively quick way of reviewing yourself can help you in those practical skills of communication. Give it a try. You’ve nothing to lose and possibly much to gain.