Without effective communication skills and comfort practicing them, whatever awesomeness you have inside you is invisible to the world. You might as well not have it. Other people will nearly always be attracted to people with better social skills.

With effective communication skills and comfort practicing them, you can showcase your inner awesomeness to your heart’s content. You can attract other people, whether for business, personal, or whatever reason you want. People want to do business with you and invite you to join them because they want people around who communicate well.

Anybody can improve their communication skills, including you

People today sometimes think I was naturally born socially adept. I’m flattered, but I remember years of sitting in the library on Friday nights, not invited to the parties I could hear across the street. Or, if at parties, bars, or social events, wondering how everybody already knew each other since, because I didn’t know how to meet someone new, I figured nobody else did. I could only meet people if I had classes with them, worked with them, or someone introduced me.

I put a lot of work into improving my social skills. One of this page’s core premises is that changing your behavior influences your life. If you don’t know how to change your behavior, you can’t. Personally, I needed low-level, clear, easy-to-understand, easy-to-follow instructions on what to do to start changing my behavior. With practice, meaning after making many mistakes, I improved my skills.

This series gives low-level, clear, easy-to-understand, easy-to-follow instructions on communication skills

This series gives instructions useful for someone like I was. I don’t claim to have the best communications skills in the world, but they’re a lot better now than before and I didn’t do anything you can’t.

I also present this series in workshops you can book me for.

Improving your communication skills improves your life. I recommend it.

• Communication skills exercises, part I
• Communication skills exercises, part II: Body language
• Communication skills exercises, part III: Conversation hopping
• Communication skills exercises, part IV: Storytelling
• Communication skills exercises, part V: Meaningful connection
• Communication skills exercises, part VI: feedforward
• Communication skills exercises, part VII: building blocks and tips
• Communication skills exercises, part VIII: breaking the ice
• Communications skills exercises, part IX: statements instead of questions
• Communications skills exercises, part 10: Your Authentic Voice
• Communications skills exercises, part 10a: examples of voicing your self-talk
• Communications skills exercises, part 10b: another example of voicing your self-talk
• Communication skills exercises, part 11: Quick and dirty escapes from conversation lulls
• Communications skills exercise 12: Avoiding starting responses with “No,” “But,” or “However”
• Context, Action, Result (CAR): answering interview questions and describing experience effectively
• How to make someone feel understood: the Confirmation/Clarification Cycle
• “Passionless” people?
• How to make a phone call with someone you don’t know but want to help you

• ← Coaching works.
• Communications Skills for Business and Life Series →