FIVE WAYS TO IMPROVE PERSONAL COMMUNICATION AT SEA

Posted on 7 July 2017 by Nick Chubb

Communication is incredibly important at sea and ashore. According to a 2015 Swedish Club P&I report, poor communication is a leading culprit of maritime accidents and more needs to be done to improve communication between bridge and engine room teams, and betweens ships. As well as at sea, good communication is key to a successful career on land and a happy life at home.

But what can you do to improve communication in your professional and personal life? We’ve outlined five key areas to think about to help you improve.

LISTEN

This one should be fairly obvious, but it’s by far the most important thing to get right if you want to have a valuable and meaningful exchange with someone. You’d be surprised just how many people don’t listen properly during a conversation, and you’d be surprised just how often you don’t listen properly during a conversation.

A lot of people put a huge amount of thought and effort into what they’re about to say, but that’s the wrong way to go about it. Instead, put as much effort and energy as possible into actively listening to the other person. If you’re listening intently, a conversation will flow organically and you will take much more from it than if you just think about what you will say.

KEEP IT BRIEF

This is particularly important when you are writing, using a radio, or communicating any kind of safety message. To prove a point, I’ll keep this brief:

If you’re trying to get a message out there’s nothing worse than waffle. Get to the point!

THINK ABOUT YOUR NON-VERBAL LANGUAGE

According to a 1967 study by Albert Mehrabian, 55% of communication is body language, 38% is the tone of voice, and just 7% is the actual words spoken. While this doesn’t apply in every situation it’s worth being aware of the effect that your body language and tone of voice can have on your communication, whether face to face or over the phone.

Positively or negatively, other people will respond to your body language without even realising it and your tone of voice will communicate far more than your realise about your situation, emotional state, and your confidence.

Speak with confidence, don’t fold your arms, make eye contact, and remember to smile and you won’t go far wrong.

READ BEFORE YOU SEND

We’ve all been there. That embarrassing typo that you spot a fraction of a second after hitting the send button! Spelling and grammar checkers are a life saver (personally, I couldn’t live without Grammarly), but they don’t catch everything. The only fool-proof way to be sure your emails read well is to read them yourself and, if you’ve got time, get a colleague to read them too.

PUT AWAY DISTRACTIONS

It’s almost impossible not to get distracted these days. According to Nottingham Trent University, the average person checks their phone 85 times per day, that’s over 5 times per waking hour! Luckily, a ship is one of the few workplaces in the world where your phone is unlikely to interrupt communication but that doesn’t mean that the environment isn’t littered with distractions.

If you need to have an important conversation, be sure to do it at a time and place that means both you and everyone else involved is able to give it their undivided attention. The last thing you want to do is go through the time and effort of communicating effectively only to find no one was listening, or worse still distract someone from an operational or safety task they are carrying out with something irrelevant.

How you communicate is much more important than what you communicate. Keep it simple, keep your body language open, and most importantly, listen, listen, and listen some more and you won’t go far wrong.What are your ideas for improving communication? Let us know in the comments below.

What are your ideas for improving communication? Let us know in the comments below.