Whether it’s at work, at a job interview, when speaking to potential clients or customers, how you communicate can have a huge impact on your success.

If you’ve ever been at the receiving end of really bad communication, you’ll remember the negative feelings that it left behind: frustration, irritation, confusion, disrespect…I’m sure you can think of others.

Being on the receiving end of poor communication is bad enough, but you don’t want to be the one giving it because it can have a detrimental effect on your reputation. Here are four tips to improve your communication skills:

Be confident in yourself

Lack of confidence comes across very badly in communication. Generally, we don’t like speaking with people who don’t know what they want to say because it makes us feel uncomfortable. If you find yourself lost for words when crunch time comes and it’s your chance to say something then you can try practising or mentally rehearsing what you will say before the time comes. It will help you stay focused on what you have to say.

When speaking, don’t speak too hastily or too slowly. Speak confidently. If you are confident about yourself as a person, you will find that your speech automatically improves.

Listen to others

Listening to other people can give you a great break in the conversation where you can reflect on what you have to say. But, more importantly, it helps you strike a better chord with the others because they feel that you are sensitive to them. Just going on blabbing about yourself will likely bore the person listening after a while.

Learn to ask questions

People love to talk about themselves or some aspect of their lives. If you can pick up cues from what the person is saying, you can use that to ask more questions about themselves. This will make them feel that you are genuinely interested in them and what they have to say.

Hold their interest

Conversations become successful only when you are able to hold the listener’s interest. You might be speaking with 10 different people every day. Do you think the same things interest all 10 of them? If you can understand what people like and then talk in related realms, it really helps. To be able to do this, you will also need a good memory. You will need to remember what different people like and speak with them accordingly. But it will all pay off in the end.