My communication style and Networking - part 1

My communication style and Networking

Can I build worthy network by communicating, what is my communication style and what is networking? I am passionate to reflect my thoughts on above questions to gain a better knowledge.

I have 29 years of experience in communicating (29 years of age)I believe we learn initial communication in mother’s womb. Worked and studied in four different countries, holding junior positions to managerial level in working brackets and learning two different languages Sinhala and English have remarkably improved my communication style.

When I m revolving back my life, I had many different communication styles. During my school days I always had the intention to achieve more, wining is  only word in my vocabulary I was so aggressive in my communication style, However with the life experiences and sharing the knowledge from various people I become more assertive communicator

I am enormously positive about life, while communicating i express positive words among many people. I was responsible to handle international marketing department in Srilanka, which need constructive communication skills, my leaders and colleges have often admired how effective and simply I communicate with the department activities.

I strongly believe to build up a decent communication flow sender, encoding, message decoding, and receiver, verbal and nonverbal, tone of voice is paramount. Also listening skill plays a major role to understand the communication flow, as a head of international marketing at DSI tyres I practiced and excelled my listening skills, whenI m communicating with Chinese and Colombian nations I developed lot patience when communicating as they take fairly long time to express their view on business projects.

I believe it is not easy to be an active listener it need to be develop over period of time and I constantly learning new communication skills from Ted talk videos and  great speeches. Whenever I need to do a business presentation for client I always focus on main three aspects. 

Who is my target audience are they senior managers or junior executives and what appropriate language I need to follow 

How long I need to communicate and what main criteria I should highlight in my communication.

How long I should have for open questions and discussion. I always practice above steps and it has benefited me to build up good communication flow.

I have been privileged to study different countries to sharpen my knowledge, when I was studying at Herriot Watt University –UK it was a completely new experience for my life. While I was working as a Nandoca (Crew member in Nandos Restaurant) Scottish customer ordered (Chickenpia and a bottle of war). I was stuck for a second of his accent and speed of the language.in a moment I realized he was ordered Chicken Pitta and a bottle of Water. I used to laughs for myself what was happened. First few months it was very hard for me to understand Scottish slang language and accent, to overcome these communication gap I watched many scotch accent You tube videos and even I went to learn Scottish accent training at University.

Also during the university period i was acculturation to many different cultural values and beliefs, every person in united kingdom greet (YOU ALRIGHT)when people greet me YOU ALRIGHT I was wonder is anything wrong with me so i replied to  them I’m alright. Because I was acculturate in a totally different value system. After some days i realized it was a cultural norm every British person greets.

Studying in United Kingdom was a significant life experience for me and to improve my verbal communications skills to a higher level and learn new cultural experience.

When i represented DSI tires atTaipei Cycle show Taiwan in 2016 I had to communicate multicultural nationalities, I was observing unique communication styles in  each nationality and the way they express their business proposals for myself and management.

 As a token of appreciation we offer a  gift for each person who visited our exhibition booth, once I offered a gift for Taiwanese customer at once he rejected my gift and I was so embarrassed at that situation, then my general manger came and insist customer  twice to have the gift from DSI.then he took the present with respect and honer.my General manger told me Taiwanese never accept gift at once, you need to insist him to take the present from you.it was a cultural shock for me and i admired how different cultures express their views on receiving gifts.

When I relocated myself in New Zealnd I faced many challenges in communicating with Kiwis, although I have a sound knowledge in English language I could not understand Kiwis slang and accent at once, lady who came to picked me at the Invercargill airport, she spoke to me (Oh your flight early innnt) i realized she was asking my flight was early isn’t it. most of New Zealanders use “Eh,In,Aye” at each of their sentence,“you have breakfast Eh”, I believe Kiwis use more slang language to express their views on each sentence initially I could not understand the statements which I need to reply because in communication Sender and receiver should have  clear consistent message to continue the flow of communication.

Once I had a experience in my working place at McDonald my immediate manger said to me “have a Friday night party keen” I was wondering who is keen? And do you understand at first sight what my manger trying to communicate. I was bit helpless at once because I do not know what reply I should communicate.

One of my crew trainer once told me “cmon its piece of piss i was wonder what he is trying to tell me, I was confounded for a moment, after while I discover piece of piss means very easy task.

Always my team members favorite word is “Sweet As” when I wanted to change my shifts and informed to manager he initially said me Sweet as I was wonder what Sweet in.but in New Zealanders Sweet As refer to many meaning from cool to awesome

By having open communication with many Kiwis has helped me to get more understand their language and  accent, I always keep my mind open to learn and acquire new words and accent.