Effective Communication Skills

1. Effective Communication Skills
 Regardless of what business you are in, a large corporation,
a small company, or even a home-based business, effective
communication skills are essential for success.
 The purpose of this workshop is to help you to understand
effective communication, and then show you how to
communicate your message in the best possible way.
Thien Nguyen
Email: thiennv1211@gmail.com

2. 2
 Communications skills overview
 Why communications skills are so important
 Communication process
 The importance of removing barriers
 Speaking/Questioning/Listening skill
How to ask questions the smart way?
 Effective Email
 How to communicate powerfully by email
 Tips for effective emails
 Don’t-know-how-to-write scenarios
 Show your professional style
 Effective Conference call
 Before the call
 Call begins, Call ends
 Effective Report
 Report’s information type
 Tips for effective report
 Overcome English barrier
 Vietnamese common mistakes
 Where to re-start
 Case studies
 Summary and Practice
Agenda

3. 3
Why Communications Skills
Are So Important?
 The purpose of communication is to get your message across
to others.
 This is a process that involves both the sender of the message
and the receiver. This process leaves room for error, with
messages often misinterpreted by one or more of the parties
involved. This causes unnecessary confusion and counter
productivity.
 In fact, a message is successful only when both the sender and
the receiver perceive (nhận thức) it in the same way. By
successfully getting your message across, you convey (truyền
tải) your thoughts and ideas effectively.
 When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you convey
do not necessarily reflect your own, causing a communications
breakdown and creating roadblocks that stand in the way of
your goals.

4. 4
The Communications Process
….

5. 5
Communications Process - Sender
Sender:
To establish yourself as an effective communicator, you
must first establish credibility (tin tưởng). In the
business arena, this involves:
 Displaying knowledge of the subject
 The audience
 The context in which the message is delivered.
You must also know your audience (individuals or
groups to which you are delivering your message).
Failure to understand who you are communicating to
will result in delivering messages that are
misunderstood.

6. 6
Communications Process- Message
Message:
Written, oral and nonverbal communications are
affected by:
The sender’s tone
Method of organization
Validity of the argument (lý lẽ)
What is communicated and what is left out
Individual style of communicating

7. 7
Communications Process- Channel
Channel:
Messages are conveyed through channels:
Verbal/Nonverbal:
Face-to-face meetings
Telephone and
video conferencing
Written:
Letters
Emails
Memos
Reports

8. 8
Communications Process- Receiver
Receiver:
These messages are delivered to an audience.
You have in mind the actions or reactions you
hope your message prompts from this audience.
Your audience also enters into the communication
process with ideas and feelings that will
undoubtedly influence their understanding of your
message and their response.

9. 9
Communications Process- Feedback
Feedback:
Your audience will provide you with feedback,
verbal and nonverbal reactions to your
communicated message. Pay close attention to
this feedback as it is crucial to ensuring the
audience understood your message.

10. 10
Communications Process- Context
Context:
The situation in which your message is
delivered is the context. This may include
the surrounding environment or broader
culture (i.e. corporate culture, international
cultures, etc.).

11. 11
The Importance of Removing Barriers
Lessen the frequency of these barriers at each
stage of this process with clear, concise (súc
tích), accurate, well-planned communications to
be an effective communicator and to get your
point across without misunderstanding and
confusion

12. 12
The Importance of Removing Barriers (Cont)
If your message is too lengthy, disorganized, or contains
errors, you can expect the message to be misunderstood
and misinterpreted.
Use of poor verbal and body language can also confuse
the message.
Barriers in context tend to stem (phát sinh) from senders
offering too much information too fast. It is best to be
mindful (chú ý) of the demands on other people’s time,
especially in today’s ultra-busy society.
Understand your audience’s culture, making sure you can
converse and deliver your message to people of different
backgrounds and cultures within your own organization, in
this country and even abroad.

13. 13
Barriers
List all barriers you are having
English
Buildings, meeting rooms, noise, other source …
Network, Phone line quality
Culture difference
Regional, time zone difference
Non-face-to-face communication
Too much information and too fast
Attitude (negative) and Emotion
Knowledge
 …???

14. 14
Speaking/Questioning/Listening skill
 Speaking skill:
 Inform your partner what you will speak
 Keep it simple and short
 Speak directly and clearly
 Respect listener
 Repeat your main points
 Check listener’s understanding
 Questioning skill:
 Open question: respondent will present ideas and provide information
 Close question: respondent will answer Yes or No
 6W-1H: What? Why? Where? When? Who? Which and How?
 http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_88.htm
 http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
 Listening skill:
 Distinguish between hear and listen
 Listen with open ears, eyes, mind and heart
 Reduce barriers to listen more effectively:
Anger / resentment (oán hận)
Prejudice / bias (thành kiến)
Arrogance (Kiêu căng)
Judgment / Criticizing (Phê phán)

15. How to ask questions the smart way?
Use meaningful, specific subject headers
HELP! Video doesn't work properly on my laptop!
Smart: X.org 6.8.1 misshapen mouse cursor, Fooware
MV1005 vid. chipset
Smarter: X.org 6.8.1 mouse cursor on Fooware MV1005
vid. chipset - is misshapen
Describe the goal, not the step
How do I get the color-picker on the FooDraw program to
take a hex RGB value?
Smart: I'm trying to replace the color table on an image
with values of my choosing. Right now the only way I can
see to do this is by editing each table slot, but I can't get
FooDraw's color picker to take a hexadecimal RGB value.

16. How to ask questions the smart way?
(cont)
Questions Not To Ask
Q: Where can I find out stuff about the Foonly Flurbamatic?
A: Ghod, doesn't everybody know how to use Google yet?
STFW you can find. 
Q: How can I configure my shell prompt?
A: If you're smart enough to ask this question, you're smart
enough to RTFM and find out yourself. 
Good and Bad Questions
Where can I find out stuff about the Foonly Flurbamatic?
Smart: I used Google to try to find Foonly Flurbamatic
2600 on the Web, but I got no useful hits. Can I get a
pointer to programming information on this device?

17. Written Communication – When?
 Follow up oral messages & oral discussion
 Difficult to meet others
 Information needs to delivered in a formal way
 Deliver information in a detail and accurate way
 Meeting request
 Build Release, Document Delivery
 Forums, Tasks and Bugs tracking tools
17

18. Basic points for a written message
18

19. 19
How to communicate powerfully by email –
Sender
Emails should be clear and concise. Sentences
should be kept short and to the point.
The subject line to inform the receiver of EXACTLY
what the email is about. It should offer a short
summary of the email and allows for just a few
words
The body of the email should be direct and
informative. It contains:
All pertinent (thích hợp) information
Salute (chào) word at the beginning and the end
Contact information

20. Sender

21. 21
How to communicate powerfully by email –
Receiver
Check receiver name list (To/cc), someone who is
interested in the subject may not in the list by
certain reasons
Read the subject line to understand the key point
of the message
Read the email content
Provide information
Work assignment, work progress, issues,
concerning, problem, notification, warning,
alert, …
Require information
Work progress, status update, reminder

22. 22
How to communicate powerfully by email –
Receiver (cont)

23. 23
How to communicate powerfully by email -
Receiver (Cont.)
Take notes for actions
Make sure you return emails in a timely manner.
This is a simple act of courtesy (lịch sự) and will
also serve to encourage senders to return your
emails in a timely manner.
Organize received mails in sub folders for
future tracking
Internal email should be checked regularly
throughout the working day and returned in a much
quicker manner as much of these detail timely
projects, immediate updates, meeting notes, …

24. Message structure
One MAIN topic/message
If there are many points/topic,
break into 2 emails
SPECIFY the response you want
Specify a SINGLE PERSON who you want
the response
Use BULLET POINTS, simple sentence
Avoid CAPITAL LETTERS
Give DEADLINE if applicable 24

25. 25
Message structure - Best Practice

26. 26
Message structure - Examples

27. 27
Message structure - Examples

28. Revise/Edit and Send
Spell check
Click to see if attachment can be opened
Zip attachment, avoid heavy attachment?
Subject OK?
To: receivers OK?
Cc: others for references OK?
Content: OK?
Deadline if any?
Remember time consuming after sending
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29. 29
Tips for Effective E-mail
o Think before you write.
o You can always deny that you said it. But if you write
it, you may be held accountable for many months.
o Keep your message concise(súc tích). The view
screen in most e-mail programs shows only
approximately one half of a hard-copy page, about
30 lines. Save longer messages and formal reports
for attachments. On the other hand, do not keep
your message so short that the reader has no idea
what you’re talking about. Include at least a
summary (action or information) in the first
paragraph of your message.
o ZIP heavy attachment or provide the shared folder
links

30. 30
Tips for Effective E-mail (Cont.)
o Don’t attempt to “discipline” your readers. It’s
unprofessional to lose control in person - to do so in
writing usually just makes the situation worse.
o Remember that e-mail is not necessarily
confidential. Some companies will retain the right
to monitor employees’ messages.
o Don’t “spam” your readers. Don’t send them
unnecessary or frivolous (hư không) messages.
Soon, they’ll quit opening any message from you.
o Inform sender if you could not response to them on
time
o Be careful when send email to ALL or email group

31. 31
Tips for Effective E-mail (Cont.)
o DON’T TYPE IN ALL CAPS! IT LOOKS LIKE
YOU’RE YELLING (la hét) AT THE READERS!
Remember, if you emphasize everything, you will
have emphasized nothing.
o Don’t type in all lower case. If you violate the rules
of English grammar and usage, you make it
difficult for the reader to read.
o Don’t put more than two colors in your email.
o Use the “out-of-the-office” when you are on leave
o Set Hi-Priority for IMPORTANT message

32. 32
Tips for Effective E-mail (Cont.)
o Don’t use fancy (khác thường) backgrounds.
o Use the “Subject” line to get the readers’ attention.
o Consider the prefix for the “Subject”
o Take the time to poofread (proofread/đọc thử) your document
before you sent it. Rub the document thru the spell checker
and/or the grammer checker. Even simpltipos (simply types) will
make you look sloppie (sloppily/cẩu thả) and damage you’re
proffessional credubility (professinal credibility).
o Always response to meeting/appointment request
o Accept if you can attend
o Reject: give reason
o Tenatvie / Propose other time

33. 33
Tips for Effective E-mail (Cont.)
o Don’t forget your attachments if any. Don’t send
wrong attachments.
o Check URLs you provide in the email. It is a big turn
off if the receiver cannot open the webpage by
clicking on your provided URL. Same for other
inventory fileserver, folders, etc…
o Never misspell receiver names.
o Consider the To: and Cc: receiver names carefully.
o Organize mails into groups, use auto-rules wisely.
o Respond to e-mails within 1-2 workdays

34. Reply and Forward Emails
34
• What Sender may feel and think for no response:
BUSY? NO RESPECT? LOW PRIORITY? YOU DON’T
KNOW? YOU ARE NOT PROFESSIONAL
• What Sender may feel and think for slow response:
Miss IMPORTANT information? SLOW DOWN work, LOW
productivity?
• Forward Emails:
• If it is just information, don’t need ATTENTION:
give F.Y.I
• If it need attention:
• Summarize the information in 1-2 lines
• Tell them to refer to below content for more
information
• Specify the response you need

35. Reply and Forward Emails (cont)
High priority message: response immediately within
1 hour
Others priorities: within 1 day, 2 days as maximum
If you don’t know the answer: response & give a
deadline
If you are busy: response & give a deadline
If you don’t have enough information: response &
give a deadline
“I received your email. I need to collect more
information on … and I will give you the details by
tomorrow morning”
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36. 36
Don’t-know-how-to-write scenarios
 I send an email to a list of more than 10
receivers, all are important, I don’t feel good to
drop their names in the salute (chào) text.
”Hi Kevin, Brian and all,”
 I want to remind the receiver for taking some
actions that he/she promised
”I understand you are working on…It would be
great if you can…”
 I want to set a deadline for an action
”It would be great to have it by Nov 05.”

37. 37
Don’t-know-how-to-write scenarios (Cont.)
There are some sections in the email that I have
to provide information one by one.
Use the in-line message. The reply will start
with “Please see my response in-line.”
I want to show my appreciation to the receiver
”Thank you very much for …”
I want to show my apologies for my mistake
”My apologies for …” then show your actions to
fix the problem, no excuse is need.

38. 38
Don’t-know-how-to-write scenarios (Cont.)

I was provided some information but I still have
some questions to ask
”Thanks for your information. I have some questions as
the following:”
or ”Thanks for your information. I would like to know more
details as below:”

I received an email, I understand the request but
it takes time to complete. Should I reply to the
email when I complete it?
Send a quick acknowledge message, “I am working
on it. I will get back to you by Nov 05.”
or “I understand your request. I will get back to you as
soon as I can.”

39. 39
Don’t-know-how-to-write scenarios (Cont.)
• I received an email and I know that the email should be
answered by other appropriated person
Forward the message to that appropriate person, copy
the sender, “Quang is working on this matter. Quang,
please help to …” or “Quang, any idea on this?”
• I want to show my objection on one incorrect information
Start with “From my understanding, …”, DO NOT use
“You are wrong” or “Your information is incorrect”
• I want to tell “I don’t know or I don’t understand” in an
appropriated way
I have a little/some basic knowledge on this but I will
catch up with... (or by…)

40. 40
Some not-so-good styles
Unclear: Maybe, probably, seems like, looks like
Example: “The issue you reported last week looks like the
problem 2 days ago and it seems to be fixed but they are
probably not the same I think.”
Humble (hạ mình): my two cents idea, it’s just only my
opinion, I am very sorry for…
Indirect: long sentences, long mail, receiver has no idea
what the email is for
Careless: no subject line, miss-spelling, provide incorrect
data (date, time, names)
Fancy: colorful, weird font type, background

41. 41
Some “basic” scenarios
o Sending the report or any info
 ”Please find in the attachment the …”
“Attached file is the …, please take a look and let
me know if you have any comments…”
Rather than using
“I send you the report/I submit to you the test plan…”
o Discussion, suggestion
 “I have some issues need your clarification as below
- A …
- B …”
o Notice, announcement or remind
 “Hi xxx, please be kindly informed…”
 “Just a kindly reminder, please help to …”

42. 42
Effective Conference Call
 Before the call:
Check list of attendances (designers, managers, …)
Prepare what to discuss with the group base on Agenda
provided (report, presentation, questions/answers) in advance
Check bridge number/pass-code. Ex: My Bridge
(ESN:6.329.0170, pass-code: 3935090)
Check the phone facility (ESN, Net phone, ID), phone usage
method, conference room
Check conference call scheduled time, be careful with time
zone calculation
Be punctual (đúng giờ) by joining the call at least 5 minutes
before scheduled time

43. 43
Effective Conference Call (Cont.)
Call begins:
Stay close to the microphone of the phone
Introduce who is on the line our side and ask for the
same introduction in the other side
Check if everyone has your information ready if any
(report, presentation, tracking sheet, etc…)
Speak clearly and slowly. Provide listeners information
for navigation (slide number, page number, sheet name,
etc…Ex: I am going to present the PV report, do you
have it opened? Let’s go to slide number 1.

44. 44
Effective Conference Call (Cont.)
 Call begins: (cont.)
Never speak Vietnamese without hitting Mute button
Pause for some discussion with the group in Vietnamese
language if need by asking the host for a one minute
break (Ex: Can you give me one minute to discuss? Hold
on for one second.)
Speak some acknowledgement words like “Aha”, “OK”,
“right”, “exactly”, “correct”, “great” so that everyone
knows you are still on the line. Don’t be so quiet.
Have a quick pause for each section to allow listeners
time to think, get the information and ask questions.

45. 45
Effective Conference Call (Cont.)
Call begins: (continued)
Ask for repetition if you have something unclear then re-
state what you understand for confirmation (Say it again
please. I am sorry, I lost your comment/question/last part.
Can you please repeat? So it means…)
If the question/answer is not clear, or complex with a lot
of info, ask for sending email to discuss
Have someone to take notes.
If the line is broken or goes wrong (noise, voice broken),
inform the host and re-dial.
Suggest to go off-line for detail/long discussion subjects

46. 46
Effective Conference Call (Cont.)
Call Ends:
Make a quick summary of what has been
discussed.
Say some good comments (this is a great
meeting to…), say thank you/good bye
Send meeting minute or action register if any.
Send questions to clarify if anything unclear or
lost.

47. 47
Effective Report –
Report’s Information types
 Time information:
Report time (week number, month, etc…)
Milestone, delivery schedule (bubble chart, dashboard
chart)
Activities plan, Forecast, Actual date
 Status information:
Achievements
Next step
Issues and Key activities
Green, yellow, red indicators
 Data information:
Chart (sustaining report), summary notes, metrics numbers
 Detail/backup information:
For further reference

48. 48
Effective Report – Tips
 Understand the views of the readers (managers, team
members, developers, mentors, etc…)
 Provide the right information, not too much nor too little
 Provide precise information with backup data
 Make sure readers can open your report (Open-Office,
file/URL broken)
 When the activity is pending, state clearly the reason why and
action to get it back to progress.
 Indicate clearly who is responsible for action taking with
completed time line
 Insert page numbers for navigation
 Use company/customer templates if required
 Use simple, short sentences, easy-to-read-and-print font type
and color
 An issues list must come with an action plan or mitigation
plan.

49. 49
CASE STUDIES

50. 50
Overcome English barrier
Vietnamese common mistakes:
Pronunciation: incorrect
Speak: too fast, stammer
Grammar: verb tense, single/plural
He don’t have TFS account.
We complete it yesterday.
We have 3 person to work on this feature.
3 people is working on this feature.
Vocabulary: show off by using idioms without knowing
the right context to apply
Up for grabs (available), off the beaten track(far
away), at every turn (every where), food for though
(something worth thinking about seriously) …

51. 51
Overcome English barrier-
Where to re-start?
Pronunciation:
 Alphabet: pay attention to b/p, r, s/sh, t, x
 Syllables (âm tiết)
 Break word into syllables
 Speak every syllable
 Don’t forget the last sound in each syllable
 Ex: English (7 characters, 2 syllables)
Organize words into sentence:
 Use short sentence (7-10 words), simple grammar and vocabulary
 Identify key words
 Use common phrases in common scenarios:
Ex: as soon as possible, as soon as, asap, as far as, back and forth,
something like that, please discuss this off-line, I will get back to you,
please keep me posted on it, you are welcomed, suite yourself, it’s up
to you, last minute update, etc…
Speak slowly
Practice makes perfect

52. 52
Summary
Communication is the process of
exchange information, beliefs and feelings
among people
To communicate effectively:
Keep it simple, short, clear, direct and two-
way communication
Recognize and remove all communication
barriers

53. More References
Questioning Techniques
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_88.htm
Writing effective emails
http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/EmailCommunicatio
n.htm
How Good Are Your Communication Skills?
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCS_99.htm
10 Common Communication Mistakes
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/common-
communication-mistakes.htm
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