By Dana P Skopal, PhD

Good communication skills are often one of the criteria listed in job advertisements or used in performance reviews. However, can we clearly define or measure such skills? Indeed, how do we learn (and teach) such skills?

Good communication skills can mean clear effective speaking and writing, and also listening (in addition to all the reading one has to do for work or study). The other side of the speaking and writing process would be to measure the comprehension of the message by the final intended user. Clear writing and usability of the message has been our focus area of research. Organisations can run writing training workshops and initiate usability testing of key documents that are for broad audiences. Outcomes of such workshops and testing can then become measures of good communication.

Communication skills have recently been listed under the broader umbrella term of ‘soft skills’. The new concept of soft skills has been defined as a combination of non-technical skills that include communication skills, emotional judgement, problem solving and computer literacy (Deloitte Access Economics, 2017). In addition to these skills, employers may argue that interpersonal skills for team work are equally as important. Yet, one link between these non-technical skills can be the ability to clearly and professionally convey one’s message accurately. The ability to convey a message and then understand a response links back to communication skills.

Focusing on communication in the workplace, any writing or presentation (speaking) training needs to cover organisation of ideas as well as grammatical structure. Our research (Skopal & Herke, 2017) showed that readers responded positively when a text is comprised of:

• clearer Themes and Rhemes (relating to coherence and presenting new information)
• macro-structural signposting (global information organization for the targeted audience)
• multi-modal design features, such as use of bold text, for both documents and slides.

Can we learn to communicate using these features? These elements can be taught at university and through workplace training, for example by comparing good and poor texts. Once these communication features are understood, writers and presenters can become more motivated to write and edit their texts when writing in their discipline (area of expertise). Understanding these steps is a key to good communication skills.

Deloitte Access Economics. (2017). Soft skills for business success. Sydney: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.

Skopal, D. P. & Herke, M. (2017). Public discourse syndrome: reformulating for clarity. Text & Talk, 37 (1), 141–164,  doi: 10.1515/text-2016-0041.