Tips for Teaching Communication Skills
We teach to change our students. Sometimes we change our students by giving them information (cognitive learning). Other lessons seek to enhance students’ appreciation for what we teach (affective learning). A third goal of instruction is to ask students to perform, or enact, new skills (behavioral learning). When the learning goal is to teach a skill, consider using time-tested, research-based strategies that yield positive results.
A skill is a desired behavior that can be repeated when needed; it focuses on doing rather than knowing or appreciating. Communication instruction may include a wide variety of communication skills. Often dubbed “soft skills", communication skills focus on managing people, information, and ideas. These abilities are highly coveted. Perennial surveys of employers reveal that the most valued “soft skills" include presentation, teamwork, and interpersonal dexterity applied to a variety of contexts, including health, family, organizational, and environmental communication.
How do you teach a communication skill, or any skill for that matter? Here’s an overview of a classic five-step approach: Tell, show, invite, encourage, and correct.
Tell
The first step hardly needs explaining. From pre-school through graduate school, instructors impart information, including telling students how to perform specific skills step-by-step. Rarely do instructors scrimp on this step. Often there is too much “telling” and not enough interactive and participative instruction.
Show
To show is to demonstrate precisely how to perform the skill being taught. Whether it’s speaking, listening, or managing conflict, the “show” step models how to enact the desired behavior. Typical methods of the “show” step include video examples, class demonstrations, or role-play. The abilities modeled in this step should directly correspond to the sequence of steps presented when telling how to perform the skill.
Invite
Some instructors use a sink or swim teaching technique. Like the swimming instructor who has would-be swimmers jump in the deep end of the pool to teach them to swim, some educators invite students to perform the skill before the prerequisite of telling and showing. Although this method quickly captures the attention of the learner, it is often not the wisest approach. What works best is to ensure that learners (1) understand the steps of performing the skill, then (2) observe how each step of the skill is performed, and then (3) are invited to perform the skill.
The first invitation to perform a skill should be a partial step, or an easier task. Driving instructors, for example, typically don’t start with parallel parking as the initial assessment of driving expertise. Invite learners to perform a less complicated skill, then build to more complex, multiple-sequence performances.
Encourage
The education maxim, “What gets rewarded gets repeated” is the underlying assumption of the next skill-development step. Offer honest, specific encouragement to minimize both learning anxiety, as well as reinforce positive learning. Better yet, if possible, see if the learners can insightfully offer positive features of their performance. Ask them what they did well. Seeking student self-affirmation enacts another maxim: “It’s better to get a message out of someone than to put one in them.” Learners appreciate receiving authentic praise and commendations reinforcing what they performed well.
Correct
We often learn best from our mistakes. Playwright Samuel Beckett put it this way: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Coupled with encouragement, corrective feedback should be honest, yet offer tactful suggestions for improvement. The teacher might simply ask, “What would you do differently if you could try this performance again?” Then listen. By listening to the response, you can gauge what the learner understands, as well as what needs to be changed from the learner’s perspective. Follow up with noting a limited number of specific behaviors that could be improved. Use the triage method; identify the most egregious errors and empathically address those. Don’t overwhelm the learner with everything that was wrong. Additional feedback can be added during other performance attempts. Don’t ignore errors, but time your correction so that the learner is not discouraged or dejected.
The most effective feedback is descriptive, specific, constructive, sensitive, and realistic. Or consider using the “feedback sandwich” technique: offer a positive comment first, then a corrective observation, followed by another positive comment. Sandwiching a correction between two encouraging comments can minimize learner anxiety and maintain learner motivation.
Application
How can this tell, show, invite, encourage, and correct sequence help with your teaching? Reflect on your last skill-development lesson (e.g., how to format an APA bibliography entry, how to present a persuasive speech, or how to develop an agenda for a meeting), and then apply the following rubric to your lesson:
- Is what you are teaching really a skill? Teaching someone how to listen may actually be more of a lecture-discussion about obstacles to listening or listening styles. True skill development teaches specific, measurable behaviors that can be described, modeled, enacted, and repeated.
- Were all five skill-development steps used? Undoubtedly the “tell” step was included. But did you show positive examples of performance success for each of the elements you are evaluating before inviting the learner to perform the skill? Did you offer both encouragement as well as correction?
- Was each element of the assessment rubric explained and modeled before inviting the student to perform the behavior? Make sure the learners know how they will be evaluated by telling and showing each element before inviting them to perform the skill.
- Was the invitation to perform the specific skill appropriate for the level of detail you explained and modeled? Note whether you are assessing the skill at the same level of detail that you described and modeled.
The goals of your course will determine whether communication skills are included. Many courses are clearly not skill-development courses, nor should they be. But when the objective is to develop communication skills, remember this: tell, show, invite, encourage, and correct.
Steven A. Beebe (Ph.D. University of Missouri-Columbia) is Regents’ and University Distinguished Professor emeritus at Texas State University. He served as Chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Texas State for 28 years and concurrently as Associate Dean for 25 years. While at Texas State he developed the graduate certificate in Corporate Communication and Training. Prior to joining Texas State, Steve was a tenured faculty member at the University of Miami for 10 years. He is the author or co-author of 14 widely used communication books, most of which are in multiple editions totaling more than 75 volumes (including Russian and Chinese editions), as well as 60 articles and book chapters, and more than 150 conference presentations. He has been a Visiting Scholar at both Oxford University and Cambridge University in England. He made international headlines while conducting research at Oxford University when he discovered an unpublished manuscript written by C. S. Lewis that was the partial opening chapter of a book that was to be co-authored with J. R. R. Tolkien called Language and Human Nature. Steve has been a communication trainer and consultant for more than 40 years and has received the National Communication Association Division of Training and Development Lifetime Achievement Award. He has received teaching awards at each university where he has taught and has also received his universities highest awards for research and service and was named Outstanding Communication Professor in America by the National Speaker’s Association. In 2013 he served as President of the National Communication Association. His passions include his family and a lifelong love of music; he is a pianist, organist and a struggling cellist.
About the Author's Publication
Communication competencies are among the most coveted skills on the planet—whether applied in the workplace, social settings, or at home.
Steven Beebe has partnered with Drs. Timothy Mottet and David Roach to create a groundbreaking training and development publication. Training and Development: Enhancing Talent for the 21st Century teaches people how to develop essential communication and leadership talent. It is not just a book about training; it is a book that prescribes how to do training.
Recently revised to emphasize e-Learning and web-based training during the COVID-19 pandemic, the NEW third edition of Training and Development features a robust discussion of e-Learning methods throughout the publication, a new chapter dedicated to Using Web Training for e-Learning, and strategies for presenting training online using e-Learning methods.
Learn more by visiting he.kendallhunt.com/beebe
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