"Can AI Enhance Your Communication Skills Training Strategy?"

We often tend to overestimate our communication abilities without accurate feedback. Evaluations of our communication effectiveness are infrequent, whether conducted by ourselves, our managers, or our coaches and trainers. Rather than objectively assessing our impact, we often rely on personal feelings of satisfaction from meetings or presentations to gauge our effectiveness in connecting with the audience.

The prevalence of video meetings, coupled with a generation's familiarity with communication through text and social media apps, further complicates the situation. We have grown complacent, and our communication skills have accordingly become more lax.

How well do your team members perform in communicating within real-life scenarios?

What does the appearance of 'bad' entail? At a superficial level, it involves the repetition of words and phrases like 'like' and 'you know,' among others. Unusual facial expressions and discordant voice tones further contribute to this perception. While some problems are readily apparent, many go unnoticed. When individuals are unprepared, they may present a 'word salad,' exposing a lack of confidence and conviction through ineffective speech. The combined impact of these communication shortcomings can result in diminished sales, decreased productivity, attrition, and a decline in morale.

Is this scenario recognizable to you? How can you guide and instruct individuals to strengthen their communication abilities and cultivate essential speaking skills?

How do you evaluate and mentor your team members?

Monitoring conversations in real-time and after the call has concluded provides optimal chances for assessing and coaching within the workflow. However, these approaches may feel somewhat reminiscent of the surveillance depicted in '1984' for many individuals.

Numerous companies incorporate aspects of communication effectiveness training and coaching within their operations. This can involve utilizing courses, scoring rubrics, spreadsheets, or one-on-one coaching, which may be facilitated either through internal resources or external outsourcing.

Instructors engage in the labor-intensive tasks of manually assessing, evaluating, scoring, reporting, and providing feedback and coaching tips. This demands a significant amount of time and places a considerable burden on trainers to achieve 100% accuracy, consistency, impartiality, and timeliness in addressing learner needs. This challenge may lead trainers to focus primarily on the most evident issues while trying to sustain the learners' progress and facilitate the required adjustments.

How can you address the challenges posed by friction, call oversight, and the limitations associated with conventional training methods?

How Artificial Intelligence Can Provide Assistance

AI-powered software offers companies a solution to address various training challenges such as cost constraints, a shortage of trainers and coaches, insufficient communication skills expertise, the scale and location of the learner population, reluctance among learners to invest time in training, and concerns about bias or trust in feedback.

AI enables trainers and coaches to address challenges related to:

Extensibility

Evenness

Contiguity

Analysis and reporting of execution

Primarily, AI empowers learners to acquire skills seamlessly within the work process, eliminating the need for a distinct "training" phase.

Software empowered by artificial intelligence has the capability to observe, monitor, and analyze learners' video calls in real-time, delivering prompt, personalized feedback and coaching immediately after the call concludes. This not only streamlines the process for both trainers and learners but also encompasses the advantages outlined earlier.

AI-powered software has the capability to observe, monitor, and analyze video calls of learners in real-time, offering prompt and personalized feedback and coaching.

Students observe their scores across various communication aspects. However, instructors, mentors, and supervisors have the ability to assess both individual and team performance, focusing specifically on the development of particular skills.

Enhancing communication abilities involves assessing and documenting aspects such as:

• Compassion.

• Non-verbal signals such as facial expressions, eye contact, and gestures.

• Characteristics of voice and tone, including pacing, inflection, and volume.

• Effective use of keywords and phrases, while minimizing filler words.

• Reviewing transcripts and questions posed.

• Being attuned to the audience's emotions and enthusiasm.

Managing this manually for each learner is not only exhausting but also nearly impossible for a trainer. AI can efficiently handle this process on a larger scale, allowing training professionals to dedicate their time to other priorities.

Handling this manually for each learner is not just tiring but also almost impractical for a trainer. AI can effectively manage this task on a broader scale, enabling training professionals to focus their time on other essential priorities.

How can communication skills training be made accessible to a broader audience?

While effective communication brings numerous advantages to the entire organization, a common practice is to limit communication skills training to high-potential employees and executives. A broader initiative is often postponed indefinitely, pending availability of time and budget.

The barriers preventing you from achieving this goal include affordability, scalability, and ease of implementation. AI serves as the solution to surmount these challenges, enabling the development of communication skills throughout the entire business.

What potential dangers exist?

Artificial intelligence ought to be compartmentalized and integrated into a dedicated tool tailored for optimal communication. Users should not have the ability to perform arbitrary searches unrelated to their educational objectives.

Many organizations boast a workforce characterized by diversity, encompassing a range of accents, facial features, and communication styles. It is crucial that the tool you employ considers this diversity.

Moreover, it is crucial to uphold and honor the individuality of learners. AI-enabled tools or technologies should refrain from encouraging a uniform expression of ideas and should instead respect the diverse ways in which individuals express themselves.

Flawlessness might not be the ideal goal. Building a team composed of individuals who never break eye contact, abstain from using any filler words, or display no signs of enthusiasm or excitement is not desirable. The communication should flow naturally, fostering trust.

What other factors should be taken into account?

AI empowers you to train your personnel seamlessly within their regular workflow, minimizing the challenges typically associated with conventional training approaches.

AI inherently fosters positive reinforcement. Simply engaging with it cultivates awareness among learners, marking the initial stage toward behavioral transformation. This fosters a motivation to enhance oneself, whether driven by personal goals or the necessity imposed by mandated training and skills development.

Enhancing communication among a larger number of individuals is directly linked to improved business performance, encompassing increased sales, enhanced customer retention, reduced employee turnover, and heightened productivity. Despite the scalability benefits offered by AI, it is crucial to note that it won't replace the essential role of trainers and coaches.

In the final analysis, human supervision and guidance remain essential in providing effective communication skills training. Ultimately, the encouragement offered by a computer can never substitute for the personal touch of human support. However, AI can enhance your capabilities, enabling you to expand your reach and concentrate on delivering the crucial human elements that learners seek.