Show me a city where most vegetables are easy to come by but potatoes are not!You would be hard put to do that in today’s world, would you not? In today’s world of soft/life skills training, “communication” is your potato. To be fair, though, it comes in a far wider variety than do potatoes.

In the Indian scenario, we have:

• “Professional Communication” / “Communication like a pro”
• “Telephonic Communication”
• “Social Communication, etiquette + the art of small talk”
• “Business etiquette”
• “Communicating in Meetings”
• “Business Communication”
• “Cross Cultural Communication”
• “Communicating In Virtual Teams”
• “Customer Service “ and “Customer Centric” Communication
• “High Level Communication”
• “Email Commmunication”
• “Body Language & Communication”
• “Branding & Communication” ; “Image (Management &) Communication”
• “Assertive Communication” (& “Communicating Under Pressure”)
• “Gender Sensitive Communication”
• “Proxemics and Personal Space”
• “Voice & Accent”

           [This one is hydra headed –           There are so many varieties of this variety itself.          BESIDES,          This does call for a very different skillset TOO]

• “Presentation” and “One To many Communication”
• “Language “ training

……………………………….. and numerous other specialities to pick from! Quite a kaleidoscopic Cairo Bazaar, is it not? Does any BASIC, BASIC common skill-thread run right through it? Some much smaller subset of key varieties that, once mastered, can serve as an operating system to build the rest on? Perhaps the answer is “YES”. But first, we need to take a few short steps back –and quickly put the word “basics” in perspective.I remember times whenGP (general practitioner) doctors were no rare sights. Not nearly every doctor specialized.I also recall the days of mere communication training programs (as against anything in our above menu).In those days,Every trainer would sketch something roughly like this on the whiteboard: Yes, I know I am hamhanded at using MS-Paint. If ‘A’ and ‘B’ had been radio transceiver sets,For communication to succeed, two things would have to succeed – transmission (T) and reception (R).But they happen to be two people.So ‘T’ becomes ‘E’ (expression) and ‘R’ becomes ‘L’ (listening).The first dotted line is the feedback loop (FL) and the second one is questioning  and probing (Q&P).

I will resist the temptation to get into greater detail.

 Module or component 1 of our operating system: We listen well alright (at least we often do) to

1. The words spoken
2. Their linguistic meaning – if there is no language barrier

........................................................................................................Do we also often listen well to

3. The FEELINGS of the other person?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPJceiH9Wpo So, as you can see,One who aligns with this basic, basic component can build upon it:

• Some Empathy Training
• Some NLP Training
• Some Tele-etiquette and Professional Telecalling Skills Training
• Some Body Language Training
• Some Probing and Questioning Training
• Some Interview Skills Training
• Some Sales / Selling Skills Training
• Some Customer Service &/or Customer Centricity Training
• Some ……………………………………………………………….

...............................................…………………. Module or component 2 of our operating system: We now move over to the ‘T/E’ (transmission /expression) side of our basic anatomy.I have dwelt on this component in a separate article /post( https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/poor-mr-mehrabian-debanik-ghosh/https://learnersconclave.in/poor-mr-mehrabian/ )And will only make mention of it quickly today. I am talking about congruency. My image consultant friends please be kind to me for a moment –I personally feel that ties are fine and so are jeans but not ties teamed up with pairs of jeans.(if you do not gel with that, change it to shorts with ties – and you will).To say“nicked / whacked” is okay with me just as it is to say “misappropriated” but I draw the line at mixing these up in a single sentence.Most importantly,your body language, your tonality and your words had better speak in congruence with each other.(Some call these the V-V-V as in the visual, the verbal and the vocal) Module or component 3 of our operating system:We are still on the expression side and we are still coming from the good ‘ol days of mere communication training. THE STOUT SIX

1. Be Clear
2. Be Prepared
3. Be Simple
4. Be Vivid
5. Be Natural
6. Be Concise

 I conclude where I began –By urging us to get brilliant on the basics (of communication)