Things I wish I knew before being an junior Dev: Communication
Tags: communicatio, beginners, programming
Published: 2022-06-18 20:36:24

# Hi, 
Those two letters can be a start or end of a bad day. How? because most people think greeting is the only thing they should know concerning the *"communication"* subject in their life.
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Communication is not speaking / talking, and what someone said isn't enough for you to totally understand the depth of what they meant, so I want us to explore possible how we can research communication and why it can be our advantage.
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I wont even attempt to describe what [communication](https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/what-is-communication.html) is but its clear that we need to do this right *no matter who you are* to actually understand people, get along with people, and in most cases for you to get things done and being a developer is no exception. 
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## Benefits of Good communication skills:

- ### Personally

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/aju3yj2lbbti9spxic86.jpg)
  - People will respect & trust your more.
  - People can share your perspective without fighting to understand you.
  - You can get what you want without **arguments**, **rejection** and **resentment**.
  - You will grow better and have much greater access to things.
  - You will have solid and healthy relationships.

- ### Professionally

![professional setting](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/mrlzgac7prfvpgb1j3e4.jpg)
  - You will have a larger network and that means potentially more resources.
  - You can work with a team or even lead one successfully.
  - You will produce better work and quicker.
  - You will be able to learn / teach faster.

# How to grow communicate skills:

- ## Maintain a Growth Mindset:

    - Only a person who is ready to grow themselves will see the need and the way to grow their skills to communicate, and so we start there.
    - Realize that being a good communicator means you can get and maintain a healthy circle of people in your network and even get things done with or through them.
    - Having a growth mindset will allow you to be able to speak the same language with successful/progressive people, and that's good for your reputation.
    - This mindset alone will allow you to understand other people's intension and if they are worth focusing on or not. 
    - This mindset and many other created from it will create room for growing in many ways including your communication.


![coomunication @
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6z4bjd8uamlrdmno9uzk.jpg)vukani.hashnode.dev](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/37f1n0ysnw326r7guuj5.jpg)
- ## Researching:

  - Reading books personal growth books,  for me growing my communication skills started with reading the book *[How to make friends by influencing people](http://vukanig.hasnode.dev/communication1)* and it change my perspective on people and that's the first time I changed the way I handle people and conversations.
  - Speak with good communicators speaking with good [communicators](https://dev.to/nash4253/404-3g35), studying how they communicate and paying attention to why they do certain things does allow you to be a better person and better communicator yourself, because they will put effort to better you and also for you to keep up you have to grow your *communication game*.
  - Listening to podcasts and also interviews about topics you like or of people you like will help you pick up the correct/professional way to interact with others that creates a respectable, lovable and charismatic image of who you are.
  - With the people you keep around you, listen to their recommendation of how to communicate better.

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![listen more image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/0se6kmvvzc1n230r8zh8.jpg)

- ##Learn To Listen:

    - This one is special because Listening is a skill that we all need to learn and relearn over and over again, but learn to listen.
    - Firstly focus on **listening to yourself, your feelings, your words, your ideas**. Practicing to listen to yourself will really open up the range and quality of the things you communicate to other people.
    - Listening being one thing that's resurfacing in the book *[How to make friends by influencing people](http://vukanig.hasnode.dev/communication1)* shows how important it is to communication and also for your own personal health.
    - 75% of unsuccessful interactions happen because of mis-communications and **being a good listener** means you will understand people and situations better and have a greater success rate of communication.
    - Make habits that bring **clarity** and **stillness** in the mind, and trust me this will help you listen better, again *`you cannot hear anything new if the old things in your mind are too noisy`*.

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![have acceptance image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nweyumekr9915n8h8noj.jpg)

- ## Be Realistic:

    - One thing that makes certain people approachable is they quality of being down to earth and being **realistic**. 
    - I find it to be very attractive to be a person who is open to the truth and willing to handle life as a whole *as it is* without needing to modify it or or people in it. 
    - In a way being a realistic person will allow you to deal with situations not people and also handle situations according to what's happening in that moment, in that room, which is one thing that is important to shape how you communicate.
    - Most of us interact with others with an agender for either them to do something you want, and being realistic, **being present** in that context of the interaction and actually proposing something that's realistic.

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- ## Have Presence:

    - Having presence means being there, being a person who has **integrity**, **confidence** and **clarity**.
    - It also means actually **reading the situations** you are in before going into them head-first.
    - In a way growing your communication needs these things and will actually make you have even more after you up your *communication game*
    - Invest in things that will grow your confidence and integrity, and this will allow you to communicate better.
    - Invest in having a clean and respectable track record, this does boost how you feel and how relevant you are and this without a doubt will boost confidence and communication.

![@https://https://www.instagram.com/nqubekogcabashe/instagram/nqubekogcabashe presence](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/cmme7dnw2j8fjyvunabn.jpeg)
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## Roots of communication blockages:

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/54rqxtsigkcv0nlfald6.jpg)
I realized that I personally have things that block my ability to communicate better and these I realized can hold back other people if there is no self introspection done. So lets explore these points.


- ## Selfishness:
    - Its easy to judge a fail in communication to being the other person being the problem, but its important to accept that both people can be blamed and that both can be said to be selfish and being one sided.
    - This is why the book *[How to make friends by influencing people](http://vukanig.hasnode.dev/communication1)* references twice the ability to *stand in the other persons shoes* as being a very important move to try when dealing with others, being sympathetic.
    - Another thing that happens in many interactions is direct and non-constructive criticism between people causing an unsuccessful communication, and that comes from having unrealistic expectations to a person.
    - I want to stress that being selfish is another mindset that even though indirectly, it is opposite to the growth mindset, and so it will deteriorate your communication logically.

- ## Lack Of Direction:

    - being a person who has no direction / clarity in life or a task will cause you to fail to communicate good.
    - Unclarity and being directionless causes people to loose personal respect, integrity and confidence - and that will make you bad communicator.
    - I also see having no clear path making you be the type of person bumping into everyone and trying to fit into everything without success.

- ## No Vision:
     - It can only make sense that being a person who doesn't want to be open-minded will block you from being able to connect as far *as communication goes with certain people.
     - The thing is *`a visionary can speak to anyone, and a non visionary can only speak to another of its kind`*, and my friend it will help you a lot to go out and speak with people who will stretch your mind and experience, and ultimately this will help you a lot more than communication goes.
     - Find what you love, focus on that and learn to grow your knowledge, skills and networks with that thing. Don't stop there, start developing new creative things out of that.

- ## Lack Of Confidence:
    - Lack of **confidence does break the communication** of an individual, it lowers integrity and also makes a person less attractive.
    - So its important to focus on what makes you confident and what makes you feel n look good. You will thank me later.
    - There are things one cannot hide / act, and having confidence is one of them and what's crazy is that the less confident you are the harder it becomes for you to relate with other people, especially the confident ones. 


So I do return to the facts here that you will become a better you, and a better developer if you connect with other people and also communicate well with them. I am requesting you work on this personal project and see if it does not grow your network and give your access to more resources and also see if it doesn't make things happen smoother around you.
## People want to connect with you