Effective communication

 

Communication skills are something I’ve been purposely working on throughout my career, and these skills are an essential part of not only being a personal trainer but are valuable in many other careers as well. Effective communication is not just about speaking to others but also considering your own qualities and shortcomings, addressing them as they arise. It’s also about understanding things which are outside my frame of reference. We all live different lives and have different experiences so there will be times when I come across a situation or person and I have no understanding of their experience.

Effective communication also includes going out of my comfort zone and exploring things I don’t know or understand, or just have never considered from another perspective. One of the most important things to do in effective communication is to look at other people’s perspectives. We occasionally come across people in life who we don’t like at first, or we get off on the wrong foot, and learning to understand others’ perspectives helps me to understand where they are coming from, so that rather than disliking an individual, I can have compassion for them because I can consider their perspective.

At other times, I can re-evaluate my own values and assumptions of the world. As we grow up, we learn different values and these are influenced by our environments. This is what makes us unique. We are influenced by our parents, friends, our schooling and later our employment. Our values become ingrained within us and become difficult to change if we aren’t willing to challenge them.

I describe myself as a people’s person. I like meeting new people. I love seeing people do amazing things, and people helping me do amazing things too. It’s why I love my job. I will always be this way because its who I am. As a PT, it’s important to have these people skills to be able to nip any kind of problem in the bud. I’ve come across thousands of people within my career and in the early days there were some clients I didn’t see eye to eye with and even some who I did but who moved on quickly.

However, I’ve continued with personal and professional development throughout my career and have noticed changes throughout the years. This has resulted in a long term client base because I have built the communication skills to enable me to build and maintain relationships with clients. Around half of my clients have been training with me now for over four years up to ten years.

There have been times over the years when I have disagreed with clients and they have ended up moving on but I have now got to a point where I can understand people a lot better. There was one situation where I told a client to ‘man up’. Having been in the army and having discipline ingrained into me for so long, the term ‘man up’ was something which had been used around me for years.

This client was struggling in the session and complaining and after the session they messaged me and said they objected to me using the term ‘man up’. They told me it was sexist and explained why they didn’t like my use of the term. At first I didn’t understand why so I listened. They explained how the term and others like it have had an impact on some of the men in her life. Had this been at the start of my career, I would have brushed it off and dismissed her complaint but now having developed my communication skills I was able to listen and reflect on my actions.

Now, I have the ability to consider her perspective and gain an understanding of where she was coming from. It made me think about what I said, and I was able to apologise. The interaction didn’t change the way I coach but it did make me think about my manner and how I communicate with people, the phrases I use, especially when I don’t know them that well. The conversation we had strengthened our coach-client relationship as that client now knows she can come to me with any difficulties she has.

As a personal trainer, effective communication skills are essential to building and maintain a client base, and in building and maintaining relationships with each and every one of your clients. A PT qualification and all the physical skills or knowledge of training methodology in the world don’t mean anything if you don’t have the people skills to convey your knowledge.