Reading as a Practice to Rebuild Declining Communication Skills

The ability to communicate well may be the single most important skill someone can build in their life. Good communication is the foundation for stable, long-lasting social and romantic relationships, professional growth, problem-solving, and even the ability to work through personal challenges. In my career as a software engineer, product manager, consultant, and product director I’ve interviewed hundreds of people and it’s more difficult now than ever to find people who are truly good communicators. Consequently, communications skills — verbal, non-verbal, written, and being able to present to groups — hold an ever-higher value in the world as they become increasingly rare in people.

The convergence of the growth of messaging and social network technologies, cultural trends, and the focus of institutional education over the last two decades seems to have led to an environment where communication skills are not held as important building blocks of a functional life.

Consider the following:
* The explosion of SMS messaging, followed by apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and others where speed is prioritized over clarity and spelling mistakes, typos, and shortened words and phrases don’t really matter
* Thumb-typing everything!
* Twitter, where the maximum length of a single communication is 280 characters
* Social platforms in general where ‘communication’ is structured as one-way (I make a statement out into the world)
* The increased prioritization of STEM curriculum and, by unfortunate consequence, decreased prioritization of the humanities (within which are the core aspects of communication skills)

These factors, and many more, have created a steep decline in our ability to communicate well. This dearth of communication skills has become glaringly apparent to me as a product professional. It’s more and more difficult to find good communicators even though communication is one of the cornerstones of building a successful career in the product realm and if someone cannot communicate well then they simply cannot do their job.

But there’s hope! Small, consistent improvements over time can make a huge difference. I’m not going to do a deep dive into all the building blocks of becoming a strong communicator, but I did want to highlight one activity that anyone can do every day and that studies have shown improves speaking and presentation skills: reading. Yep, just reading.

Recent research suggests that reading and speaking skills have a reciprocal relationship and a 2001 study by Canadian Researchers specifically showed that voracious readers become better speakers. Consistent reading improves your vocabulary, contextual referencing, grammatical accuracy, and other foundational skills that are essential to being a good communicator. And as a bonus, at least one study has linked reading fiction to an increase in people’s capacity for empathy, which is certainly valuable to everyone but should be of particular interest to the product professionals out there.

And for those of us who could use some specific work on public speaking (which is nearly all of us…), just start a practice of reading aloud. Nearly every public speaking expert, website, coach, and resource for public speaking recommends reading aloud as a practice to improve speaking in public (which includes things like presenting to your team at work). Reading aloud will help build clean, clear enunciation (and pronunciation), develop a good sense of cadence when speaking, and bring your attention to how you deliver to your audience. The simple act of gradually improving these skills over time can be a huge benefit to almost everyone.

One reason reading is a great starting point for building these skills is that it doesn’t need to be a cumbersome undertakings. Make reading a daily practice of just 10–15 minutes a day, but make sure you do it every day. Start with things you’re interested in and just enjoy the practice. The commitment to a daily practice is the most important piece, and the gradual improvement will separate you from the vast majority of people in the world today.