We generally believe we’re more effective communicators than we really are. But how would we know? Who will tell us otherwise? Rarely is one’s communication effectiveness assessed (whether by oneself, one’s manager or by one’s coach or trainer). Instead, we assume that just because we feel good about a meeting or presentation, we were effective at reaching the audience.

The era of video meetings — combined with the fact that an entire generation has grown accustomed to communicating via text and social media apps — only adds to this challenge. We’ve become complacent and our communication skills have relaxed commensurately.

How Effective Are Your People at Communicating in Real-World Situations?

What does “bad” look like? On the surface, it’s repeating words and phrases such as “like,” “you know” and more. Strange facial expressions and voice tones that are out of sync with the message. Some issues are easily observed, but many are not. When people are unprepared, the word salad is tossed up and a lack of confidence and conviction is revealed through poor speech. The culmination of these communication deficiencies can manifest in lost sales, lost productivity, attrition and low morale.

Does this sound familiar? How can you coach and train people to exercise their communication “muscles” and develop critical speaking skills?

What Are You Doing to Assess and Coach Your People?

Real-time and post-call conversation monitoring have offered the best opportunities for in-workflow assessment and coaching. These methods are a bit too “1984” like for most of us.

Many companies have some elements of communication effectiveness training and coaching in place. They might use courses, scoring rubrics, spreadsheets or one-on-one coaching — which may be delivered using internal resources or outsourced.

Trainers manually assess, evaluate, score, report, and share feedback and coaching tips. This is extremely time consuming and challenges trainers to be 100% accurate, consistent, unbiased, and timely in responding to learners so they can maintain momentum and make the necessary adjustments. They likely only coach on the most obvious infractions.

How do you overcome friction call oversight and limitations of traditional training?

How AI Can Help

Whether it’s cost, a lack of trainers and coaches, a lack of communication skills subject matter expertise, the size (and location) of your learner population, learners not wanting to take time to train, a fear of bias or lack of trust in the feedback, AI-powered software presents companies with a way to address these and related training issues.

AI allows trainers and coaches to overcome issues pertaining to:

• Scalability.
• Consistency.
• Immediacy.
• Performance analysis and reporting.

Most significantly, AI enables learners to develop skills in the flow of work, taking the “training” out of training.

AI-enabled software can track, monitor and analyze learners’ video calls as they happen, providing immediate, personalized feedback and coaching as soon as the call ends. This saves time for both trainers and learners, while also providing the benefits listed above.

Learners see their scores on a variety of communication elements. But trainers, coaches, and managers can view individual and team performance and zero-in on specific skills to develop.

Developing communication skills requires evaluation and reporting on elements such as:

• Empathy.
• Facial expressions, eye contact, gestures and other non-verbal cues.
• Voice and tone qualities (e.g., pacing, inflection, volume).
• Keywords and phrases (as well as excessive filler words).
• Transcript/questions asked.
• Audience sentiment and enthusiasm.

This is exhausting, if not impossible, for a trainer to undertake manually for each learner. AI can help manage this process at scale so that training professionals can focus on other priorities.

Another game changer is that AI can simultaneously analyze the engagement and enthusiasm of a speaker’s audience on a video call. This provides further validation that the speaker’s message and delivery are on track while also providing critical intelligence on the call itself. Currently, there is no other reasonable, cost-effective, time-efficient way to do this without AI.

How Can You Take Communication Skills Training to the Masses?

Though effective communication benefits the entire organization in myriad ways, many reserve communication skills training for high-potential employees and executives and indefinitely delay a broader effort when time and budget allows.

Affordability, scalability, and ease of implementation are the obstacles keeping you from making this happen. AI is the ingredient that overcomes those obstacles, making communication skills development possible across the business.

What Are the Risks?

AI should be isolated and embedded in a tool specifically designed for communication effectiveness. Learners should not be able to conduct random searches that are irrelevant to their learning mission.

Most companies have a diverse employee population — with a variety of accents, facial features and communication habits. It’s important the tool you’re using takes this into account.

Additionally, learners’ individuality must be maintained and respected. Any AI-enabled tool or technology should not attempt to train people to be homogenous in how they express themselves.

Perfection may not be so perfect. You don’t want to create a workforce made up of people who stare incessantly into the camera, never use a filler word, or never show enthusiasm or excitement. The message delivery should be natural — which creates trust.

What Else Should You Consider?

AI gives you the ability to train your people in their normal workflow, reducing friction inherent in traditional training methods.

AI brings with it natural reinforcement. Just by using it, you’re creating awareness amongst learners, which is the first step to behavior change. It encourages a drive to improve, whether for themselves, or because training and skills development have been mandated.

The more people you can get communicating more effectively, the better your business’s performance will be — more sales, better customer retention, less employee attrition, increased productivity. However, while AI will help you scale, it most certainly will not eliminate the need for trainers and coaches.

At the end of the day, there is still a need for human oversight and coaching when it comes to delivering effective communication skills training. After all, a kudos given by a computer will never replace human encouragement. But AI can help you scale your efforts so that you can focus on delivering those critical human elements that learners are looking for.