Tracking improvements in verbal communication

Quantified Self QS newcomers
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Hi all,

I grew up speaking in very ‘sub-optimal’ ways, including pressured speech, not enunciating, and generally communicating ineffectively (probably due to a very rough childhood).

Recently, I’ve decided to measure and improve how I communicate by recording my conversations, transcribing them, measuring my mistakes (see below), and then rewriting my side of the conversation to reflect what I would’ve liked to have said.

My question is: How can I effectively quantify my communication skills?

So far, here’s what I’ve come up with:

Number of interruptions (and interruptions received)
Count of filler words
Time to interruptions (how long I let the other person talk before I interrupt them)
Time spent talking vs. listening
Average silence duration
Speech rate (words per minute)
Number and length of pauses in my speech
Number of breaths
Time focused on my topics of interest (also analyzing usage of “I,” “me” vs. “you,” and “we”)
Sentiment analysis – positivity vs. negativity
Topic shifts (how often I change the subject)

I’m looking for additional ideas on how to effectively quantify my communication skills.
What other metrics or methods would you recommend?

Has anyone else gone through a similar process? I’d love to hear about what worked for you.

Thank you,
NL

Not related to quantifying specifically, but here are some books that have been recommended to me:
Speak With Distinction by Edith Skinner
The Voice Book: Caring For, Protecting, and Improving Your Voice by Kate DeVore and Starr Cookman
Articulate While You Communicate: Speak Well, Write Well, Be Well by Dr. Sheryl L. White
Clear Speech: Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension in North American English, 4th Edition

Also thinking of practicing enunciation exersices (e.g. pen placed horizontally between your teeth forces you to really enunciate, though it’s tiring), using a telepromter app and generally finding role models and trying to model their speech.

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This is so interesting! I’ve never really thought of how people could track their speech patterns themselves before, even though its a big topic related to public speaking and leadership communications. Thanks for posting about this in the forum.

I do have some ideas on what you can consider adding in. Part of being an effective communicator is working on active listening skills. That’s something that can be quantified to see if you’re improving. Counting clarifying questions and paraphrasing/summarizing in your conversations can track that.

You can also track unique words used and sentence complexity. Tone of voice is also incredibly important to be aware of, perhaps also track that.

I don’t know if you’re going to be doing a peer analysis to compare your data to, but that may be helpful to consider so you know what the numbers look like for what you consider effective communication.

Be sure you’re getting explicit consent to be recorded lol that could be considered part of being an effective communicator in itself. If people are willing, maybe they can also give you feedback you can consider. It’s not a “hard number” but effective communication isn’t had with yourself. The participant is worth asking!

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Yeah, thanks. For sure, got to have consent!

I’ll incorporate your ideas as well - thanks again :wink:

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So, my idea is now to use Google sheets to measure the data and then import it into Flourish to get a nice visualisation (this is just random data as an example).

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Super interesting project.

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