# Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Skills: 9 Worth Practicing at Work Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication/verbal-and-nonverbal-communication-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication/verbal-and-nonverbal-communication-skills.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving communication at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Verbal and nonverbal communication skills work together: words, body language, tone. See how they differ and nine specific ones to practice at work. ## Key facts - Title: Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Skills: 9 Worth Practicing at Work - Category: Communication - Primary skill: Communication - Related skills: Building Confidence, Building Self-Awareness - Primary keyword: verbal and nonverbal communication skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication/verbal-and-nonverbal-communication-skills/ ## What this page covers - Verbal and nonverbal communication skills work together: words, body language, tone. See how they differ and nine specific ones to practice at work. - Practical guidance for verbal and nonverbal communication skills - How this topic connects to Communication ## Detailed explanation Verbal and nonverbal communication skills are two halves of the same message. The verbal half is what you convey with words — spoken, written, or signed. The nonverbal half is everything else that carries meaning: eye contact, posture, gestures, facial expression, distance, and tone of voice. When the two disagree, people tend to believe the nonverbal half. If you have ever walked away from a conversation certain your words were fine, yet sure the other person read you wrong, that gap is usually where it happened. There is a straightforward reason for it — and it points to a short list of specific things you can practice. ## How the verbal and nonverbal halves actually divide Most guides treat this as a two-way split, but the more useful version has three parts. CADRE describes the communication process as verbal (the content of your message — the choice and arrangement of your words), nonverbal (the message your body language sends), and paraverbal (how you say what you say — the tone, pacing, and volume of your voice). That third component is where a lot of unintended meaning leaks out. The other difference worth understanding is control. As MasterClass puts it, the words a person chooses tend to be intentional, while many elements of nonverbal communication are unintentional or outside a person's control — blinking, fidgeting, mannerisms, small physiological responses. Verbal speech follows grammar and patterns; nonverbal behavior is far more fluid. That asymmetry explains the common experience above: you edited your sentence, but you did not edit your shoulders. Nonverbal communication is broader than "body language" too. Study.com groups it into kinesics, haptics, silence, paralanguage, chronemics, proxemics, and personal appearance — movement, touch, pauses, vocal quality, timing, distance, and how you present yourself. Verbal, meanwhile, is not only speech: it covers written communication as well, which is why [a badly ordered email](/knowledge/communication/business-email-writing/) and a rambling update are the same skill failing in two places. ## 9 verbal and nonverbal communication skills to practice at work These are the specific, practicable behaviors behind the two categories. The first four are verbal, the fifth spans both, and the last four are nonverbal. ### 1. Leading with your main point Most workplace misunderstandings are not caused by the wrong words. They are caused by the right words arriving in the wrong order. Say the conclusion or the request first, then explain how you got there. Being precise and concise — along with thinking before you speak — appears on virtually every list of effective verbal communication skills, and this is the practical form it takes. A useful drill: before you open your mouth, compose the one sentence that would still be worth hearing if the other person had to leave immediately after it. ### 2. Speaking up clearly and directly [Assertiveness](/knowledge/communication/assertive-communication-skills/) — expressing your thoughts, opinions, and needs confidently while still respecting the other person — is one of the most consistently cited verbal skills in workplace guidance. It is not volume and it is not bluntness. It is saying the thing you would otherwise think about in the elevator afterward. Speaking clearly belongs here too: finishing your sentences, not trailing off, not burying a request inside three qualifiers. For people early in their careers this is often the hardest verbal skill, because the risk of speaking feels larger than it is. A question asked out loud costs far less than a task done wrong. ### 3. Adapting to the person in front of you Knowing your audience shows up as a core verbal skill for a concrete reason: the same information needs a different shape depending on who receives it. A manager who wants the decision, a colleague who needs the detail to do their part, and a client who needs the implication all require different opening sentences for one identical fact. Adapting does not mean changing who you are; it means changing the entry point. Watch how the other person communicates with you — length, formality, how much background they give — and meet them there. ### 4. Being ready to clarify without friction Guidance on verbal skills regularly includes being prepared to clarify in a friendly manner, and the "friendly" part is doing real work. Misunderstandings are cheap to fix in the first thirty seconds and expensive to fix a week later. The skill is asking the follow-up question, or offering the correction, in a way that does not make either person defensive — treating the confusion as a shared problem rather than someone's mistake. ### 5. Active listening Active listening is the one skill that is genuinely both. According to SkillsYouNeed, it combines nonverbal signals — posture, eye contact, mirroring — with verbal techniques such as questioning, reflecting, and summarizing. Summarizing does most of the heavy lifting: playing back what you understood gives the other person a chance to correct you before anything goes wrong. It also takes the pressure off, because your job in the conversation shifts from performing to understanding. ### 6. Eye contact you calibrate Eye contact signals attention and interest, but SkillsYouNeed adds an important caveat: it can be intimidating, especially for shyer speakers, and the right amount depends on the situation. That caveat matters more than the standard advice to "maintain eye contact." A one-on-one review, a nine-person meeting, and [a video call](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/video-call-etiquette/) all call for different amounts. A workable default is to hold it while the other person speaks, let it break naturally while you think, and return to it when you deliver your point. ### 7. Posture and an open body position How you stand, sit, and move shapes how others read your confidence and your engagement. Career guidance on nonverbal skills describes open posture as the best default at work, because it reads as trustworthy, credible, and approachable — while SkillsYouNeed notes that the attentive listener tends to lean slightly forward or sideways. Crossed arms, a turned shoulder, or a body angled toward the door all say something you did not mean to say. This is the cheapest nonverbal habit to change, because you can adjust it deliberately the moment you notice it. ### 8. Tone, pace, and volume This is the paraverbal component in practice, and it is why the same sentence can land as a genuine question or as a challenge. Being aware of the pace and tone of your voice is what makes your words land as intentionally as you chose them. Speaking too fast is the most common early-career version of the problem, and it usually comes from wanting to finish before you get interrupted. Slowing down and letting sentences actually end is often the highest-return single change available. ### 9. Facial expressions, gestures, and distance Facial expressions convey emotion and reinforce what your words are already saying, and gestures help you articulate a point — waving in greeting, pointing while giving directions. The failure mode is rarely overdoing it; it is a flat face during a conversation you genuinely care about, because the other person resolves the contradiction in favor of your face. Distance belongs in the same group: adjusting how close you stand or sit, based on cultural norms and the other person's comfort, signals whether an interaction is formal or informal. The catch with the nonverbal half is that you cannot watch yourself do it. Guidance on improving nonverbal communication points out that most of us produce thousands of conscious, semiconscious, and unconscious cues every day, which means finding where you fall short usually requires [enlisting friends or coworkers](/knowledge/self-awareness/questions-to-ask-for-feedback/) to tell you. The stakes are higher than they look, too: EHL Insights notes that while verbal skills may help you ace the interview and land the job, nonverbal communication matters just as much for job performance, promotion, and how much you enjoy your career. None of that is fixed — but it is hard to change a habit you cannot see, which is why it helps to [check your own blind spots](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) with something outside your own head. ## The skills underneath how you come across Read back over the nine and a pattern shows up: hardly any of them are really about words or gestures. They are about wanting to understand the other person, being willing to say the thing, and knowing how you actually land. Those are three separate habits, and each one reaches well past conversation. **Communication** is the closest of them. Its useful principles are the ones you just saw scattered across the list — a genuine desire to understand, adapting to the receiver's style, speaking up, being clear and direct, stating the main point first, and using body language deliberately rather than accidentally. It covers far more than talking: choosing conversation over writing for anything sensitive or complex, participating properly in meetings, handling the tricky moments like disagreement or an apology. Delivery is one part of a much larger skill. **Building Confidence** is what turns the nonverbal advice into something you can act on. Posture, steady eye contact, and an unhurried pace are read as confidence by other people — but you cannot install them by deciding to feel confident. They come from doing the thing repeatedly at a size you can handle: speaking once in a meeting before speaking twice, taking a small presentation before a large one. Confidence follows the evidence you accumulate, which is exactly why it is buildable rather than something you either have or do not. **Building Self-Awareness** is the missing instrument. Your nonverbal cues are the textbook blind spot — you produce them constantly and observe almost none of them. The fix is not more introspection; it is feedback. Asking a colleague you trust what you look like when you disagree, or what your voice does when you are rushed, gives you the outside view you cannot generate alone. Which of the three to work on first is genuinely not obvious from the inside. A short assessment ranks all **twelve work skills** the framework treats as buildable rather than fixed, so instead of guessing where your effort pays back, you can [see which to build first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and start there. Reading the nine, you probably recognized a few you already do without thinking about them. Most people are stronger on one half than the other, and the half that comes easily rarely feels like a skill at all — which is part of why the other half goes unexamined for years. The rest is not a personality problem. Pace, posture, and the habit of stating your point first are behaviors, and behaviors respond to practice in a way traits do not; you can become noticeably easier to understand without becoming someone different at work. The return also grows over time. The more people depend on acting correctly on what you tell them, the more the distance between what you meant and what they received starts to cost you. By reading this far instead of assuming your delivery is fine, you have already done the part most people skip. What is left is finding out which of these are yours. ## See where your communication skills stand The only thing left is to find out which half of this is actually yours to work on. The **free** Job Skills Test is a short self-assessment of your work skills: you answer questions about how you handle ordinary situations at work, and it shows you where you stand across all twelve of them — communication included — and which ones will make the biggest difference to how you come across right now. **[Take the skills test](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, and your results are shown instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Verbal and nonverbal communication skills work together: words, body language, tone. See how they differ and nine specific ones to practice at work. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Communication. It also relates to Building Confidence, Building Self-Awareness. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/confidence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication/verbal-and-nonverbal-communication-skills/ Preferred summary: "Verbal and nonverbal communication skills work together: words, body language, tone. See how they differ and nine specific ones to practice at work." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.