Listening, Reasons for poor listening. Tips for improving listening skills

Listening Skills

•      When you listen, do you really HEAR what the other person is saying?

•      Because listening involves decoding what someone else is saying, it’s a great place to start improving your communication skills. We know that communication can break down at any point in the Communications Process but, particularly in one-to-one discussions, problems often arise in this decoding stage. By thinking about and working on our listening, not only do we improve our own listening skills, but also we get an appreciation of the challenges we face as speakers.

•      Too often, we don’t really listen to what the other person is saying. Perhaps we’ve come to the conversation with defined ideas of what they’re going to say, and we occupy ourselves with formulating our response while they’re talking. Or perhaps we think we understand what they’re saying, but in fact we’ve miss-interpreted the words they’ve used. Equally, the other person may think you haven’t listened, because your body language has indicated disinterest. If they think this, even if you were actually listening attentively, they may go away from the conversation feeling dissatisfied.

•      Being a good listener is just as important a skill as speaking, writing, and giving presentations. Good listening, supplemented by asking good follow-up questions, plays a key part in building relationship and avoiding misunderstandings, particularly if the other person isn’t expressing all that clearly.

•      The higher the chance in a conversation, the more critical it is that you’re certain you have understood the other person’s point of view correctly and fully. So it’s particularly important to think about listening well when you’re negotiating, taking instructions or dealing with a key customer or contact.

 Tips for Effective Listening

•     Devote all your attention to listening – don’t try to think about your response at the same time.

•      Use attentive body language to make sure that the other person realizes that you are listening to what they are saying.

•      Repeat back what you think the other person has said, using your own words, and use checking questions to ensure you really understand what the other person means.

•      “Listen” to their body language too. What feedback do you have about how the conversation is going?

•      Be comfortable about saying that you will respond later once you’ve had a chance to think about what the other person has said. It is often better to wait and give a well-considered response than to rush in with immediate thoughts, just because the other person wants a quick answer.

•      Improving Your Listening Skills

•      Here are some more resources to help you work on the areas for improvement in your listening skills:

•      Active Listening: Hear what people are really saying

•      Do you really listen to other people or do you just hear what you want to hear? Find out the benefits of being an active listener, and how to develop this skill.

•      Empathic Listening: Going beyond active listening

•      Make sure you really understand what someone else is telling you, and that you’ve drawn the full story out of them, by using this powerful listening technique.

•      Questioning Techniques: Asking questions effectively

•      How you ask a question has a massive impact on the answer that the other person gives you. Learn what type of question to use when, from open and closed questions, to guide questions, probing questions, leading questions and rhetorical questions.

•      Body Language: Understanding non-verbal communication

•      Recognizing and understanding non-verbal language is key to effective communication. You can lead, inspire and motivate others more effectively by understanding and acting upon their non-verbal language.

•      Giving and Receiving Feedback: Keeping team member performance high, and well-integrated

Feedback is designed to help improve things next time, but if you go about it the wrong way, it can make things worse rather than better.