Skip to main content

Listening: A Key to Effective Communication

Although most of us have received years of training on how to read, write and speak, few of us have been taught how to actually listen. Listening can be divided into four categories:

  1. Social or casual , to fill our days;
  2. Attentive, when we are in a situation we regard as important/when receiving instructions;
  3. Empathetic, when we want to feel with the other person and understand/be sympathetic;
  4. Active listening, requiring a responsibility on the part of the listener to absorb the meanings of the words he/she hears and then assume an active role in the exchange. -The most crucial method of listening

Many are good at some of these categories, others are skilled at one, some are skilled in none.
As a society we tend to focus on what we are saying rather than how we listen and apply that knowledge and understanding.


Practicing and applying good listening skills can help create and sustain an environment of trust, respect and understanding. Hearing is a function that almost never requires effort or even response. Listening always does! Before we apply the physical effort to listening we must first make the mental effort to achieve the task. This is done through a number of areas:

Listen for emphasis-These are the emotional factors that make a person act or react. What is really important? What is the key to what the person is saying?

Ask Questions- The more information you collect, the better able you'll be to present your ideas in a manner that will be seen as a contribution to the other person.

Really Listen-If you do that, you'll get more information than the words alone convey. You'll become aware of the tone of voice, posture, gestures, facial expressions, etc. Every one of these sends a strong message if we pay attention. All of those factors contribute to presenting a complete message. Sometimes the focus of the conversation may not be what that person is trying to say. By analysing all of these components, this will give you a better understanding of the complete message.

Conclusion? When the other person is talking, be sure you are actively listening. Don't start thinking of what you'll say as soon as you have a chance to talk yourself. If you don't pay close attention, you'll likely miss important information. -If you demonstrate you are truly interested in the person as well as in the business, strong relationships can develop.


Now I will stop talking....

Labels

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Christmas & Looking Forwards

Happy Christmas to those who have arrived here to read this post. The world and the media remind us often that Christmas is a time for giving, for compassion, for family, for celebrating Jesus and for receiving. It is also a time when we reflect on the past year - what has occurred and happened in our lives and where we have come. The New Year beckons and we begin to look forward to the positive changes that we desire, our aspirations and hopes for the future. We want to feel better in ourselves, and have an improved world with less stress, anxiety and suffering. Looking forwards is a powerful thing. It provides us with the ability to consider what may be, as we journey into the unknown. It enables us to work out where we would like things to go. In the animal kingdom, I expect we are one of very very few species that have this ability to look out over long periods of time. Other animals will look forwards I expect season by season, if that. They concentrate on the present. ...
5 comments
Read more

The pace of life

As we begin the Christmas season around this beautiful world, a period of reflection often occurs. Christmas (for most of the western world) is a time when we think about the year gone by, and about how far we have come along the road, and then we turn to the new year and begin to think about how far we are going to go and what we are going to do with our time next year. We all live life at different paces, sometimes we move quickly, at other times more slowly. We each choose how fast we want to move, making decisions that alter our progress and that sometimes take us in different directions. Sometimes those decisions help us gather momentum, at other times we lose it. That got me to thinking about physics...I was never really any good at school physics, I think the highest exam mark I ever got was around 40% despite the attempts of some very good teachers!, and the lowest was somewhere in the teens ....now a few years on from school, the querky reality is how much physics i...
2 comments
Read more

Pathways

The other day I found a piece of paper that I'd created with my best friend a few years ago, and it reminded me of how simple things are when we want them to be. We travel along our path, experiencing this and that - hearing and seeing this and that, and along that pathway we make decisions. Those decisions keep us moving, either in the same direction or in another. Like travelling along a road, we sometimes know our way, we recognise the road - it's a well travelled road as they say - we know where we are going because we have been there before. At other times we see signposts and respond to what they are telling us - we react to them and alter our direction based on what they say. At other times, we register signposts to give us confidence that we are on the right track, we experience 'deja vu' or coincidences we just get that intuitive feeling that we are moving in exactly the right direction. I think this simple little topic is going into my book. Have a gre...
1 comment
Read more