Listening Skills

Listening is a very significant part of the communication process. Effective listening enhances communication quality. It helps build relationships, solve problems, ensure understanding, resolve conflicts, and improve accuracy. Effective listening is an art that can be mastered with practice. Since the effectiveness of communication depends hugely on good listening, it is high time for all to pay attention and develop these skills.

Importance of Listening Skills:

The person who carefully listens to someone will undoubtedly have big rewards such as:

Grasp and understand the matter that is spoken by the speaker

Enrich our personal relationships

Help us make fewer mistakes in our jobs

Increases our learning potential

Work better in a team-based environment

Move up the corporate ladder faster

Helps you to perform your duties well

Makes you more impressive when you speak

Importance of Listening Skills in Communication

Listening skills are a vital part of good communication. If you have good communication skills, you can start to improve relationships in the workplace and society.

1. Reduces Misunderstandings

Poor communication always results in misunderstandings. And, poor communication arises from poor listening skills. People end up assuming things and misunderstanding each other if they do not share their side of the story or listen to others actively. So, it’s easy to mishear something or misinterpret information. Such misunderstanding can gradually keep increasing if the listening skills in communication are not improved.

2. Builds Empathy

Empathy is essential to effective listening. Therefore, it would be best if you mirrored the emotions the speaker has. For example, if the speaker’s face expresses sadness or joy, your facial expressions and words should also express similar emotions. Empathy towards the speaker takes concentration and consumes energy, allowing open communication and establishing relationships. 

3. Limits Judgements

Listening limits judgments. While actively listening to someone, your total concentration stays on the conversation. As a result, you try your best to understand the other person or group of people and remove judgmental thoughts. You, therefore, listen to the speaker with an open mind because they are giving you their perspective. You may realize that the speech makes more sense as they continue the lecture.

4. Improves Business Relationships

If you are working in a customer-centric or interactive role, your communication skills play a big part in your success. Thus, practicing good listening skills with everyone at the workplace would benefit your success. You could also build stronger bonds with your co-workers. As a result, everyone will respect you more and value you.

5. Increases Productivity

Whether you’re at work or home, listening is essential to your success. Good listeners are more likely to store information and understand what’s required of them. This is a valuable skill in group projects and meetings. People may think they need to talk a lot to contribute, but listening is arguably more essential. If everyone listens to each other, there is less room for misunderstandings. This increases everyone’s productivity.

 6. Enhances Leadership Skills

Leaders always have good listening skills in communication. Active listening helps you connect with your team’s ideas, hear various perspectives, and prevent miscommunications. In addition, a good team leader ensures everyone feels respected, which means they all feel listened to. They always listen to others and help them in every possible way.

7. Providing Feedback

Providing feedback to the speaker can only be achieved through active listening. The goal of feedback is to send signals to the speaker to know that you are actively listening. The medium of feedback can be verbal or non-verbal.

For example, you can use “okay, or I understand it” for verbal feedback. And for non-verbal feedback, you can nod your head and other appropriate facial expressions. Writing down what the speaker is saying also shows your attentiveness.

Which Jobs Require Good Listening Skills?

Listening skills are essential for good communication. Every professional and non-professional person should master this skill. Listening skills are vital for every job, but they are more critical than other soft skills in business. Below is the list of roles where listening skills are essential.

How to Improve Your Listening Skills in Communication?

It is very crucial that you evaluate your listening skills to select the areas that require improvement. Here are some ways you can follow to help improve your listening skills:

1.  Maintain Eye Contact with the Speaker

In a meeting or public speaking, you should always maintain eye contact with the speaker. By doing this, you are giving your undivided attention to the speaker. Also, it shows that you are making an effort to understand what they are saying. As a result, the speaker will feel they are being appreciated for their effort.

Also, it gives them a non-verbal indication that you are interested in what they are saying, which encourages them to continue expressing themselves. So, you should limit any unnecessary distractions in meetings and public speaking. For example, you should avoid:

• Texting or scrolling through your phone, 
• Looking out a window, 
• Scanning a computer screen
• Body language such as biting your finger, running your finger into your hair, etc. 

Sometimes, the speaker won’t make eye contact with the audience. This is because they are maybe shy or feel uncertain. Or that people in their culture do not use direct eye contact when communicating. However, you should continue to face the speaker even if they don’t look at you.

2. Visualise What the Speaker is Saying

Visualizing something related to the topic when listening to it is a great way to memorize it. If you do this while listening to the speaker, you will remember keywords and phrases quickly. Therefore, you should try to conjure up mental images while you are listening to the speaker. 

To make up a mental image, you can use simple pictures or places related to the topic. Although, if you lose focus when visualizing something, make sure that you immediately refocus on the topic.

3. Do Not Interrupt

Everyone’s capacity to understand a subject is different. For example, in some matters, you may not understand everything that someone says to you. So, you may want to ask a question to back up and clarify the topic or phrase you misunderstood. 

However, you should wait for a pause in their speech and then ask your question. This way, you are showing the speaker that you are listening, paying attention, and willing to discuss things further. The speaker will also appreciate it because they can finish the speech without interrupting.

4. Pay Attention to Non-Verbal Cues

Most of the time, our communication medium is non-verbal. Our body language and voice tone often give out what we are feeling even without saying anything. You can detect if the speaker is bored, irritated, or enthusiastic by just looking at their eyes, mouth, and shoulders position. 

You should follow others’ body language as well as listen to the speech. It will help you understand what the speaker actually means when they are talking to you.

5. Practice listening

Practicing is a great way to improve and learn any skill-listening means being aware of what to do when someone is talking to you. So you can improve your listening skills by practicing. For example, you should write down what you heard, and understood and give feedback to the speaker. 

Also, you can listen to podcasts or audiobooks; they are great for improving listening skills. Although, you should not listen to more than a four-minute clip. Write down what you understand and replay the audio clip to see how much information you had retained from the audio. 

Many professional bodies such as One Education can help you learn new skills.

 

Having effective importance of listening skills in communication means expressing interest in the topic being discussed and understanding the information provided. Good listening skills are very vital in or outside of the workplace. Often people with good listening skills are promoted or get to work on a project they like. 

The benefits of listening skills in communication are enormous in the workplace. Employees with good listening skills ensure better workplace relationships, increase productivity, and more. To become a good listener, you first identify why you have poor listening skills. After that, work on your flaws.