How to develop Listening skills

An Overview

Listening skills are an essential part of communication, and enable you to send and receive messages accurately; either verbally, through body language, or in written form. Of all the aspects of communication, one can learn, listening is arguably the single most important, and is a soft skills that employers keenly seek. Communication isn’t just about talking with others and sharing stories, ideas, goals, and desires. Effective communication often involves listening skills that develop your ability to really absorb what others say, and listen with an open mind. Just like becoming a better speaker, there are many benefits of becoming a better listener.

You may be surprised to learn there are numerous ‘types’ of listening skills. The two most basic types are:

• Active Listening: involves holding eye contact, nodding, having good posture, and mirroring the speaker’s body language to show genuine interest in what they’re saying. In addition to these nonverbal cues, you must also allow the speaker to finish their thought in its entirety.
• Discriminating Listening: In a basic sense, this type of listening involves analyzing the sound of a person’s voice rather than the words in a bid to understand the underlying message. We learn discriminating listening at a young age as we try to distinguish between the voices of our parents.
• Comprehensive Listening: This form of listening relates to understanding the message being communicated. Effective, comprehensive listening requires the necessary vocabulary and language skills.
• Effective Listener:  A job candidate shares her understanding of an unclear question during an interview and asks if she has it right. An interviewer notices that a candidate doesn’t look her in the eye when asserting a key strength or A customer service worker repeats a patron’s problem or complaint back to her to reassure her that she has been heard.
• Informational Listening: In this case, we are listening to learn new information. It is one of the least active forms of listening because we are listening to instructions to try and understand something, and we don’t criticise or analyse.
• Critical Listening: As you can probably guess, critical listening involves analysing what is being said. It is an active form of listening and tends to involve decision making or problem-solving.
• Therapeutic/Empathic Listening: This is a testing type of listening because it involves trying to understand the speaker’s emotions and feelings.
• Passive listening is when you listen to something without giving it your full attention. For example, you put on French radio in the background while you’re working, or listen to Spanish music without really paying attention to the lyrics

How to develop Listening skills

To develop effective listening skills, it is helpful to first look at what causes us to be ‘ineffective’ listeners. A major issue is to become distracted or bored after a couple of sentences. In the workplace, you can use your skills to carry out your role’s duties without any issues, serve clients and customers, and enjoy a good relationship with your colleagues and managers.

• Speaking in public or groups through electronic media.
• Raising your eyebrows every once in while.
• Keep eye contact
• Moving slightly closer toward the person speaking to you.
• Avoid trying to offer an immediate solution.Sometimes, when people explain a problem they are experiencing, it might feel instinctual to offer a solution to their problem. Instead, just listen what they have to say.
• Smiling and laughing when it is appropriate.
• Show your comprehension of what they’re saying by using expressive reactions like an understanding head nod, or looking concerned if the speaker says something alarming. , or asking questions if they talk about a new development in their lives.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Listen without distraction. Turning off communication devices like cell phones is a polite and easy way to get rid of further distractions.
• Take note of the speaker’s body language.Someone’s body language can communicate a lot more than the actual words they are saying.
• Emphatic listener and persuasive speaker.
• Articulate, confident, and professional speaking abilities.
• Listen with the intent to learn.Some people focus on how they are going to reply when someone is talking to them, rather than absorbing and understanding what their partner is trying to communicate.
• Be open minded.A basic rule of listening, is to judge only after you’ve heard and evaluated what someone has to say

As well as actively listening, I had to multi-task and ensure each existing order was properly prepared while paying attention to new ones.

• How Would You Describe Your Listening Skills?
• How you can create a motivational climate?
• Give me an Example of When You Used Your Listening Skills to Complete a Task Properly or Solve a Problem?
• Tell me about your delegation for growth and development?
• What Have You Learned from Your Mistakes?
• What did you learn from recent mistake and in what areas can you utilize that knowledge in the future?
• Do You Work Well with Others?
• Describe an incident when you had to listen attentively in order to act quickly enough to meet a deadline?