2. Listening Skills
Hearing is a passive process, listening is active
Hearing:
Need to pay attention to ensure that you
hear the message clearly.
Interpreting:
Analyze the speaker’s words based on your
experience, attitude, knowledge and
background.
Evaluating:
Let the speaker know whether you have
understood the message and respond to it.
Responding:
Evaluating the information received and
make decisions accordingly.
4. Importance of Effective Listening
Why do we need to listen well?
Listening leads to the understanding of facts
and ideas
To avoid miss communication during
interaction
Listening helps to gain new knowledge and
also for enjoyment
How well we listen has a major impact on our
job effectiveness and on the quality of our
relationship with others
5. Barriers to Listening
Attitudinal barriers:
Preoccupation with personal or work
related problems can make it difficult to
focus one’s attention completely on what
a speaker is saying,
Wrong assumptions:
It is wrong to assume that
communication is the sole responsibility
of the sender or the speaker and listeners
have no role to play.
Physiological barriers :
Genuine hearing problems or deficiencies
that prevent them from listening properly.
Physical barriers:
Distractions in the environment such as
the sound of an air conditioner, cigarette
smoke.
6. Barriers to Listening
Cultural barriers :
Accents can be barriers to listening, since
they interfere with the ability to
understand the meaning of words that are
pronounced differently. Gender barriers.
Lack of training:
Listening is not an inborn skill. People
are not born good listeners. They have to
develop the art of listening through
practice and training.
Bad listening habits:
Most people are very average listeners
who have developed poor listening habits
that are hard to shed and that act as
barriers to listening.
7. Strategies for Effective Listening
Be Attentive
Ask Questions
Don’t interrupt Unnecessarily
Use Body Language
Empathize
Take Notes
8. Listening in a Business Context
Effective listening is one of the essential
qualities of a successful manager.
Good listening skills can help you locate job
openings, fare well in job interviews and be
selected for the job.
Listening mistakes can lead to costly errors
such as retyping of important documents,
rescheduling of important meetings etc.
It can boost quality, profits and productivity,
whereas poor listening has the exact opposite
effect.
9. Listening to Customers
Organizations today are beginning to
recognize the importance of being customer
oriented.
Customer orientation means identifying and
then satisfying customer needs, which in turn
involves listening to what the customer really
wants.
A dissatisfied customer can create negative
word-of-mouth publicity for your product
and company.
Some approaches for handling customer
complaints and listening to customers.
10. Listening to Employees
Superiors need to be open to the suggestions and
complaints of employees.
This is an indication that they are listening to their
employees.
Listening also means inviting suggestions and personal
opinions of employees through regular downward
communication.
Performance appraisal is also part of downward
communication.
A manager doing a performance review of a subordinate should take care not to do a
destructive review, where the subordinate is criticized for poor performance.
Manager should also practice ‘therapeutic listening’, whereby the manager counsels the
employee on how to improve performance.
