Aside from breathing, humans probably listen more than anything else they do. We listen to everything going on around us. However, most of us are not good listeners. We listen at about 25 percent of our potential, which means we ignore, forget, distort or misunderstand 75 percent of what we hear. In order for this skill to be enhanced you have to want to be a good listener.
Traditionally, the common focus of building communication skills has been on sending messages. However, an equally important part is receiving messages. To have a successfully engaged working team, everyone needs to be a good listener. Not just a passive listener, but one who actively seeks to receive the sender’s message, to fully understand it and respond positively to it.
Listening is:
- Receiving information through your ears and eyes
- Giving meaning to that information
- Deciding what to think or feel about that information
- Responding to what you hear
Learning to listen more actively will help you be a better leader and team player at work as well as a better communicator in your personal life.
At least half of all communication time is spent listening. Listening is the ‘receiving’ part of communication, and this must be done in an active way. Active listening can:
- Improve your ability to help others solve problems
- Increase your job satisfaction
- Improve your company’s results
- Keep you better informed as to what is going on in your work group
You would be surprised how much of the above bullet items are missed by those who are not truly active listeners. To enhance their success, companies desire to hire people who have good listening and communication skills. Employees who know how to listen help make their company a better place to work by:
- Understanding problems and opportunities better
- Staying focused on the truly important issues
- Retaining information better
- Clarifying and improving work processes more effectively
- Building and enhancing relationships
Listening is a skill that anyone can learn, and it is also a gift anyone can give. It is a gift of a person’s time and attention. Listening is an acknowledgement of caring. Honest listening encourages a speaker to be creative and thus to feel more accepted.
The gift of listening assumes the speaker has value, dignity and something to offer. We must listen every moment in our work and personal lives. If, in our listening, we take the focus off ourselves and encourage the speaker to express their ideas, we extend a gift that will be repaid many times. Develop a listening attitude. The results are worth it.
Jeff Adams is the author of “7 Essential Skills of Leadership, How to Lead Your Organization to Operational Excellence.” Jeff holds multiple certifications in continuous improvement methodologies, including Lean, Six Sigma, and QRM. More information about Jeff and services offered can be found at www.continuousleadership.com.