Active Listening
September 2 2007Erin’s Business Tip Of The Week
Active Listening
This skill is one of the most important skills to develop for effective leadership. It requires fully focused attention on the speaker to understand the subject matter and the message conveyed. The benefits of active listening include getting people to open up, receiving necessary information, avoiding misunderstandings, resolving conflict, and building trust. To prepare yourself for active listening you must follow some simple steps:
First, you must focus your attention on the subject, to do this you must stop multi-tasking and rid your space and mind of distractions, such as your computer, phone, pda, mail, the to-do list, deadlines, etc. Put all the distractions aside while you are listening. A good strategy to accomplish this is to sit close to the speaker and make eye contact. This creates an atmosphere of collaboration and increases the opportunity for mutual understanding.
Second, you must stop the responsive and judgmental chatter in your mind while listening. Hold your opinions and comments to the very end, do not interrupt, unless appropriate, and don’t let your thoughts and opinions stop you from listening to the speaker. You want to fully understand what they are saying in order to make the most effective use of that information.
Third, pick up on the non-verbal ques. The speaker will be sending plenty of nonverbal information, you only have to be aware of it. You will be able to tell if the speaker is confident or uneasy about the information, or if they are angry or excited about it, etc. Note the ways they are trying to convince you one way or the other and how they are feeling about the communication. Part of actively listening is also watching.
Lastly, restate or summarize the message to the speaker to make sure you have accurately heard the message and ask questions afterwards for clarification or additional information. Such questions should not allow the speaker to respond with a yes or no, but rather require the speaker to respond in a demonstrative way by using words like “how”, “why”, “describe”, “show”. Do what you can to encourage and continue the train of thought to pull out more information on the subject(s). Frequently you can get the speaker to disclose more (and at times even more important) information or to dig a little deeper on the subject. And of course always give your thanks for their time and communication.
