How to Improve Your Listening Skills

1. Introduction: Good listening skills aren't in possession of a special unattainable give. Instead, these are skills that you can learn. This class provides guidance to assess your current listening skills, understand the challenges to effective recently, and developed various behaviors that will allow you to become a better listener and a better coworker, mentor, and friend. Learning objectives we will consist of the following goals. We find common challenges to listening and related situations. Define main types of listening intentions. Improve the mindset of listening. Prepared, keep yourself from interrupting. Bigger how to let someone know you've heard this week from the experience that I have worked with colleagues in various professions and accumulative dose experiences continuously. Therefore, I would like to pass on those experiences to everyone to try and change the way of listening in order to be beneficial to work. And friendship will be improved immediately. 2. How to Detect Yourself as a Good or Bad Listener: By yourself, how can you tell when you are not listening to someone? It is actually a little tricky because since your mind is somewhere else, you are not paying attention to where it should be. That is, listening to the person talking to you. So you need to learn to monitor yourself and become conscious of this, then you can stop before you seriously offend someone. Here is an inventory of habit signs to watch out for. And if you catch yourself doing any of these, please pause and quick redirect yourself. First is interrupting me. You see yourself cutting the other person off, stop. You are not giving them enough conversational space. You have to let them finish. Second, steering the conversation in another direction is happy happens all the time organically and it is not a problem. If you are chatting with a friend or something, they might say reminds you of something else and you go, especially if the other person is trying to talk to you about something they feel is very important. They are going to be upset and feel not heard of you are common during the discussion and ignoring what they are trying to say. The bedding them before they can finish their point. Healthy debate can be fine and even a good thing sometimes, but it is not a debate. It is actually not even a fair fight. It, you do not let them say what they need to. You are not running an internet news talk show, so do not act like it. Instead, even if you have to restrain yourself, wait until they're done before responding. For playing with electronic devices. If you find yourself doing this, it is a very bad sign because the other person is noticing to create a policy to keep your cell phone in your bag or at least face down on the table when you are trying to have a conversation with someone. If both you and speaker do not need flashing lights and buzzers between interacting conversations. Are you asking them to repeat things frequently? It is one thing if you are in a noisy environment, you just cannot hear, or if it is quiet and you have to ask them to say something again. It is probably because your mind is wandering. By the time someone says to you, Are you listening? Or even worse, you are not listening. It is too late. They are really deeply offended because they were trying to convey something and you did not show interests. Do not let it get there too far. By watching yourself and monitoring these signs, you can stop yourself and get your trust back in business and relationship. 3. Listen with Understanding the Big Picture: Sometimes you are in situation where the details are actually a real distraction. If you get bogged down in the details, you may find that you actually miss the more universal truth on the broadest scope that was being communicated. Assume you are sitting in a meeting when a branding consultant presented his recommendations for how a startup company it should brand itself with the customers. A question for the end of this presentation demonstrated what we listening for big picture. Those people were asking important questions while strategy for implementation, they asked about the research conducted to reach the recommendation, and they probe for deeper understanding of the general direction. On the other hand, there were some people who asked the specific date and we'll be rolling out, which had not been decided yet. And they asked about specific wording and specific visuals, which had not been decided yet. This went on for a little while and you could tell that they were frustrated listeners, but they will also frustrating to the presenter and others in the room who knew this was not the time yet for focusing on are worrying about the details. The details would be important, of course, but not yet. Now it was more important to focus on the overall vision, the mission, the big picture. Have you noticed people who can sit to a really long meeting and are then able to synthesize the core ideas into one or two concise sentences as we review. That is a person who can listen for and understand the big picture. Can you hear a few helpful tips? Ask yourself, how would this information have an impact three years from now? And how would you explain this to someone outside the organization or this relationship? When you can clearly and concisely explain an idea to someone who is not even familiar with the information. You have probably figured out the big picture. In addition to asking yourself these key questions, you can practice understanding the big picture by attending a lecture and describing afterwards the key ideas presented. If you have more than three to four main ideas, you have probably been to focus on details. This is a listening skill. Well, we're improving if it is not one of your current strings. 4. Listen with Capturing in Details: For listening skill in recalling the details is your ability to listen for. And we tend specific points made and direct intent by a speaker. This type of listening is what you need to do when your boss gives you instructions and complicated multi-step task you are expected to do and report back. You need to listen for details when people are showing that, that requires you to act frequently. Really talented people hurt their own professionalism and credibility because they let little things to the cracks and then end up inadvertently letting people down. When someone starts speaking to you, assess your listening for the details. It's the right kind of listening for you at this point. Ask yourself, I need to take action on this information either now or later. What information do I need to remember in order to take the action? Asking these important questions to help you decide what kind of listening focus you should have. It you do not need to act on the information. Let's say your friend or colleague is just wanting to share something with you, then understanding the big picture or listening with compassion or empathy would be a more appropriate and effective listening focus. If, however, you frequently find yourself in situations where we call in detail is important, then try and practice strategies to wherever the skill. Listen to the weather forecasts without watching, and then see if you can recall daily temperatures for the week. Keep trying until you see improvement in you recall, take notes next time someone gives you instructions on how to do a specific task. And then test yourself by reading the notes back to the speaker and see if you caught it. I just try following your own notes and see if you can accomplish a task. We calling the details can save you for your value time, effort and possible embarrassment. 5. Listen and Evaluate Content: Some of the listening you do every day is critical or evaluative listening. This type of listening comes into play when you have to form an opinion after gathering and information, need to decide between two positions on what you have to assess strengths and weaknesses. Proposal. This type of listening happen too often in the word pairs and then negotiates place in the dynamic business. Will this type of critical listening is fully essential in the viability of the organization and sustainability for future growth. If you are not listening critically and where the information you have in front of your decisions you make can be fraught. As soon you are sitting in a presentation where two different consulting firms, so presenting company executives with two different guidance and directions for the international growth. Both were very well prepared, but one of the two firms and answers to all the questions, they had anticipated what the listeners would want to know the alphabet, additional pieces of evidence for the argument, and they ended up presenting a lot more content for the executives. These additional quality cables consulting firm, the content advantage, which resulted in them gaining the trust and winning the project. When you listen to evaluate content, put yourself in top listening mode priority. If you are a visual learner, feel free to sketch down, take notes to force yourself to listen to the information presented and play devil's advocate, no matter your listening style as yourself for these questions, is the speaker making a viable argument? Is the evidence he or she is presenting recent, credible, and relevant to the topic? Are both the pros and cons details presented. Is any of the information misleading you from the original objective, what you can call fantasies in the argumentation, if this was a product or service, we do buy or pay for it. One very big caution for critical evaluative listening is not to get distracted by the delivery of the speaker or any other external factors. Great sample evaluative listening, training ground is news or sports commentaries. In both cases, newscasters present the facts and then in the commentary section they present the analysis of the situation. Listen to each of the arguments, claims, evidence, and reasoning presented at the end of the news or sports show. Decide if the opinion presented is also your opinion or if you would present any counter arguments are different viewpoint were not present. With need to evaluate content, takes discipline and focus on content only. Allow yourself enough time to compare, contrast, and decide on the quality of what is presented to you. 6. Listen with Reading Non-Verbal Language: Can you hear or imagine the body language on the phone? Can you figure out came to the party with who after you have spent some time at the venue. These are the types of questions I would ask you to find out if you are attending to non-verbal language or subtle cues being attuned to non-verbals language or a set of queues is all about reading nonverbal signals. They are vital in discovery and conveying meaning. In many cultures, direct verbal communication is not the norm. Even in the United States. You know that it is not everything is communicated direct, verbally, and many things are left unsaid. A silence and listeners must breed between the remaining lines. Being attuned to non-verbal language or subtle cues allows you to read between the lines and gather additional meaning by reading these nonverbals language are subtle cues prepares you for stellar listening. You may be hearing someone communicate a message, but it acuity receive do not match up. You need to adjust your response. E.g. you ask your friend for his or her opinion on a project and she tells you that he or she agrees. The conversation looks a little bit like this. She says yes, but he or she does not directly look at you and Esau, her posture communicates something totally different. Nonverbal cues are very subtle and tough to clearly decipher. Assume you were the afternoon speaker for an organization have been their annual offsite. You plan to spend the day with the group and you are invited to attend the morning session or what the first one. See. The first session involved companies sensitive information that you are not privy to. The administrator you work with you and enjoy the coffee in the morning. And gesture to the table outside of the room asking that you have another cup mount. It got started. Can you imagine how awkward it would be? Like you said, I would love another cup and I can just print it in the back of the conference. We will, gladly, you will sharp enough to get the message and not invite yourself in the conference room. The anthropologists spent years observing many people and documenting their nonverbals in an inaugural academic book, The Silent Language, as outlined, the theory, explicit, our verbal versus informal nonverbal forms of communication. Being able to read nonverbal language are subtle cues is an essential listening skill that you are not well-versed in the skill, do what the book said. Watch people. You may need a communication interpreter, someone who knows the context, the people, the situation, on the culture, time, debriefing with them as part of your skill building in the non-verbals language are sort of two reading division. If reading non-verbal language or set of cues is not just Tom suit, I encourage you to either watch people converse in another language or watch TV shows, drama series and the best for this exercise and try to figure out the historic plot. Another day to day activity. You can practice this walking into a meeting where you do not know the members and their positions and tried to figure out who is whose wives. As I mentioned earlier, nonverbals, language or subtle cues can sometimes be very tricky. So do not be afraid to seek help and enlist the nonverbal interpreter. 7. Listen with Compassion: Listening with compassion or empathy takes time and energy, but it is well-worth it as it builds the relationship between you and the speaker. When you watch a compassionate and empathetic listener, you see the mirroring the emotion and even body language of the speaker. They usually are laser focused on this weaker, and they seem to not care about anything else that is happening in the process of listening. Compassionate, empathetic listener is poured themselves into the listening experience so that they can better understand the speaker's emotions and their feelings. Since we talked about other details earlier, a listener in a compassionate and empathetic situation, nuisance and paraphrases what emotion and content. This is a type of listening potential to build a strong trust and respect among both parties. Compassionate, empathetic listening is important when you deal with conflict situations among members of your teams, with staff who report to you or just listening to a colleague who is destroyed by an issue, expand past the immediate so-called professional colleague to the whale more customers. If you listen with compassion or empathy and you'd show deep understanding for a challenging situation, then you can diffuse emotion or even coma frustrated speaker or customer. Compassion or empathy starts with the language pair is going on in your head. If the listener, while you listen, put yourself in that person's shoes and identify with his or her feelings. Tell yourself to completely immersed in the listening experience without judging or becoming distracted by and your nonverbals language. Try to be a formula to the speaker. And he do speak. Use acknowledging responses such as AC, or how you do verbally participate in the conversation. Use sentence stems such as tell me more about that or I can see why you feel so upset about this. Is that the first time this happened or I would be frustrated to what happened next. As you listen, Remember to honor the speaker's feelings and do not use any phrases that we discount them, such as, that is not that bad. Do not get so upset over this, or it is all going to be fine shortly. Compassionate, empathetic listening can be emotionally branding if you are not well-versed in it, practicing often improve your skills. And my suggestion is that you do in situations that are not too emotionally draining to you, e.g. listened to a baseball parent complained about his or her son's coach. Now, listen to a young adult talk about the drama created in his or her circle of friends. Neighbor talk about USO host situation at work. Listening with compassion or empathy will set you apart in your workplace and your personal life. Identify when it is necessary and put your skills and action that you want to be an overall better communicator. 8. Solution for Listening to an Annoying Speaker: Sometimes main reason why it can be hard to listen, let's be honest, is that you are listening to someone who is very annoying. It can be really difficult to summon the patience and grace you need, but there are some hopes and techniques to apply and keep in mind. If the person is really boring, it is often because the speaker is passionate about the subject. You are not interested in those areas. If that is the case, you can try to switch the conversation slightly so you can connect and understand with that passion. Ask the speaker, how did they get interested in those specific subjects and what makes the speaker love those field expertise. That will probably be more interesting than an in-depth discussion with particular details. If the speaker is repetitive, it may be because they don't believe you heard him speaking the first time. You can often get the speaker to stop repetitive speaking by restating the point and letting them know you heard the message and telling them the real action plan. Wisely, the speaker might be annoying because they are angry. If that is the exact case, look at the situation and determine did you do something wrong in any reason that you might need to apologize for if that is the case, apologize because it is the right thing to do and apologizing is alpha and all that is needed to get the speaker to stop exploding with a loud noise. But if you are not at fault in any ankles, and therefore it is not appropriate to apologize. Think about what the speaker really need. They probably want to make sure you understand the problem and why they are frustrated. But you can do are going to take strong action to help them. So you can restate the situation, express empathy that they are having to go through it and let them know what the plan is to remedy it. That will often in things. Finally, the speaker may be annoying because they have an opinion and a worldview that just seems strange and prints it to you. Why would they think and speak out something is strange and crazy as that? Well, maybe they probably have their reasons and it is a good place to put your newly Han listening skills to the ultimate test. They probably have what seems to them and may in fact be a really good reason. It, in your view to listen and discovery instead of just being annoyed, it is pretty easy to listen, to fascinate the people who are clever and in-depth, engaging. And it is a lot harder and pretty tough. When you are feeling annoyed. You can listen to and interact well with the speaker that you feel might be a little boring or a little annoying. It means that you are now succeeded in mastery and improving listening skill to the new level.