How To Quickly Improve Your Listening Skills

1. This Is What You Are Going to Learn in This Course : Hi, my name is Marcel and welcome to my course on how to improve your listening skills. Listening skills is something very important and very crucially all have to improve and develop. We want in general, to improve our communication skirts. And this class is exactly for that reason. So what will you learn in this course? You will learn the importance of listening. You will learn five ways to improve your listening skills. You will learn how to become an active listener. You will learn barriers to listening and how you can overcome them. And I will share with you when you are listening skirts needs improvement. I am a chef and I have worked in the international hospitality industry for almost 30 years. I wasn't charge of kitchen teams which consisted of 180 people. That's a lot. And when you lead large kitchen teams like that, you have to be a great listener because you have to make sure your team is organized and you manage it well. And most importantly, you are leading it into right direction. So at the end of this class, and after implementing and of course practicing of all what you have learned, you will be able to improve your listening skills and therefore your communication skills dramatically. I hope you check out this class. I hope you have a look and to the cost description. And then I'll see you inside my class. 2. Here Is a Quick Win: In this quick win video, I want to give you three general listening tubes. These tubes, which I'm going to share with you in a second. I actually no-brainers, but we are all guilty of ignoring them from time to time. So the first tip I want to give you is that you want to face the speaker and maintain eye contact. And I know this is for some people that difficult thing to do, especially also in different cultures here we're maintaining eye contact us rather perceived kind of aggressive. But in the Western culture, for example, the culture where I'm coming from, Europe, it is important that you maintain eye contact because it shows interests. It shows respect that shows acknowledgment that the speaker actually fields that you are dedicated to him. So these are all very important messages. The second tip is don't interrupt the speaker. Yeah, it sounds so easy, but how many times and I'm guilty of this as where right? Don't interrupt the speaker, and this actually ties into tip number three. Tip number three is to listen truly what the speaker is saying and not just already making up your answer in your mind. And this is again, something we are all guilty of including me. Yeah, we hear when we're really careful and observing ourselves. While we are listening to somebody, then you can observe that you actually make up your answer already in your mind. Yes. You are hearing him or her. But you want to answer. You want to interrupt? Yeah. Then mistake number one, you interrupt the speaker. And because you, you think you have to now say something because you find your message is so important that you have to share it right now. But rather than doing that, you should just finished listening and then truly listening. What the speaker has to say and then engage upon this. What actually the person was saying rather than to just deliver your pre-made answer which you had made up in your mind. 3. Why Are Listening Skills So Important?: In one of my previous classes, which is called how to become a powerful team leader. I'm sharing with you my nine leadership principles. These nine leadership principles which I have discovered and developed throughout my career as an executive chef internationally. And one of these crucial leadership skills is listening. Listening is one of the most important skills you have to and should develop if you want to become a powerful and successful team leader. So in this class, I'm going to do a deep dive and we're going to explore the importance of listening and why it is important. Why is listening so important? If you have great communication skills and listening skills are included in that. That is the foundation of all good relationships. Listening is about care. It's about being kind, and it's all about showing concern and empathy. If you are observant and can pay attention, then you have a great advantage. Here is also another secret I want to share with you. What actually precedes listening is observing. Yeah. This is also what I have learned over the course of my career. I always thought just to listen to really carefully listen, it's already a good skill, but actually, observing precedes listening. So the first step would be you really observe your the other person. Yeah, you can I read their body language. You can read their facial expression. And now if somebody is sad, for example, or depressed, you certainly will notice that. And based on your observation, you can then ask this person a question or you can come up with the phrase, for example, you seem to be sad, for example, yeah. And then the other person will give you an answer and then you listen, okay? Then of course you try to understand. So this is actually the real process, the deepened saddled process of how you listen properly and carefully to another person. Yeah, effective listening skills are frequently undervalued in our society. Good communication skills require both effective speaking and listening. By being an attentive listener, you can understand more and of course, improve your relationships at work with your family, with your friends, with everybody. Basically, the thing with true listening is that it requires total focus and total concentration. Because if you listen, if you truly listen, you give attention and esteem to the other person. So the other person feel valued and valuable in return. Because if the person knows that you value him, the more he will be willing to listen to you in the future. This is a great secret Also, I learned. If you want to be listened to, you should first learn to listen to other people they are because if other people have always something to say to you, if they feel if they're notice that you are truly listening to them, basically then showing them that you are really interested in them and then in their issues and their problems or whatever they want to share. Then they say, wow, this guy is really taking me serious, really values Me and my opinion and what I have to say. Yeah. So you you will step up on the ladder of importance to this person and then return the next time. If you have something to say, trust me, this person will listen to you. And especially as a leader, if you're a team leader, if you're leading teams or groups of people, you need to, you need to have the support of your team. You need to make sure they listened to you to get the job done right. So if your staff, your team members are not listening to you, you are lost. You're on your own. And that's completely detrimental to any leadership position. Another concept I have learned is bracketing. Bracketing means that if you are listening to somebody, you focus and you try to put your prejudices aside. You desire society, you put your opinions aside and you focus in on what this person says. You basically put yourself in the other person's shoes. This is also a great skill. We need to develop an order to really listen to the message, what the other person has to share to really grasp also sometimes these subtle and underlying inflammation and excellent reside or outcome of this bracketing technique is that the speaker whom you're listening to will actually sense that if you are really focusing and you putting yourself and her or his shoes, this person with censored, the person will feel less vulnerable and open up faster. So that means the person sensors that you really focus and listen. You are listening and the person feels more comfortable. Yeah, and this is what you want. The person feels more comfortable with you. She or he opens up and more communication is going. 4. Here Are Some More General Listening Tips : The first quick win video I shared with you already three general listening tips. But here are two more tips for you. If you want to become a effective listener, don't be judgmental while listening. Yeah, we have touched on that already. Try really to focus on what the other person has to say. Don't judge it. Don't try to judge it from your perspective. I know this is difficult. It's not easy because we are all judging constantly all the time and we are all the time also see these things and evaluate things and judge things from our perspective. But effective listening is actually putting yourself in the other person's shoe. And the other tip is that you employ active listening techniques. There are a bunch of so-called active listening, listening techniques. But we're going to talk about this later. 5. Here Is My Story : I have personally witnessed firsthand how it feels to be truly listened to. I share this story in my other class, how to become a powerful team leader. But I want to quickly also share the story here because it's left a big mark on my own experience. When I moved to America 20 years ago, I took up a traineeship position in one of the largest hotel at the West Coast of the United States. And I was a chef at a time, a fully trained chef from Germany, but I wanted to gain more experience, so I applied for this hotel. And of course, I was excited, I was nervous. First-time in the United States, actually it was the second time, but that was my second try to really become successful there. And I remember the first time when I met with the executive chef. And from the first a get together from the first encounter have also very good vibe between him and me. He seemed to like me a lot, which I was happy about because this was important for me. I mean, you have to get along with your boss somehow knowing that for the next 18 months you're gonna be in this hotel working with this guy and his team. So what I did was I learned from the mistakes in the past and I requested a meeting with them. I said Chef, can I talk to you if you have time? I want to discuss a few things with you and he said Yes, sure. He made time. We met in the garden coffee. We were actually sitting outside and near the beach side and varied very nice location. And I told them, chef, please tell me what can I expect from you and what do we expect from me? Yeah. So then he shared a little bit about himself and stuff like that. But then later he listened to what I have to say. I was truly amazing because I never really experienced that before in my professional, at least. Working in the kitchen environment is very stressful. Higher power, high-speed environment. There's unfortunately mostly not time for deep face-to-face interaction between two human beings, but this chef seem to be completely different. He listened to what I have to say. He asked questions, he gave me tipsy, gave me advice. And if it felt truly great, and all these things happened within me, what I already mentioned, I've heard appreciated, I've had valued, I've heard acknowledged. I also felt somehow important because I was also taken serious. Yeah. That was so important in this. The way how he made me fear through listening to me, through applying his own listening skirts. I liked much more. Yeah, this is definitely true. So I can 100% confirmed this. If you really master your listening skirts, people with like you much, much more, they will trust you much, much more. They will also support you much, much more. And I still hold this chef and to this day in very high regard, I even have a contact with him still today because he is kind of my hero. A hero at the beginning, I didn't know that, but after working with them for almost two years then eventually he became my mentor and he mentored me even after I left the United States. So you see, what came out of this first encounter was a great, almost friendship. You can say. That's a great thing. 6. The Road Less Traveled : I also read a book recently, it's called the road less traveled. This book is very famous and some of you might know this one. It's a classic, It's, it's a bestseller. Millions and millions of copies have been sold. And in this book also, the author writes about listening and how important listening is and what kind of mistakes we actually make by not listening and how lousy we are actually in, in listening to other people. He mentioned the situations, for example, with parents and little children's. And it's so true because I know from my own experience at home when I was a little kid or from observing and watching other parents. Howard. Howard. Howard really works. Yeah. So you can, for example, completely as a parent, 4-bit your kit to speak if you don't want to listen at all off for what reason ever. So this is the first, let's say, way to cut off your kid. If you don't want to listen at all, you just forbid ticket to talk. Now, this is very easy for you as a parent if you just say shut up. The other. Another way is for example, you permit the chatter. Yeah, you can have your kit chat in the background, but you don't really listen at all because you say it's not only parents, you know, I know that even from work in o of people come into my office and wants something and I'm busy at the computer. And even with previous girlfriends, for example, they have something to say and I don't, I don't really want to listen because I have other things in my mind and I'm not really interested in what she has to say. I'll let her talk, but I don't really listen. I've just actually pretending. But she thinks or she thought, I'm listening actually, but actually I was just doing something else. And this actually ties into the next thing. Yeah, if you pretending you listen, but actually you're doing something else and you can do something on your computer if somebody is saying to you something or you can even just pretending you're listening to that person, you can even facing that person. You can even maintain eye contact. But in reality, movie is going on in your mind and you are busy with a completely different topic. I think we all can relate to this and it also happens to me sometimes even at work if I have issues problems to settle into fixed and then some stuff or team members coming into my office and wants to share something important. It really happened. I'm not lying that I was facing that person. The person's thought I was listening. Yeah. I paying full attention. And then when the person was finished talking, I had to really ask him or her again, excuse me. Can you repeat? I did not pay attention. That fear. It's really embarrassing, you know, I mean, this is ridiculous actually. If you have to ask the person again to repeat because you were sitting there ready focusing, seemingly paying attention, facing, maintaining eye contact that you had a completely different movies going on in your mind. Then another way, how we try to fool ourselves actually and trying to listen to other people's selective listening others. This is also about parents too. Yeah. So they tried to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. And we all do this. We are all guilty of this will cause we think we zooming in now with tuning in and try to get the important information. And then We think we receive the important information and then we are tuning out the other information which is being conveyed. But of course this is not truly listening. You just fool yourself. Or number five, the best way to truly listen, to absorb all the information in order to understand is to truly listen. And this is what this course is all about. 7. Five Proven Ways to Improve Your Listening Skills : In this section, I will share with you five ways how you can improve your listening skills. And the first way, I mentioned already earlier, it is that you face the speaker and that you maintain eye contact for the reasons we have discussed earlier, you want to give you a full attention. You want to stay focused so the speaker fields that you take him or her seriously. The second way to improve your listening skills is that you keep an open mind. We have also touched on that already. Keeping an open mind is that you do not let yourself be influenced by your own opinion. Cr, try to be as neutral as possible. Try to put yourself in the other person's shoe. Also don't interrupt if possible. It is one of the worst mistakes you can make. If you interrupt the speaker. You are kind of a sentence grabber, you know, because you want to convey, you want to communicate your points. Because if you interrupt somebody who is speaking and you might know this from yourself. If you interrupt somebody, you're not only interrupt the speech itself, but you also interrupt the train of thought. And it's very polite and it really sucks. Somebody interrupts, you are constantly interrupts, you write, you constantly lose your train of thought and NF2 have to start all over again. So real conversation cannot really be happening because of that mistake. We have already mentioned the third way of how you can improve your listening skills, and this is to develop your active listening skills. In the next section, we will do a deep dive on that. But here I want to give you a few active listening skills which you can and neat and should develop. The first one is paraphrasing or repeating back. Yeah, this is a very simple technique which is very useful at not only shows the speaker that you are actually really listening, but also it's good for you because, why I'm paraphrasing, you make sense in your own mind of what has just been set. So this is a, it's a win-win technique for you and the speaker. Another active listening technique is a non-verbal cue, which is nodding your head. Yeah, or even maybe shaking your head or just simply keeping eye contact then of course, verbal affirmations during the conversational while you're listening. Like I understand, I know. Are. Thank you. And another active listening technique is that you want to show concern. Because if you show concern, then the speaker can see and feel that you are really taking him, him or her seriously. And by showing concern, you automatically built up rapport, which is so important between the communication of a two or even more people. The fourth way to improve your listening skills is indeed just listen, listen, and try to absorb all the information. Try to create a mental model in your mind. Can be a picture or something else. Do not try to what we discussed already. Don't try to make up your answer already in advance because if you do that, you do not pay attention anymore. You will miss out. Crucial information. Listen, relax. It needs practice. You know, I'm guilty of this as well. Yeah. Because I also think of myself as somehow an important person. And what I have to say is important. So we all tend to think and behave that way. Now what other people have to say, it's not so important, but what I have to share, what I have to say is so important you need to listen to it right now. You have to hear it now. That's foolish, that's unprofessional. And it will not bring any plus points in. Improving your communication and listening skills. Sit down, relax when you need to practice it, and listen. Listen carefully to the other, what the other person has to say, and based on that information, then you develop your answer. And a fifth way to improve your listening skills is a rather simple one. You want to make sure you lean towards the speaker because this simply signals to the person that you are engaged and interested. 8. Learn These 11 Active Listening Skills (1-7): In this section, I'm going to share with you 11 active listening techniques, scarce, and exercises, which you should practice in order to improve your listening and communication skills. And after each scale or exercise, I will also give you an example so you hopefully will understand better. So let's get started. The first square we have mentioned already, it's paraphrasing. Paraphrasing means that you basically repeat, in a nutshell, what the speaker just has said to you. That is, for the reason that not only you make better sense of what has been said in order to understand better, but also to show the other person that you are, that you really listened and paid attention and also have been engaged. So here's an example. So what you are saying is your current content management system no longer meets your team's technical needs because it doesn't support large video files. The next skill is to ask open-ended questions. That is a technique in order for you to gain more information. Yeah, simply to extract more information. Open-ended questions are questions which you cannot just simply, are. The other person cannot just simply answer with yes or no. So here's an example. You're right. The onboarding procedure could use some updating. What changes would you want to make to the process over the next six months? And another technique is to ask probing questions. These are questions where you really dive into a certain issue or topic because you want to drill down, so to speak, you want to gain additional information. And an example would be, Tell me more about your current workload. Which of these projects is the most time-consuming? Tip number four is to use verbal affirmations. Verbal affirmations are very effective tool because it shows to the speaker to whom you are listening to that you are engaged and that you are paying attention. We all do this more or less unconsciously anyway. But if you know about this technique, you can use it on purpose and consciously. And does this what I do a lot, these verbal affirmations, they have a great effect on the on the communication. And typical verbal affirmations are, for example, yes. Really? Are. That makes sense, these kind of things. Scale number five is to display empathy. Yeah, you want to be able to, during a conversation to recognize the speaker's feelings and emotions. And an example would be, I'm so sorry you're dealing with this problem. Let's figure out some ways I can help. And of course, if you are able to display empathy, that goes a very, very long way, not only at work between teammates, colleagues, or your boss. It goes a long way with your friends or other people, which you don't even know. If they sense that you can acknowledge their emotions and feelings because we all have emotions and feelings. And imagine you are very sad or depressed or frustrated. And somebody is listening and acknowledging these feelings and emotions you feel. If you take it serious, instead of somebody who's just just pretending to listen and then not really as affected by what you have to say. And you're just wondering, is this guy really listening to me? What the heck is he doing anyway? So very important. Another great active listening technique is to share similar experiences which you had, yeah, for example, the speakers sharing any kind of experience. You had a similar experience already. So then, then say it. Say it to the speaker, say that you had, have had a similar experience. Why is this important? Because then you can relate better. The other person, the speaker, relate to you Much better. That creates bonding and report. And an example would be, I had a tough time getting started with this program too. But it gets much easier after just a few weeks, I felt completely comfortable using all the features. Tip number seven is very important. During your conversation with the other person. You want to recall previously shared information. This is a very effective tool because it again shows the speaker to whom you're listening to that you remember things. Yeah. So effective. It's a very useful and effective technique in leadership. Remembering names, for example, this is not really, it's not about a conversation here, but remembering things from previous conversations is very, very effective tool also to influence other people. Because they see that you remember things or this person remembers my name, or this person remembers that my child was sick two weeks ago and now he's asking about it. Who I can tell you that goes a very long way and I'm talking here out of my own experience. This is one of the techniques I'm using a lot. And an example would be last week, you mentioned adding a more senior coordinator to help with this account. And I think that's a great idea. 9. Learn These 11 Active Listening Skills (8-11): We have talked about tip number eight already. These are the nonverbal cues like nodding your head for example, even if you don't agree. But just to give off these nonverbal cues is very important in communication. Because otherwise if you just would be sitting there like a robot, not doing anything, not showing anything, then the person, of course would at least two very uncomfortable dislike you're talking to a wall. It's the same thing and there's no point and into human relations or relationships or community, interpersonal communication, this is usually not happening. So keep, keep in mind that you want to always use non verbal cues. The next tip is obviously to smile and a conversation. This is not easy and everybody is a little bit different. I also have difficulties with that. Yeah, I'm I seem to be more on the serious side. I don't know why. I also have to practice this to smile more. Why? Because we all know a few smile. You are just more sympathetic, you're more likable. And you want to establish rob port with the speaker. And eventually if you are a team leader, you want to positively influence you or your team members, your staff, right? And if you sit there listening and smile, if it is appropriate, then it's just better for the whole chemistry. Tip number ten is to avoid distracting movements. One of the most known distracting movements is indeed, if you have a look at your watch, this is a typical sign for people who are not interested in the conversation regardless of their really busy or not. Yeah. Even you are really busy and you have time pressure and you have to get out of this conversation or meeting, then the best way to do this, to share it in the beginning, yeah. Once your meeting commences or your conversation commences, say, Look, I only have 15 minutes today for you, but I hope this is okay. Then all should be good. But just do this. Clock watching thing are moving around in your chair or playing with pencils or looking out the window. If your office has a window is just demonstrating and showing and conveying that you're not interested. And this is not what you want to do if you want to become an effective listener with great listening skills. And the last tip is, and we mentioned it already to maintain eye contact. At least in the Western culture. This is very common. We are doing it all the time and conversations. And I know in other cultures as a little bit different. So I'm just speaking here out of my own cultural background. You wanna sit back, relax and listen, focusing and maintaining eye contact while maintaining eye contact because it shows interests that shows attention. And it also shows that you take the other person seriously and are interested in what she or he has to say. Of course. And obviously you don't want to stare all the time. And to the other person's eye. You're not a magician who wants to hypnotize somebody. And that would come across as really weird. So you don't wanna do that, just simply relax, maintain eye contact, and listen. You also should use active listening phrases. What are these? We have talked about it briefly in the beginning when I told you that the the listening process actually starts with your observation? Yeah. And what kind of state is the other person when you see meet them as the person happy, as the person sat, as the person frustrated or even the depressed. So you do your observation first. And then based on your observation, you can then use active listening phrases. For example, like you are dot, dot, dot. Then you fill in your observation. For example, you are sad. Or another listening phrases, it sounds like dot-dot-dot, and then you fill in your observation. It sounds like crazy. Another one is, it seems like dot, dot, dot, and then you fill in your observation. It seems like that's not really nice. Another one is what I'm hearing as dot-dot-dot. And then you fill in your observation. And the last one would be, you seem to be saying that that's an effective and great technique. Also to connect with the person because this person fears and notices that you really seem to pay attention, acknowledge their feelings, emotions, their state. You display empathy, and you automatically build rapport and connect much better. So these listening phrases you should develop, it should use them. You don't need to use all five. You pick what is best for you. And sometimes we even doing it already unconsciously. So by implementing the above verbal and nonverbal techniques into future conversations, you can work toward developing stronger relationships and retaining more information from your workplace interactions. For example, active listening takes practice, yes, to improve and maintain. The more you use these techniques, the more nature they will fear. 10. Barriers To Listening and How You Can Overcome Them: In this section, I'm going to share with you some barriers to listening and how you can overcome them. Yes, they are certain barriers to listening. And there can be either external or internal. Yeah. And you want to make sure you remove them if possible, completely. One rather internal barrier to listening is your foreign X. And like I do have, I have a foreign accent, but I tried to speak as clearly as possible and I hope you can understand. I'm pretty sure you can understand what I'm saying. But a foreign accent is something which could make it difficult for the other person to understand this foreign X and it's hard to remove. I know what the only way actually to improve this is to improve your English, right? Another external barrier would be background noise. If you have a conversation going on. If I have an apartment conversation with one of my team members, I make sure and I invite this person to my office, I close the door. Nobody is actually allowed to come inside. And I focus my attention on that person and I make sure there are no other background noises. I even might you take my take the telephone and put it to the side so that nobody can call me the worst. The worst thing really is for me, this is what I really hate Actually. If I'm in the middle of a meeting and a telephone rings, yeah. So if I have a smart phone, I were to switch it off or put it into silent mode. Or I just lift up the telephone and put it to the side so that nobody can can disturb me. And of course, your own biases and prejudices, they play a role. These are internal barriers you want to remove as much as possible. We have talked about this earlier. Another internal barrier to listening is your state of mind. Actually. For example, if you're anxious or even angry, believe me, that will affect your ability to listen properly in a great deal. And also if you have a tension, deficits or attention difficulties, this is another internal barrier to listen. Yeah, that you want to improve or remove as much as you can because you need to be able to pay attention not only for a short period of time now these days and these times people have shorter and shorter attention spans. But in order to develop and have great listening skills and therefore communication skills, you want to make sure you have your intention under control. If someone, for example, if somebody, for example, has a strong foreign accent, you cut. If somebody, for example, has a strong foreign accent, you could ask the person to speak more slowly add this is one way for you to absorb the information better and move to a quieter area if it is too noisy. This is a simple way. How you can remove this barrier to listen, yeah. If possible, always look for quiet places where you are not distracted. Distraction is really the worst enemy of any important conversation. 11. Here Is When Your Listening Skills Need Improvement!: Alright, we're almost at the end of this class, but before I let you go, I want to share with you three things. And if you do these three things, then you know that you're listening skills need improvement. And the first thing is interrupting. So when you interrupt, then you have certainly a great need to improve or to remove that bad habit. Bad habit of interrupting while other people are speaking. And we have talked about it before. Then also, if you talk too much, talking too much is never good. Yeah. It is not a sign of a balanced conversations. This is what conversations should be. It should be balanced. You talk and then the other person talks. And of course, you also talked about distraction. If you are constantly distracted and not being able to pay attention into focus, then your listening skills need improvement. 12. Thank you!: Okay, Thank you and congratulations for being a part of this class and for staying until the end. I hope you liked it. I hope it could give you some valuable information, skills, tips, tricks, and exercises in order to improve and polish your listening skills and therefore your communication scared CIA. So again, we have talked about, in this class about the importance of listening. I shared with you five ways to improve your listening skills. I showed you how to become an active listener or actually a better active listener. We talked about external and internal barriers to listening and how you can overcome them. And last but not least, I shared with you, let's say, three bad habits. If you do have them, then you're listening skills truly need improvement. With that being said, I'm checking out for today. My name is Melissa. Thank you so much for attending this course, how to improve your listening skills. If you really liked this class. And I would be very grateful if you could share one or two sentences with the public in your rating. Yeah, and then I hopefully see you in one of my future classes. Take care. Bye bye. 13. Check Out My Leadership Class Here on Skillshare!: Hey, if you liked this class on how to improve your listening skills, then you should also check out my leadership calls and this class, I not only cover listening skills, but also eight other leadership techniques and principles you need and shoot master in order to become a powerful and successful team leader. This class is also available here on Skillshare. So I hope you're going to go and check it out.