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You can use active listening to develop your self and social awareness skill . Active listening isn’t about staying silent the whole time someone talks— it’s about listening for the info you need, watching for clues through body language, demonstrating empathy, avoiding judgment and bias, and asking the right questions so you can communicate your best in your personal and professional life.
Active listening can be broken down into three main elements:
Attention is the fundamental difference between hearing and listening. Paying attention to what a speaker is saying requires intentional effort on your part.
While reading a book, or having a discussion with an individual, you can go back and reread or ask a question to clarify a point. This is not always true when listening. Listening is of the moment, and we often only get to hear the speaker’s words once.
The key then is for the listener to quickly ascertain the speaker’s central premise or controlling idea. Once this is done, it becomes easier for the listener to discern what is most important. Of course, distinguishing the speaker’s primary goal, the main points, and the structure of the speech are all easier when the listener is able to listen with an open mind.
Even if you are paying attention, you could be doing so with the wrong attitude. Telling yourself this is all a waste of time is not going to help you to listen effectively. You’ll be better off determining an internal motivation to be attentive to the person speaking.
Approaching the task of listening with a positive attitude and an open-mind will make the act of listening much easier. Bad listeners make snap judgments that justify the decision to be inattentive. Yet, since you’re already there, why not listen to see what you can learn?
You will always need to make up your own mind about where you stand - whether you agree or disagree with the speaker - but it is critical to do so after listening. Once you have an overall idea of the speech, determine the key points, and gauge your agreement, you can decide why it matters, how it affects you, or what you might do as a result of what you have heard.
Often when we hear someone speak, we don’t know in advance what she is going to be saying.
So, we need to be flexible, willing to follow a speaker along what seems like a verbal detour down a rabbit hole, until we are rewarded by the speaker reaching her final destination while the audience marvels at the creative means by which she reached her important point.
If the audience members are more intent on reacting to or anticipating what is said, they will be poor listeners indeed.
Too often, instead of listening, we mentally rehearse what we want to say. Similarly, when we read, we are often trying to multitask and therefore cannot read with full attention. Inattentive listening or reading can cause us to miss much of what the speaker is sharing with us.
Choosing to listen or read attentively takes effort. People communicate with words, expressions, and even in silence, and your attention to them will make you a better communicator. From discussions on improving customer service to retaining customers in challenging economic times, the importance of listening comes up frequently as a success strategy.
Here are some tips to facilitate active listening and reading:
The previous tips will serve you well in daily interactions, but suppose you have an especially difficult subject to discuss, or you receive a written document delivering bad news. In a difficult situation like this, it is worth taking extra effort to create an environment and context that will facilitate positive communication.
Here are some tips that may be helpful in those circumstances:
Finally, recognize that mutual respect and understanding are built one conversation at a time. Trust is difficult to gain and easy to lose. Be patient and keep the channels of communication open, as a solution may develop slowly over the course of many small interactions. It is more valuable to maintain the relationship over the long term than to "win" in an individual transaction.
Source: This tutorial has been adapted from "Business Communication for Success" Version 1.0 by Scott McLean. Copyright 2010. ISBN 978-1-4533-2742-5 (Licensee Product: Workplace Communication), reprinted with permission from FlatWorld.