Another Handful of Tips 61 –

Good Listening Habits

Five of the best tips to improve your listening skills

Listening to staff and clients is one of the most important tasks for managers and leaders.

You cannot listen if you are doing all the talking – and if you are not listening you are not learning. For better listening stop talking and concentrate on what the other person wants to tell you.

Hearing is with the ears, but listening is with the mind.

1. Eliminate distractions and stop talking

Your first task is to set the scene by establishing a rapport with the person or audience. Allow time for this.

Remove distractions.

If possible, choose a quiet area away from others.

2. Give the speaker your undivided attention

Empathise with the speaker – think of similar situations and how you would feel.

Concentrate. Listen carefully to the main message.

3. Be patient

Do not interrupt, even if you disagree with what is being said.

Let the speaker finish. Keep calm and avoid arguments.

4. Review the points made

Try to summarise what you have heard.

What issues were not clear?
What did you not fully understand?
What other things should have been mentioned?

5. Ask questions to clarify thoughts

Ask simple questions that require definite answers so you learn more about what the speaker really thinks.

You will please more people by listening to them than by talking to them.

Geoffrey Moss

“A wise person talks little, an ignorant one talks much.”

P. S. To be successful in your job, follow these blogs.

The author has run workshops for over two thousand managers and worked in many countries. For example, he has run 31, three day workshops, in Singapore for the Singapore Institute of Management and learned much from these experiences.

His management books have been published by 30 publishers in 18 countries and in 11 languages.

Source: