Most humans by nature have a fascination with their own voice - which often manifests itself in a desire to keep on speaking. However, there’s quite a bit of difference between just talking and actually communicating, with the latter requiring extensive application of personal effort. People with inherently good communication skills, or individuals who have extensive management training experience, know what to say at exactly the right time, at what place and to whom. Even more importantly, they usually understand when not to say anything at all, and simply listen. There are certain key characteristics that depict whether a person is a good communicator or not - one of them is being a good listener. It might be possible that you are able to communicate your views and thoughts to another person in the best manner, but when it comes to listening to others, you happen to be a complete failure. In most people, the quality of listening is closely related to their grasp of information, and with the ever changing situation in business environments today, excellent listening skills have become an imperative for success.
Here are some business coaching tips that will help you to improve your listening skills:
1. Pay attention to what the other person is talking about. It’s essential to focus your attention on the speaker, and it’s not just a matter of having good eye contact, but the overall posture of your whole body makes a significant difference as well.
2. Let the other person speak. Patience is the essence of any good communication ability. It’s important during the act of listening that you should allow the other person to put forward his/her opinions, while making a point to not interrupt in the middle of the discussion.
3. Do not impose your opinion. To avoid conflict, you should respect the opinions of others, and at the same time, try not to impose your opinions on others either, as it often happens that the opinions of any two people don’t even remotely come close to common ground.
4. Ask meaningful questions. It is important that during a discussion only meaningful questions pertaining to the discussion are asked or raised. These questions should always help guide the discussion trend towards a meaningful conclusion.
5. Help and support the other person. Good listening requires creating a supportive environment for anyone speaking in order to help them sense that all is going well. Encourage the other person, and let them feel that you are interested in listening his/her opinions or views.
6. Restate your thoughts. Active listening is very different from passive hearing, and it’s quite difficult to master. Although listening by itself will definitely provide you with some knowledge - or at the very least, help you to come to some sort of opinion, it’s still rather important that at the close of any exchange of opinions you should be able to easily restate, point for point, all the former topics from the discussion.
It is quite true that the more you listen, the more effective and efficient you become. Many of you might be well versed in speaking, but have you ever really given consideration to the value of listening? The tips given above may not guarantee that you suddenly transform into a good listener, but what they definitely will do is improve your listening skills to a great extent, automatically affecting a positive impact on your overall communication ability.
Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of the L2L Group, specialising in providing Executive Coaching, Training and Consultancy Services to Businesses across the Globe. Want to learn more about these business success strategies? Get Alan’s popular FREE Business Pack today!
