The Manager's Minute

Listening Skills: Your Strategic Advantage in Interpersonal Effectiveness

Developing good listening skills is a great way to improve your effectiveness and put yourself on the path to career success. There are many benefits to being a good listener, including:

Listening says “You are important and I’ll take time to hear what you have to say.”
Listening provides quick access to a perspective on conflict.
Listening provides data for you as a manager or coworker to make decisions.
Listening builds relationships.

Now that you know some of the benefits of being a good listener, let’s look at some keys to active listening:

1. Eliminate or block out obstacles to listening such as noise, other tasks, or
assumptions about the speaker.

2. Demonstrate that the speaker has your full attention. Maintain eye contact and
put aside all other work.

3. Let the other person speak without interruption. Encourage the speaker to
continue — nod and give other cues that he or she should continue.

4. Ask the speaker to repeat or clarify anything you don’t understand.

5. Take brief notes to keep track of details, but be careful that these don’t become a
distraction for you or the speaker.

Learn to effectively use these techniques for dealing with aggressive colleagues and more in our Strengthening Your People Skills in the Workplace training. Sign up for this course or one of our other great seminars at NationalSeminarsTraining.com today!

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Managing People Tip:

The quickest way to establish credibility is to use your best people skills and work with each one of your employees according to their response style. This awareness allows you to approach the employee in the best possible way.

– Management and Leadership Skills for First-Time Supervisors and Managers Seminar

Quote:

“The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has.”

– Confucius

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Your Responses:

Great points to remember and help ensure that we maintain "two-way" communication during our converstations.
Posted by: TJ
08/04/11 at 02:16 PM

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Great Job!! What a awesome reminder of the importance of just listening to others
Posted by: Linda Rae
08/03/11 at 12:46 PM

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All four of the articles presented today in this issue are very good and helpful for me and my office staff it is what I have been looking for. Thank you,
Posted by: Gail Scott
08/03/11 at 10:02 AM

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