Listening Skills Blog
Chris Farmer's Leadership and Management Training Blog
Welcome - the purpose of the blog page is to provide you with a never ending source of valuable, practical and entertaining information designed to help you get the best performance from yourself and others.
In these blogs you will find all the information you need to make faster progress in less time and effort. Here you will find all the information you need to achieve your goals. In addition to helping yourself to achieve your goals, you can use the same information to help others to achieve their goals.
Listening Skills Blogs
How can I improve my listening skills?
- Give the other 100% of your mental focus
- Listen with intent to understand, (not with intent to reply)
- Visualise what you hear
- Ask questions if you don’t understand
- Actively try to memorise
Listening is an often-neglected part of the communication process. When thinking of communication skills, most people think of effectively transmitting a message. (Speaking, writing, body language and voice tones). but for every transmitter there must be a receiver. And so listening is as important as speaking. In order to improve listening skills, you need to develop the following skills:
Give the other 100% of your mental focus. Listening is an active, not a passive process. Listening is work. It takes effort to actively listen to a message and to understand its meaning. It is easy to drift off and allow the message to wash over you without making a dent. Good listeners pay attention.
Listen with intent to understand, not to reply, means that the first duty of a listener it to understand the content and meaning of the message. This means that you must temporarily drop defences and resist the urge to fight against the elements of the message you don’t agree with. This means: KEEP AN OPEN MIND. At least for a while.
Visualise what you hear. Everyone thinks in pictures. And good listeners are often those who are able to translate words into vivid mental images. Good listeners can actually SEE what you mean. If you want to improve your listening, and your reading, actively try to generate mental images of the message as you hear it.
Ask questions if you don’t understand. If there is any doubt as to the exact meaning of the message, as a question. Don’t guess. Don’t assume too much.
Actively try to memorise what you hear. Memory is improved when you try to remember. If you don’t try to remember you probably won’t remember. If you cannot remember what you hear, the message was wasted.
Good listeners remember everything.
Listening Skills Blogs
Leadership Listening Skills
29 October 2024
Learn the four essential steps to improve leadership listening skills and build trust. Understand without bias, evaluate carefully, and respond with meaningful action. Elevate team communication and decision-making by mastering active listening.
Continue Reading >Three Levels of Listening
19 July 2022
Listening is one aspect of communication, and which can be categorised into 3 different levels. How do you listen? Do you pretend to listen, or do you listen with intent to criticise or disapprove, or do you listen to understand?
Continue Reading >How to Ask Good Questions
5 April 2019
People are judged by their questions rather than by their answers. Are you stuck in a rut, not progressing in your career? Learning to ask good questions is key to your learning and understanding. Here are some great questions you can use.
Continue Reading >How to Improve Active Listening Skills
12 February 2019
Active listening is a useful skill to master, not only you will gain a more in-depth understanding of what is being talked about, but Managers who are active listeners will develop a better working relationship with their team.
Continue Reading >Communication Skills: Listen-Out for What is Not Being Said
22 December 2015
When listening to another person who is trying to convince you to accept an idea, or opinion, it is often very important to listen out for what is NOT being said, ie you need to be concerned with what the other person is taking for granted.
Continue Reading >How to Ask the Right Questions
18 August 2014How to ask the right questions Communication skills training includes how to ask the right questions. In any conversation, there is always the danger of some misinterpretation of the meaning of the message. The causes of the misinterpretation are many and each cause can be averted by asking the right question
Continue Reading >Blog Categories
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