Improve Your Listening Skills

Improving Your Listening Skills

• Effective listening is more difficult than it appears.
• Steps can be taken to become a more effective listener.

Understanding Why Listening Is a Complex Process

• Difficulties that are unique to listening:
  • Listening happens in real time.
  • Speech is invisible.
  • Listeners need to convert incoming sounds into recognizable words and sentences.
• Listener patterns can impede successful communication
  • Poor self-management
  • Idle brain power
  • Ineffective listening
  • Barriers to physical reception
  • Flawed recall

Becoming a Better Listener

• Minimise the barriers to effective listening.
  • External barriers are anything that impedes physical hearing or concentration.
  • Internal barriers are listener behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that hinder understanding.
• Adapt your listening style to the situation.
  • Content listening involves understanding and retaining information.
  • Critical listening involves understanding and evaluating logically.
  • Empathic listening involves understanding feelings, needs, and wants.
• Active listening involves making a conscious effort to engage and to turn off internal filters and biases to understand what is being said.

Five elements of Active Listening

• Open and positive state of mind makes you receptive to information.
• Active engagement means committing to being and staying in the conversation.
• Respect for silence means allowing the speaker to collect their thoughts.
• Nonverbal awareness is an understanding that intentional and unintentional signals can explain and amplify a message.
• Thoughtful note-taking means that you don't rely on your memory.

Steps to listen Actively

• Put yourself in an open and positive state of mind
• Keep yourself engaged
  • Vocalized listening
  • Compartmentalising
• Respect silence
• Pay attention to nonverbal signs
  • Hand gestures, facial expressions, posture, eye contact
• Take thoughtful notes

Behavioral Differences Between Effective and Ineffective Listeners

• Effective listeners listen actively, while ineffective listeners listen passively.
• Effective listeners put themselves in an open, positive frame of mind; ineffective listeners switch to listening without consideration.
• Effective listeners stay focused, take careful notes, and make frequent eye contact, while ineffective listeners allow their minds to wander, take no notes, and make little eye contact.
• Effective listeners keep their emotions under control, mentally paraphrase, and adjust their listening style; ineffective listeners allow negative emotions and fail to paraphrase.
• Effective listeners give nonverbal feedback and save disagreements until an appropriate time, whereas ineffective listeners fail to offer feedback and interrupt whenever they disagree.
• Effective listeners engage the other person, overlook stylistic differences, and distinguish between main/supporting details, while ineffective listeners fail to engage and are unduly influenced.
• Effective listeners seek opportunities to learn; ineffective listeners assume they already know everything.

Improving Your Nonverbal Communication Skills

• Nonverbal communication is the process of sending and receiving information, both intentionally and unintentionally, without using language.
• Nonverbal signals can convey a significant amount of information.
• Six types of nonverbal signals:
  • Facial expressions
  • Vocal characteristics
  • Gesture and posture
  • Personal appearance
  • Touch
  • Time and space
• Paying attention to nonverbal cues will make you a better speaker and better listener.

Using Nonverbal Communication Effectively

• Consider the nonverbal cues you send.
• Pay attention to the speaker's nonverbal cues.
• Be observant.
• Ask the speaker honest and respectful questions.

Developing Your Conversational Skills

• Listening and an awareness of nonverbal communication are the foundation of good conversational skills.
• Planning the conversation.
• Initiating the conversation.
• Maintaining the conversation.
• Concluding the conversation.

Initiating Business Conversations

• Initiating unplanned conversations involves asking questions about their work and avoiding gossip.
• Initiating planned conversations involves determining the topic and setting a time limit, using an agenda, and avoiding defensiveness.

Maintaining a Positive Conversational Flow

• Do not talk nonstop.
• Do not interrupt.
• Express disagreement and criticism indirectly.
• Stay engaged and appear engaged.
• Summarize to reenergize and refocus.
• Ask direct and indirect questions.

Gracefully Concluding a Conversation

• Leaving a positive impression of yourself and the conversation.
• Quickly summarize any action items.
• End on a positive and respectful note.

Handling Difficult Conversations

• Involves emotions, egos, and differing points of view.
• Rehearse your active listening skills.
• Prepare thoroughly.
• Visualize the situation from the other side.
• Vent before the conversation.
• Clarify and compartmentalize your emotions.
• Stay tuned to your own emotions.

Improving Your Listening Skills

• Conflict is inevitable in the workplace when people with differing ideas, priorities, and personalities are asked to work toward common goals.
• Areas to consider during conflict:
  • Why conflict arises in the workplace.
  • Constructive vs Destructive conflict.
  • Steps to resolve conflict.

Why Conflict Arises in the Workplace

• Workplace conflict arises from structural, situational, and interpersonal causes.
  • Structural: permanent aspects of being in business.
  • Situational: temporary forces within an industry or company.
  • Interpersonal: choices, behaviors, and personality traits of people.

Constructive vs Destructive Conflict

• Constructive conflict- important issues into the open, increases the involvement of team members, or generates ideas for solving a problem.
• Destructive conflict-saps productivity, damages morale, or threatens to spread to other people in the organization.

Steps to Resolve Conflict

• Decide if the conflict is worth resolving.
• Examine your own beliefs and behaviors.
• Identify where the conflict originates.
• Establish common ground.
• Choose a strategy for resolving the differences.

Levels of Conflict

• Language differences lead to superficial conflict.
• Personal habits such as lateness can annoy other group members.
• Differing personality types can lead to clashes.
• People who prefer to work alone may find it difficult to work in collaborative environments.
• Personal priorities such as desired work pace may differ.
• People may disagree about the organization's goals.
• Colleagues from different cultural backgrounds may have conflicting priorities.
• Difference in personal values

Choose a Strategy for Resolving Differences

• Strategies for resolving conflict include:
  • Avoidance: Should only be used when a real solution isn't possible
  • Accommodation: One side sacrifices to maintain harmony in the relationship
  • Compromise: Two sides can meet in the middle
  • Collaboration: Both sides sacrifice to create a new solution that satisfies all

Mediation

• A conflict resolution process where a neutral third party guides opposing parties through steps to resolve their conflict
• Formal grievance procedures.

Negotiation

• Parties work toward a mutually acceptable solution.

Developing Your Skills as a Negotiator

• Negotiation is an interactive process between two parties with opposing goals to reach a mutually acceptable outcome.
• Negotiating errors occur due to misunderstandings about the process involved.
• Higher emotional intelligence leads to better negotiations.

Negotiation skills

• Better ability to monitor and manage their own emotions
• Cooperative spirit
• Win-win outcomes

Preparing for a Negotiation

• Effective negotiators prepare and use a rational process.
  • Understanding and clarifying your own position
  • Evaluating the other party's position
  • Assessing the situation

Clarify Your Position

• Understand what you hope to achieve through negotiation:
  • Target
  • Best alternative to a negotiated agreement
  • Reservation point

Evaluating the Other Party's Position

• Acquire information possible about:
  • The other party's target
  • Best alternative
  • Reservation point
• Bargaining zone
  • Room for negotiation

Assess the Situation

• Key questions to ask:
  • Is this a one-time deal or an episode in a long-term relationship?
  • Can you walk away if you don't get what you want?
  • Is there a "ticking clock"?
  • Is the amount of negotiable value fixed?,
  • Can you expand the range of negotiable value?

Engaging in Negotiation

• Negotiation begins when one party makes the first offer.
  • Anchor is the value of the first offer.
  • Counteroffer signals that you are prepared to negotiate.
  • Final offer accepted or walk away.