Active Listening
January 25, 2008 | Author: admin | Filed under: Workplace Communication
Our article on “The Inquiry Skill” revealed why it is such an important part of the two-way communication process and so critical a skill for a workplace leader.
Inquiry and listening go hand in hand. If you don’t really listen to what the other person has to say in response to your inquiry, you deny yourself and the other person of all the potential positive outcomes.
And really listening is not a passive process. You need to actively engage with the other person.
The Challenge of Active Listening
Most people are not very good listeners. Why is that? We believe there are three underlying reasons:
- We’re all pretty busy juggling myriad priorities in our work and personal lives. These engage a great deal of our attention; and it’s a challenge to put them to the side and focus fully on the other person’s issues.
- Because of this, we tend to take shortcuts — leaping to conclusions and assumptions, based on insufficient information.
- Active listening is a learned skill, in which most people have had little or no training.
6 Elements of Active Listening
- Stop what you are doing and give the person your full attention.
- Use silence … and don’t complete the other person’s sentences.
- Collect the facts on the issue at hand.
- Then go deeper. Listen to what is really being said. What does s/he want you to understand?
- Use reflective questioning — paraphrase/restate comments to get confirmation.
- “Let me see if I understand you. Are you saying…?”
- “You want…. Is that right?”
- Ask clarifying and open-ended questions to inquire:
- “Give me an example.”
- “What would you like to see happen?”
- “Anything else?”; “Tell me more.”
If what the other person is saying is very simple and with little emotional content, you may need to apply only the first two elements, i.e., shut up and listen.
Although adding a reflective question at the end is always a good idea. For example: “You need to leave work a half-hour early today for personal business and will make up that time by coming in a half-hour early tomorrow. Right? OK!”
However, for anything more complex — and especially if there are emotions involved (e.g., as in a complaint or a personal problem) — you’ll definitely want to apply all six elements.
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The Grimmes conduct customized onsite training workshops and large group presentations for organizations in every sector of the economy. Their groundbreaking book on managing people in today’s workplace will be published by AMACOM in the second half of 2008. Visit their main website at http://www.GHR-Training.com and topic-specific http://www.Employee-Retention-HQ.com and read issues of their own e-newsletter at http://www.WorkplacePeopleSolutions.com |
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