Giving performance feedback is one of the most common ways managers help their subordinates learn and improve. The researchers explain the main barriers to high-quality listening and offer tips to help anyone become a better listener. This can make employees more likely to cooperate (versus compete) with other colleagues, as they become more interested in sharing their attitudes, but not necessarily in trying to persuade others to adopt them, and more open to considering other points of view. The research findings suggest that attentive and non-judgmental listening seems to make an employee more relaxed, more self-aware of his or her strengths and weaknesses, and more willing to reflect in a non-defensive manner. Whereas feedback is about telling employees that they need to change, listening to employees and asking them questions might make them want to change. Researchers explored whether a more subtle intervention - asking questions and listening - could be more effective. But it can backfire when people become defensive. Covey this means: “Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.Feedback is one of the most common ways we help others learn and develop. Practising active listening can help us get to the other side of that river, to understand the other person’s perspective, to walk into their shoes. These types of questions show that we are interested and want to put effort into understanding the position of the other person. Asking open and judgement-free questions can also help us in active listening. Conflicts are often the result of clashing values, where people choose to stick to their own values and beliefs and are not open to understanding the other person’s point of view. Solving conflictsĪctively listening can also play a crucial role in solving conflicts. This way, listening has a huge and undervalued power of transforming relationships. When we listen, we show that we care and that this person is important to us. It is about focus and understanding and looking at things from different perspectives for the greater good. The good part is that active listening is a skill and can be acquired with time and patience. Maybe because we already heard a lot on the topic, or we just assume that the person is going to repeat something we know. The third reason is related to bias we already think that we know what the person is going to say. Secondly, we humans have a limited attention span and the digital era is not helping us with that, so we are very quickly distracted. For example, you do not like the person who is talking, or you are just preoccupied with your own problem at the moment. Firstly, there is noise in the communication: it could be external noise, or internal (psychological). There are couple of reasons why active listening is difficult. Why is the skill of active listening so hard to acquire? In this case, you let the other person decide if they are open to listening to your solution and as such you increase the chance that they are actually going to consider it. Should you still feel you have a brilliant solution you want to share, first ask for permission to do so. However, often people are not interested in solutions, sometimes they just want to complain and have someone who will simply listen. What also often happens when someone shares their problem is that we immediately give advice on how to solve it. That doesn’t mean that we can never share our own story, but the first step in building a relationship is letting the other person know that we see and hear them. As such, we show the other person that we do not really care about their story. What happens then? We are not engaging ourselves with the other person, we stand on our side of the river, and we are busy with our own story. What often happens though, even in a casual conversation is that when someone shares their experience with you, instead of actively listening, we quickly jump in and say: “Oh yes, sure I have also experienced that," or "I also have a headache," or "I also had a fight with my boss," etc. In other words, you need to leave your own world and step into the reality of the other person. If you truly want to understand the other person, you need to leave your side of the river and stand next to the other person. I often picture communication as a river, where the communicating parties stand on two opposite banks of the river. The goal of active listening is to understand people’s point of view or ideas first without immediate judgement. It is not always easy, but it is a skill and as such it can be trained and developed.Īctive listening is when you are fully aware of and concentrate on what is being said rather than passively hearing what the speaker is trying to convey. Listening without prejudice, assumptions, or judgement. I am a coach, so active listening is a key skill that I use every day at work.
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