Management Skill Builder

Being a Good Listener

Most of us like to talk more than we like to listen. In fact, it’s been facetiously said that listening is just the price we have to pay to get people to allow us to talk. Managers must be effective communicators if they are to do their job well. Part of effective communication is conveying clear and understandable messages. But it’s also using active listening skills to accurately decipher others’ messages.

Skill Basics

Too many people take listening skills for granted. They confuse hearing with listening. Hearing is merely picking up sound vibrations. Listening is making sense out of what we hear; it requires paying attention, interpreting, and remembering. Active listening is hard work and requires you to “get inside” the speaker’s head in order to understand the communication from his or her point of view.

Eight specific behaviors are associated with active listening. You can be more effective at active listening if you use these behaviors.74

  • Make eye contact. We may listen with our ears, but others tend to judge whether we’re really listening by looking at our eyes.

  • Exhibit affirmative nods and appropriate facial expressions. The effective active listener shows interest in what’s being said through nonverbal signals.

  • Avoid distracting actions or gestures. When listening, don’t look at your watch, shuffle papers, play with your pencil, or engage in similar distractions. They make the speaker feel that you’re bored or uninterested.

  • Ask questions. The critical listener analyzes what he or she hears and asks questions. This behavior provides clarification, ensures understanding, and assures the speaker that you’re really listening.

  • Paraphrase. Restate in your own words what the speaker has said. The effective active listener uses phrases such as “What I hear you saying is … ” or “Do you mean . . . ?” Paraphrasing is an excellent control device to check whether you’re listening carefully and is also a control for accuracy of understanding.

  • Avoid interrupting the speaker. Let the speaker complete his or her thoughts before you try to respond. Don’t try to second-guess where the speaker’s thoughts are going.

  • Don’t overtalk. Most of us would rather speak our own ideas than listen to what others say. Although talking might be more fun and silence might be uncomfortable, you can’t talk and listen at the same time. The good active listener recognizes this fact and doesn’t overtalk.

  • Make smooth transitions between the roles of speaker and listener. In most work situations, you’re continually shifting back and forth between the roles of speaker and listener. The effective active listener makes transitions smoothly from speaker to listener and back to speaker.

Practicing the Skill

Follow these directions:

Break into groups of two. This exercise is a debate. Person A can choose any contemporary issue. Some examples include business ethics, the value of unions, stiffer college grading policies, gun control, and money as a motivator. Person B then selects a position on this issue. Person A must automatically take the counterposition. The debate is to proceed for 8–10 minutes, with only one catch. Before each speaks, he or she must first summarize, in his or her own words and without notes, what the other has said. If the summary doesn’t satisfy the speaker, it must be corrected until it does.

Experiential Exercise

Social media. For many of you, you’ve probably never known a time without social media. Logging on, checking your feed, posting photos and updates is now the norm for individuals in the United States and in other countries around the globe. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram … perhaps you use these or some other social media sites. And maybe in your younger days, before Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you used AOL Instant Messaging or Six Degrees or Friendster (considered the first real online connection of real-world friends) or even Myspace. Using social media in your personal life is one thing, but what about social media usage in the workplace? Should companies let employees use social media at work? In this Experiential Exercise, you’re going to discuss the pros and cons of controlling social media usage in the workplace. In your assigned groups, discuss the following:

  1. Should organizations allow employees to use personal social media while at work? Defend your answer.

  2. Should organizations restrict the use of personal social media at work? Defend your answer.

  3. Make a list of the pros and cons of controlling social media usage in the workplace.

  4. Would you work for an organization that restricted social media usage in the workplace? Why or why not?

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