Listening

• In order to thrive in global market place one has to

be an effective listener

• Management has to listen to employees, customers,

government agencies and public, in order to succeed
in business
 Some important facts about
listening
• Personnel at all levels spend:
• 32.7% of their time listening
• 25.8% of their time speaking
• 22.6% of their time writing
• 18.8% of their time reading
• Top management spend between 65 to 90 %
of their time listening
 Importance of effective listening

• Effective listening can improve quality, boost

productivity and save money

• Poor listening can have opposite effect

 Importance
• Good listening plays a major role in career success.
• People who listen have good leadership qualities
• Good listeners are also good managers
• Good listeners are happy at their job and others are
more satisfied working with them
 What is effective listening
• Good listening skills require not only the speakers
message content, but also his feelings intent and the
context are carefully considered

• Good listening is understanding others’ messages

before making ones own understood
 Importance of listening skills in
business
• To sell Ali Asad what he wants to buy, you’ve
got to see things through Ali Asad’s eyes, and
the way to Ali Asad’s vision is to listen to what
Ali Asad has to say
 Importance (contd)
• Listening to what people want and focusing on their
needs helps you to focus on what you have to sell
• Your job is to listen and acquire an understanding of
the needs of the prospect
• Good service is good listening
• Listening is not an activity you can delegate
 Barriers to Effective Listening

• Some facts:
• In conversation only 25 to 50% accuracy in
interpreting each others remarks is achieved
• Average worker listens at about 25% accuracy
level
• In a 10 minute presentation, a listener recalls
only 50 % after 48 hours the recall drops to
25%
 Barriers to effective listening
• Hearing problem
• Rapid thought
• Physical distractions
• Message overload
• Preoccupation
• Egocentrism
• Fear of appearing ignorant
• Cultural differences
• Gender differences
 Guidelines to listening more
effectively
• Minimize distraction
• Talk and interpret less
• Seek and observe feed back by asking
questions, paraphrasing content, intent and
feeling
• Take notes and repeat information
 Process of listening

Listening process is carried out through the

following process
• Attending
• Understanding
• Remembering
• Evaluating
• Empathy/support
 Attending
• The process of selecting and focusing on
listening to the sound of only one speaker

• To be a good listener, we have to train

ourselves to attend to what people are saying,
regardless of our interest and need
Three techniques of focusing attention
• Get physically and mentally ready to listen

• Make the shift from the speaker to listener a

complete one

• Hear a person out before you react

 Get physically ready to listen
• Adopt a good listening posture:
• lean forward
• stop any irrelevant physical movement
• block out any miscellaneous thoughts that
pass through your minds
• compel yourself to focus on what is being said
 Make the shift from speaker---
• In conversation you have to constantly shift
from speaker to listener
• If instead of listening you are thinking what
you are going to say, your listening
effectiveness will drop
• Shifting from the role of speaker to listener
requires continuous efforts
 Hear a person out
• Cultivate the habit of letting the speaker, speak
Sometimes we stop listening before the speaker
finishes talking, because we know what the speaker
is going to say
• Cultivate the habit of letting the speaker complete
his or her thoughts before you stop listening or try to
respond
 Hear---
• We often let the persons mannerisms and
accent turn us off, we stop listening when we
don’t like his ideas, or his way of talking
• If this happens, try to listen objectively
 Understanding
• Understanding is decoding a message
accurately by assigning appropriate meaning
to it.
• Techniques to ensure understanding are
• Empathy
• Questioning
• Paraphrasing
 Empathy
• Empathy is identifying and experiencing the
feelings thoughts or attitude of another and
responding appropriately
• When we empathize, we put aside our own
feelings thoughts and attitude and put
ourselves in the other persons shoes
• We need to exert extra effort to develop our
empathizing skills if we are to increase our
interpersonal skills
 How to become more effective at
empathizing
• Adopt an attitude of respect
• Concentrate on understanding the non-verbal
as well as the verbal messages
• Try to feel with the person or try to recall or
imagine how you would feel in similar
circumstances
 Questioning
• In order to understand, effective listeners ask
questions to get additional information or
clarify a point
• Eg: A “I am totally frustrated Would you stop
on the way home and buy me some paper”
• B “what do you mean”
• This would further confuse A who is already
frustrated and uptight
 questions
• Questions to get more information
• “what kind of paper would you like me to get”
• Questions to clarify:
• “What’s frustrating you”
 eg
• A “they turned down my proposal”
• B “well did you explain it the way you should
have” inappropriate attack on A
• “Did they tell you why?” Appropriate
 questions
• Ask questions in a sincere tone showing
genuine interest and concern
• Do not use a tone that conveys boredom,
sarcasm or superiority
 paraphrasing
• Paraphrasing means: reinstating the speaker’s ideas
in you own words to make sure you have understood
them correctly.
• There are three kinds of paraphrasing
• Paraphrasing content: understanding the content of
the message
• Paraphrasing intent: understanding the intention of
the speaker, it will help you to understand why they
have been spoken those words
 eg
• At the staff meeting the boss says
• “next week, we’ll start using this display board to
show when we’re out of the office and where we
have gone”
• It could mean to help customers and colleagues
informed about each others whereabouts or
• To keep track of employees because the boss
suspects that some employees are slacking off on
company time
 paraphrasing
• Paraphrasing feeling: often the speakers
feeling is important to understand the
message
• Eg. “That is the third time he cancelled the
meeting who does he think he is”
• “Whenever a deadline comes, I get excuse
instead of results– this can’t go on much
longer”
• In each eg. There are emotions of anger, hurt,
self doubt, frustration and worry
 Remembering
• Being able to retain information and recall it
when needed
• There are two techniques to remember

• Repeat information

• Make notes
 Evaluating
• Evaluating is the process of determining the
truthfulness, authenticity, or believability of
the information provided

• Inferences are claims or assertions based on

observation or facts, which may or may not be
true
 Attending

Good listeners Bad listeners

• Attend to important • May not hear what the
information person is saying
• Ready themselves • Fidget in their chairs
physically and mentally and let their minds
• Listen without wander
emotional involvement • Visibly react to
emotional language
 Understanding
Good listeners
• Assign appropriate meaning
to what is being said.
• Seek out purpose, main
points, supporting
information
• Silently paraphrase
• Seek out meaning from
nonverbal clues
Bad listeners
• Hear what is said but
unable to understand or
assign meaning to words
• Ignore the way information
is being organized
• Never mentally review
information
• Ignore nonverbal cues
 Remembering
Good listeners Bad listeners
• Retain information • Interpret message
accurately but soon
forget it
• Repeat key
information • Assume they will
remember
• Take notes
• Rely on memory alone
 Evaluating

Good listeners Bad listeners

• Listen critically • Hear and understand but
are unable to weigh and
consider it
.
• Do not differentiate
• Separate facts from between facts and
inferences inferences
• Accept information at
• Evaluate inferences face value
 Responding empathically

Good listeners Bad listeners

• Provide supportive • Pass off joy or hurt or
comforting change the subject
statements

• Give alternative
interpretations