Listening Well Sends a Message

Good listening skills will Improve your relationships with everyone, your family, your co-workers, your employer, and the people you speak with on the phone.  Someone once said, “If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you make a very small package.”  How true that is!  Big-hearted people care about others. When you learn to be truly and unselfishly interested in people, our friends will know you are really listening and that you care about them as much as you care about yourself.  When you are interested in the triumphs and defeats, the happiness and heartaches of those around you, you build trust.  Listen to their experiences and value their opinions.  Your genuine interest will draw them out and bring you a wealth of valuable understanding. 

When you learn to focus on what a person is saying, you become a much more interesting person – because you understand and can reply appropriately.  If you catch yourself thinking about your reply instead of what someone’s saying, they will sense that they have lost the connection with you.  They will find you a shallow person; one who doesn’t really care about anyone but themselves. 

Genuine listening is a skill that takes a while to cultivate and will be invaluable to you your whole life.  To begin, look the speaker in the eyes and listen without judging.  This is not the time to be formulating an opinion; it is time to simply take in what they are saying.  After hearing what someone has to say, it’s alright to take a moment to think about and understand their feelings and opinion.  Repeat the most important point back to the speaker so they know that you were engaged in what they were saying.

It isn’t unusual to find that we listen more carefully to someone we look up to, or who enjoys a greater stature, such as a supervisor or an older and respected family member.  You would never do “mental multitasking” when you desire their good opinion.  However, it may happen more often than you’d like when conversing with your subordinates, your co-workers, or even a child.  Think about how often you might be distracted when someone is speaking; for example, when, from the corner of your eye, you see papers that need to be straightened, a text that has come in (that is one of the worst and most disrespectful interruptions) or something else that you allow to take your attention from the speaker.  There goes that disconnect again

Think about the impact you want to make – you must listen if you want to be listened to.  Conversation is a two-way street.  Your listening skills, your eye-contact and attention shows someone that they are important to you – those same attributes (or lack thereof) may demonstrate that they are not all that important to you after all.  Whether a boss, a coworker, a friend, a family member or especially a child – is that the message you want to send?