Sharpening Your Listening Skills
March 25th, 2010
Here are 14 guidelines to sharpen your listening skills, increase your productivity, reduce errors, gain customer satisfaction, and help you become more successful…
- Don’t interrupt. (But…but…but…)
- Ask questions. Then be quiet. Concentrate on really listening
- Prejudice will distort what you hear. Listen without prejudging
- Use eye contact and listening noise (um, gee, I see, oh) to show the other person you’re listening
- Don’t jump to an answer before you hear the ENTIRE situation
- Listen for purpose, details, and conclusions
- Active listening involves interpreting. Interpret quietly
- Listen to what is not said. Implied is often more important than spoken.
- Think between sentences
- Digest what is said (and not said) before engaging your mouth
- Ask questions to be sure you understood what was said or meant
- Ask questions to be sure the speaker said all he/she wanted to say
- Demonstrate you are listening by taking action
- If you’re thinking during speaking, think solution. Don’t embellish the problem
I’m not sure where I got this list, I think it is a subset of a longer list. Forgive my lack of reference as this is just a document I created and had to share with my direct reports at one time. All of that said, it is a great list to improve your listening skills.