How to Improve Your Listening Skills for More Effective Communication at Work

How to Improve Your Listening Skills for More Effective Communication at Work

We have two ears and one mouth for a reason: effective communication requires proportional use of both, which necessitates good listening skills.

The workplace of the twenty-first century may not look the same as it did before COVID-19 spread like wildfire around the globe, but that doesn’t mean you should lower your standards at work.

Zoom meetings, conference calls, and the constant time spent in front of a screen have, if anything, raised the bar for meeting etiquette and communication. This extends beyond simply turning off your microphone during a meeting.

Effective workplace communication has been a hot topic for decades, but due to a lack of awareness and personal ownership by all parties, it is rarely addressed or implemented.

It’s not just about speaking clearly or choosing the right words to communicate effectively. It all begins with deliberate listening and being present. Here’s how to improve your listening skills so you can communicate more effectively at work.

There are stark differences between listening and hearing. Listening involves intention, focused effort, and concentration, whereas hearing simply involves low-level awareness that someone else is speaking.

Listening is a voluntary activity that allows one to be present and in the moment while hearing is passive and effortless.

Which one would you prefer your colleagues to implement during your company-wide presentation? It’s a no-brainer.

Listening can be one of the most powerful tools in your communication arsenal because one must listen to understand the message being told to them.

As a result of this deeper understanding, communication can be streamlined because there is a higher level of comprehension that will facilitate practical follow-up questions, conversations, and problem-solving.

And just because you heard something doesn’t mean you actually understood it. We take this for granted daily, but that doesn’t mean we can use that as an excuse.

Your brain is constantly scanning your environment for threats, opportunities, and situations to advance your ability to promote your survival.

And yet, while we are long past the days of worrying about being eaten by wildlife, the neurocircuitry responsible for these mechanisms is still hard-wired into our psychology and neural processing.

The brain is far too efficient to retain every detail about every event that happens in your life, mainly because many events that occur aren’t always that important.

The brain doesn’t—and shouldn’t—care what you ate for lunch three weeks ago or what color shirt you wore golfing last month. But for those of you who remember where you were on June 3rd, 2014, this date probably holds some sort of significance to you.

Maybe it was a birthday or an anniversary. Perhaps it was the day your child was born. It could have even been a day where you lost someone special in your life.

Regardless of the circumstance, the brain is highly stimulated through emotion and engagement, which is why memories are usually stored in these situations.

When the brain’s emotional centers become activated, the brain is far more likely to remember an event. [2] And this is also true when intention and focus are applied to listening to a conversation.

Utilizing these hard-wired primitive pathways of survival to optimize your communication in the workplace is a no-brainer—literally and figuratively.

Intentional focus and concentrated efforts will pay off in the long run because you will retain more information and have an easier time recalling it down the road, making you look like a superstar in front of your colleagues and co-workers. Time to kiss those note-taking days away!

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Effective Communication Isn’t Always Through Words

While we typically associate communication with words and verbal affirmations, communication can come in all shapes and forms.

In the Zoom meeting era we live in, it has become far more challenging to utilize and understand these other forms of language. And this is because they are typically easier to see when we are sitting face to face with the person we speak to.

Body language may play a crucial part in how our words and communication are interpreted, especially when there is a separation involved.

When someone tells you one thing, and their body language shouts something completely different, it’s tough to let that go.

Our brain quickly starts to hunt for more information and inevitably leads us to follow up with questions that will bring better clarity to the situation at hand. And in all actuality, not saying something could be just as crucial as really saying something.

These usually neglected non-verbal communication choices can reveal a profusion of information about the intents, feelings, and motivations.

We do this unknowingly, and it happens with every encounter, conversation, and engagement we engage in.

The secret is in the usage and active interpretation of these signals to increase your listening abilities and your communication skills.

Our brains were made for understanding our reality, which is why we are so skilled at spotting subtle subtleties and underlying gaps within our casual encounters.

As a result, when we discover contradicting messages in verbal and nonverbal communication, our brain goes into troubleshooting mode.

Which messages have been consistent throughout time with this theme? Which assertions don’t match what they’re truly attempting to say to me? What should I make of their words and gestures?

Let’s say we want to take things a step further. In that situation, it’s important to remember that body language is usually a subconscious process, which means we rarely think about it.

This occurs because our brain’s major attention is on stringing words and sentences together for vocal communication, which often necessitates a higher level of processing.

This isn’t to say that body language always tells the truth; it can, however, provide cues to help us balance information, which can be quite useful in the long term.

Actively understanding body language can give you a leg up on the competition when it comes to communicating. It can also be used to make a connection with the person you’re conversing with.

This process is firmly woven in our human fabric, and it works in a similar way to how kids learn new skills from their parents’ characteristics during their early growth years.

Mirroring a person’s posture or stance can help to form a subliminal link, allowing them to feel more like one another. The activation of certain brain regions is initiated by the stimulation of specialized neurons known as mirror neurons.

While observing someone perform an action or task, these neurons get active, aiding learning, queuing, and comprehending.

They also allow someone who is witnessing an action to become more efficient at physically performing the action by causing changes in the brain and altering the overall structure of the brain to improve output for that particular activity.

Listening with purpose can help you comprehend your coworker, and when combined with mirroring body language, you can make your coworker feel like you’re on the same page.

This easy trick can help you communicate and understand each other better in all facets of the conversation.

Remove all distractions from your life once and for all

“What is easy to do is equally easy not to do,” says Jim Rohn. And this is a fundamental notion that will pervade all elements of communication.

Distractions are a proven method to ensure that a conversation is misunderstood or misinterpreted, resulting in inefficiencies and a shaky foundation for communication.

This is unsurprising, especially at an age when individuals are continuously distracted by social media, text messaging, and incessantly checking their emails.

We’ve become enslaved to a societal standard that has distorted our ability to genuinely focus our attention on the task at hand by hijacking our desire for the addictive dopamine surge.

And these diversions aren’t simply for the moment they’re being employed. They consume valuable brainpower and key processes, delaying our capacity to get back on track.

After an interruption, our brains require an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to their optimal state of focus, according to Gloria Mark, a researcher at UC Irvine.

Distractions are costly, error-prone, and provide little to no benefit other than a boost to your ego when you receive a new like on your social network profile.

To avoid any distractions during a meeting, a no-phone policy should be implemented, video conference sessions should be set up on their own browser with no other tabs open, and all updates, notifications, and email prompts should be turned off immediately, if feasible.

These are just a few instances of how we may make our workplace environment more conducive to high levels of communication.

Action Always Speak Louder

Effective professional communication does not have to be difficult, but it does have to be deliberate. Knowledge can only go us so far, but knowing something is not the same as putting it into practice.

The more you do it, just like riding a bike, the easier it becomes. Exceptional communicators. That’s it about effective communication…

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