Listening Skills

Listening Skills

Introduction

People seem to only use mindful listening when it is important to him or her. Socrates once wrote “Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but only one tongue - to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak”. My mother always told me a saying “You have two ears and one mouth, use them in that portions”. I never understood that until I read this quote from Socrates. Basically it's saying that you should use your ears twice as much as you speak because if someone is over working their mouth and not working their ears then they need to start balancing the portions a little bit better (Bodie, 2007). After knowing my active listening score, I analyzed that my active listening skills are above average. I do listen to my peers and reply to them adequately. But, at times I do get distracted and tend to sway away from the topic and ignore what the other person is saying. In my opinion, my strengths are that, when in communication with a person, I quietly listen to what the person is trying to say, and use empathy as a technique to better understand the situation. My weakness can be that when two or more persons are trying to communicate to me, I tend to sway away from the communication, as I find it difficult to give attention to both of them. Also, in work when presenting my own idea towards another person which I think is the perfect one for the situation, I don't tend to listen to the other party as i think that whatever I have presented is the best one.

Discussion

What I have analyzed is that Talking to establish a contact with another person, exchange ideas, experiences, information, obtain information, create an experience. Our conversations are creating our reality. Depending on how we communicate with each other, establish our relationships, personal and professional (Lundsteen, 2001).

The conversation has two players, transmitter and receiver, the speaker and hearer, respectively. Very few people know that in a conversation the most important part is listening. It is the listener who controls the conversation, not the speaker. We're used to hearing but not listening. But then, what is listening? Listening is Hearing + Interpreting.

Listening not only involves using the ears, but also the eyes, mind, our whole being to decipher other, from the words and also from that other non-verbal language is even more important. His gestures, body posture, tone of voice we speak louder than words. The word only represents 7% of our ability to communicate, tone of voice and body language account for 38% and 55% remaining. It is very important consistency between what is said, the tone in which it says and gestures and body movements that accompany the communication (Bostrom, 2000).

How much you are willing to believe that the latter method can enlarge knowledge, facilitate relationships, and avoid mistakes, save time, increase trust in the relationship? It may ...