Listening Skill

Listening skill is one skill that majority of people will ignore, or I should re-phrase myself, as majority of people do not find themselves with problem to perform such skill. But in fact, most of people have poor listening skill.

People often believe that they have fine listening skill as they have been practicing it since they were born. The 1st skill that one obtained right after birth is “Listening Skill”. Then through age, one then learns to speak, read and write. Therefore, one would attend writing class as it was found most difficult, and in school one was graded mostly base on the writing skill.
However one can find many books or training program provide tips and knowledge to improve one’s writing, reading or even speaking skill effectively, but never a book focusing only on listening skill. It was due to the nature of the brain. Listening skill is not something can be taught, because it require personal discipline.

80% of time when someone is talking, listener’s brain will work simultaneously on the reply. The brain will formulate the reply base on experience and knowledge instead of the message from the speaker. In such respect, one is not actually listening to the message.

Although I mentioned earlier that “Listening Skill” cannot be taught, and require self-discipline. But there are still some tips that I would like to share to improve one’s listening skill.

1. Do not interrupt the speaker: Allowing speaker to finish the message is the key to effective listening. Many of time, one’s mind will obtain few key words base on the 1st or 2nd line of the message, and automatically generate the entire message with a reply. This will often cause interruption to the speaker, because one would consider that the message from the speaker is exactly as the message generated in mind, and can be replied even before speaker ends. This is a common cause of communication error.

2. Repeat in own words: After listen to the speaker, one can repeat the message in his/her own word to confirm understanding. It is difficult to stop the brain on formulating the message and reply base on the key words obtained, but at least one should check with the speaker if the message acknowledged is correct. Due to the tone and pace of the speaker, same message can be acquired with different meaning. Therefore, by repeating the message in one’s own word, one could then eliminate the chase of misunderstanding.

3. Be an active listener: It was mentioned ahead that effective listening involves self-discipline. In order to conduct good listening skill, one must 1st want to listen. Choice of location and timing become very important in this case. One should only perform communication at the right time at the right place, and this will happen only when there is a “WANT” from the listener.

Above 3 tips are some I have learned from some training and reading. It still requires daily practice to improve on such skill. I hope these tips can help some of you to enhance your “Listening Skill” and reduce the chance of communication problem.