5 Tips To Enhance Your Listening Skills
Everyone knows that good communication skills are a must if a person desires overall development, and rightly so. People toil hard to achieve a quality of communication skills. But, in this process, they just ignore and miss out on a thing termed as "Listening Skills".
These skills are the most difficult thing for someone to achieve as it requires immense patience. Not everyone is a good listener. We usually are not keen to listen to someone and acquire their ideas and suggestions.
If a person is a good listener, most probably he is a good problem-solver too. As implied before, these skills require patience in abundant quantity and so does solving a problem. Good listening skills enhance the quality of relationships, growth in career, and of-course enhancement of personality.
We are here with some tips that might help you to improve your listening skills. Have a read:
Eye-Contact: Keeping an eye-contact with a person you are listening to is the most important thing to do. This factor defines the amount of your interest in this conversation. Make sure that while communicating with a person, you keep your cell-phones aside, and maintain an eye-contact with that person.
No Interruptions: Interrupting when a person is talking will simply mean that you desire to end this conversation. When someone is talking, just be patient and listen to them. Wait for them to complete, and then express your views. Your non-interruption quality while a person is talking implies that you are keen to keep this conversation going.
Ask Questions: Don't hesitate in asking questions. If you are not clear or not convinced by any point, just wait for the speaker to complete and ask your question regarding the same. This will give the speaker an impression that you actively listened to his thoughts and are willing to know more about them. But, again, wait for the speaker to complete. By no means, violate the no interruption rule.
Stay Relaxed: Don't show any hassle or panic on your face while listening to someone. This might make the speaker feel that he is speaking something that he shouldn't and thus making him nervous. Just listen with a relaxed body-language as it will only help both, you and the speaker.
Refrain Giving Judgement: If someone trusts you to share their problems with you, just listen. Don't be too early to give your judgment and thus degrading the conversation quality. Remember, we should give judgment or an opinion only when asked.
Our first priority should be listening to the person's problem and making them feel better. Also, don't show the sign of impatience while a person is sharing his problems with you as it will only make him feel that they are bothering you unnecessarily.
Just try to employ these practices in your daily life and we are sure that it will make you a good listener. Remember, a good listener can make you a better friend, a better colleague, a better employee, and of course, a better person.
