How to Listen Effectively

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By MIghtyDreamer
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would you hear even this close?

The strongest quality that great communicators and successful people have in common is that they have learned listening effectively. Do you think communication is more important than listening? Or is it one in the same to you? Well it should be. Good communication is not obtainable without the art of effective listening. It is the lack of communication that I find generally on a daily basis in work and personal experiences as well as the desire to help others who find it difficult to listen or communicate that has prompted me to write this article of helping learn the skill of listening effectively. It is being categorize moderately challenging because the art of listening in an age where life has become so visual, it is indeed a skill to reckon with and some what challenging to obtain it. Ready to learn effective listening tactics? Forward to my 7 tips of effective listening skills.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

precision listening
precise listening
an interest
conscious listening

Step 1

On this subject, I'm going to paraphrase my own understanding with a wonderful tactic to remember not only the importance of precision listening, but also how to do it with a technique referred to as C-A-R-E-S-S. You want to caress your speaker with an open heart and attentive eyes. Caress, don't forget this word and you begin becoming an expert listener.
Step 2

The first thing you want to do in a conversation is to take away the "you" focus. This includes what you think, what you hear, what you what to hear, what you think is being said. Forget about whatever it is that 'You' want from a conversation; unless of course you are the one needed to be heard. Now you are at the starting point of being able to effectively listen.
Step 3

What word is it needed to be remembered for effective listening?

C------ concentrate
A------ acknowledging
R------ respond
E------ exercising emotional control
S------ sensing
S------ structuring
Step 4

What happens when you listen is that you have three things that are going on. You have the visual of the face that you are listening from. You have your physical ear that is receiving sound and then there's the inner ear which is not the physical one that's important here, but the spiritual one. This ear is the one that enables deep understanding of what is being heard, but it can also be the death of the message when it is connected to emotion. This one skill of learning how to detach the two will improve your listening tremendously.
Step 5

Another step is to learn how to dismiss everything that is happening around you. If there is a message needed to be relayed to you and you know you are the type of person who becomes easily distracted from the environment around you, then make a conscious effort to stop the conversation, flagging the subject and find quiet non-distracting space to finish listening to whomever it is that talking to you and or whom you want or need to be clearing understood from. Let me ask you something? Have you ever been in a room with someone and they all on the phone? Let's say while you are typing an e-how article this is happening. Initially, you hear the conversation. It can even be outright annoying or distracting. After a few moments, you're not conscious of the conversation any more. You may not even realize the person stops talking on the phone and directs for minute a shout out to you. Has this ever happened to you or any type of an experience like this? Well, effective listening is that subconscious technique that needs to be done consciously for precise listening that becomes effective because complete detail information gets into the brain, can be accessed later and absorbed for immediate use. Mastery listening will come when you can block everything out and like almost through a funnel only hear what is being directed specifically towards you.
Step 6

When you speak, listen for visual and verbal response that the person you are talking to is actually listening. Eye contact and variation of prompts to your speaking shows acknowledgement, a connection of what is being said, and when done properly, the effective listener can and usually will make reference to the sequence in what you have said.
A good listener can relay back to your key points and paraphrase in as much detail in a sequence. When someone speaks and you are suppose to listen, be honest with yourself and conscious if you are um hum ming to almost everything that is being said to you. If when someone talks to you or in a particular person's conversation that talks to you frequently you find um hum's are frequently your response to them, you are not listening and not remembering most of the sequence of events probably in their conversations either.
Step 7

Start practicing everyday effective listening. It reflects on how you communicate, who wants to communicate with you, effects all aspects of your daily encounters and consequently, it is probably the greatest gift you can give to a mate, your children, a relative, a friend or yourself. I hope you are listening and pray you have heard this article.
Step 8

You'll find that your skill in how to listen effectively improve by using all of the methods in this article, along with other tactics that you have and will learn.

Comments

PBreech said

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on 11/29/2009 Focus, learn how to dismiss everything that is happening around you. Excellent tip!

ShirleyLee said

on 2/8/2009 I thought this was a good article on listening. Because this skill is so important to team-building, I too wrote an eHow article on it. Mine is titled “How to Become an Active Listener”, which it written as recommended a 4-step approach.