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Remember Chinese Whispers? You know, the party game where you whisper a message to the person next to you, and then they whisper it to the next person, and so on. Listening in a business setting is similar.
We start out with good intentions. We want to understand what the other person is saying. Somewhere along the way, we get distracted or start forming our own opinion about what they're saying, and we stop listening. Next thing you know, we're unsure of what they said or have misunderstood them. This is unsurprising but understandable. It can also be unacceptable, depending on the situation.
You might feel you wouldn't fall prey to such a silly game. Well, our Comprehensive Training Module on Listening in Business Communication has exercises and activities to test and improve the listening skills of your trainees. It also contains a fountain of knowledge to familiarize your business with techniques to improve listening skills.
On the face of it, listening is not that hard to define or to do. Nevertheless, we all get distracted; we stop paying attention. Maybe the speaker is boring, or the topic is, and we catch only about 25% of what was being said. That’s a terrible number. It’s bad for our jobs, our companies, for the future of the human race!
Introduction to Listening and Key StatisticsÂ
The module begins with us learning the meaning of listening. The slides help the trainer to showcase the principles of good listening skills and the key statistics associated with it (how much we listen, how much time we spend listening, etc). The trainees will also learn to distinguish between listening and hearing, a distinction that most people often overlook.
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Now that you know listening can make or break your life, the session closes with an exercise on listening skills.
Listening: Objectives and Process
Even with so few people actively listening, the world keeps spinning. Perhaps, it is not so important, right? Wrong. Businesses worldwide lose billions of dollars in revenue yearly due to ‘simple’ mistakes that could’ve been avoided had people listened. Companies just don’t publicize these losses, that’s all.
In this session, the trainer has the aim of representing listening as a profitable process with significant and specific objectives. The effort is to showcase the importance of being an active listener. Trainees must understand WHY it is important to listen and what can go wrong if they don’t.
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At this point, a distinction must be made between effective and ineffective listening based on human factors such as acceptance and empathy. The trainer will end the session with an exercise to improve listening when between two individuals. The Chinese Whispers are now taking the shape of a meaningful conversation.
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Effective Listening Types
Few people, if any, know that there is more than one type of listening; in fact, there are five types of effective listening.
Different as they are, no one listening type can be ignored. Each has its uses depending on the specifics of your situation. What are these types, and what are these situations? This module is the complete guide.
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The session ends with a demonstration of putting these principles into practice.
Ineffective Listening Types
There is more than one way to listen improperly as well. Each way of ineffective listening creates difficulties of its own kind.
You can’t quit a bad habit if you don’t understand it. In this section, the trainees are educated on the errors committed while listening, with examples.
Active Listening
In this segment, we become familiar with active listening and what makes it different from passive listening (even though you can do both while seated!).
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We end with a simple ‘Fill in the Blank’ activity to ensure listening skills are improving and discuss the benefits of active listening.
To Know and To Do
The trainees are now well aware of what active listening entails but can they manifest it in behavior? Yes, but only with a lot of practice. In this dialogue, the trainer must focus on the techniques to be implemented to develop active listening using roleplay activities.
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This activity can be improvised as per the needs of the trainer.
Active Listening: Nonverbal
After this primer on active listening, we will now focus on how it is reflected in our nonverbal communication. It constitutes 55% of overall communication. Therefore, active listening will also show results for our nonverbal communication skills. It is also quintessential to business communication.
In this exchange, we focus on evolving the nonverbal skills of trainees, such as facial expressions and posture. We execute these techniques in action through another roleplay activity.
Gain access to our full Comprehensive Training Curriculum On Business Communication by clicking here.
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Improving Listening and Receiving Feedback
It is incontestable that if and when you receive feedback, it is best to listen. This ensures that the same mistakes are not repeated, a hallmark of career progress. In this discussion, we begin with a progressive stepwise approach to improving listening and continue discussing the rules of receiving feedback.
Barriers to Effective Listening
We listen to other people and other things from the moment we are born. We have years and decades of practice in it, and yet somehow, we are not very good at it. In this small but critical section, we learn about the obstacles we face while trying to listen and learn how to overcome these.
What they Learnt, What They Thought, and What They Remember
In this final discourse, the trainer summarizes what was learnt through the module and opens the floor to the trainees to have their say. We complete this Comprehensive Training Module with questions to test the progress the trainees have made.
FAQs on Listening in Business Communication
What is the role of listening in business communication?
There are several benefits to being a good listener in business communication. For one, it can help build trust and rapport with others. When people feel like they're being listened to, they're more likely to trust and respect the person they're speaking with. Good listening also allows for better collaboration, as it allows all parties involved to share information and ideas more effectively.
Finally, active listening can also help resolve conflicts. Understanding someone's perspective makes it easier to find common ground and reach a mutually beneficial solution.
What is listening, and what are its types?
Listening is a process of receiving, interpreting, and responding to spoken or written messages. There are different types of listening, including informational, critical, and empathic listening.
Informational listening is when you listen to obtain information, such as during a lecture or conversation. This type of listening requires you to pay attention and focus on what is being said in order to understand the main points.
Critical listening is when you listen in order to evaluate or judge what is being said. This type of listening requires you to be able to analyze and interpret the information in order to make a judgment.
Empathic listening is when you listen in order to understand how someone is feeling. This type of listening requires you to be able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and understand their emotional state.
What are the barriers to effective listening?
One of the biggest barriers to listening is our own assumptions. We often think we know what someone is going to say before they even open their mouths. This can lead us to tune out what they're actually saying or to jump to conclusions about their meaning.
Another barrier to listening is distractions. It's hard to pay attention to someone if you're constantly being pulled away by other things. This can be anything from our own thoughts to external noise and interruptions.
Finally, we may also have a hard time listening if we're feeling stressed or overwhelmed. When we're under pressure, it's easy to start filtering out information that we don't think is important or that we don't have time to process.
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