Features of Active Listening - Assignment Example

Researchers on the area of leadership, before and currently, were uniformly confronted by the predicament of pinning down the finest leadership qualities from thousands of first-class traits presented to them by multitudes of organizations. This search for a needle in the haystack has been made uncomplicated by communication specialists through passionately arguing their perspective about active listening. We humans are given the gift to hear but only a few of us has been given the dexterity to hear with understanding that is listening. Active listening is the hardest craft to perfect in the realm of communication. However, in the sphere of leadership, listening with sensitivity and with a genuine intent to understand should be comprehensively practiced and compassionately implemented. What is active listening? Listening is a mere assimilation of the meanings, and technicalities of the words such as its phonology and morphology by the brain. Listening is a natural human activity because it provides us with the useful facts and ideas in order to survive. Once listening becomes attentive, free of distractions, focused on a particular problem, and an effective response thus motivating communication, it transforms itself into being active. Listening with the intent to understand and be influenced by the sentiments of the speaker is spontaneous and active; it is as well governed by non-verbal cues such as body language. Covey (2004, p. 241) expressively defined active listening as empathic since it does not just listen with the ears but with the eyes and the heart; it listens for emotions and meanings; and it does not cold-heartedly pays attention but senses, intuits, and feels. Active listening is a method that guarantees mutual understanding and trust. It connotes a paradigm-shift because in order for us to understand the disposition of another we should first attempt to position ourselves on theirs. For Covey (2004, p. 239) this empathic form of listening endows the listener a splendid Emotional Bank Account wherein openness and confidence from other parties are deposited. Nonetheless, if you are a leader and one of your employees suddenly lagged in his performance and he confessed to you that the lapses were due to marriage problems, you should not only feel sorry for him but devise preparatory actions that would repair the damages done by his inefficiency. Active or empathic listening is always accompanied by constructive responses. Why active listening is important? Active listening is significant because it provides the listener clear-cut frame of references to work on. Listening to understand and be understood are effective deviations from the ordinary dominance of a leader’s self-centered and practical perspectives in any decisions and actions done in various human organizations. This classic endeavor towards human dynamics rather than the technicality of the issue put forth in a conversation creates a productive environment wherein hostility and lack of trust were expelled. Enterprises which possess highly motivated labor force have been sharing a common effective formula, which is an open communication system characterized by active listening that creates self-managed teams. Unrestrained communication guides both the leaders and the members to understand their goals with the intention to cooperatively contrive to realize their formulated objectives. The domains of communication must flow liberally throughout the organization to ensure that teams are empowered to make cogent decisions. Normally, leaders are esteemed with brilliancy if they have the talent to aptly compose and convey motivating speeches. Yet, before leaders can successfully inspire and empower their team members, they ought to initially listen to the latter’s diverse interests, experiences, and cultural backgrounds with the genuine intention to tailor motivational efforts that value individual differences. Who are involved in active listening? In the private areas of our life, we and the people we love are the main players in active and emphatic listening. We usually devote substantial amount of time with them, understanding their sentiments, needs, and concerns with the genuine intention to strengthen our relationship with them. Active listening employed within our intimate personal relationships guarantees an easy answer to problems and generates well-built trust among the members. In the industrial sphere, the employees and the managers or leaders are the significant constituents of active listening. As aforementioned, leaders are the ones who should extensively listen with the intent of understanding and being understood since in reality the fate of a company heavily relies on their final decisions and actions. However, the human resources of an enterprise will always be its lifeline because through the appropriate exercise of active listening, the workforce will be capable to honestly, logically, and accurately provide their feedbacks and suggestions for the company’s growth. Moreover, not only the leaders and employees are involved in the truthful implementation of active listening but also the third persons who are equally valuable to a company’s success: the suppliers and the customers. When active listening is important? Active listening is in reality an extremely important everyday human endeavor. It is vital for parents to address their children’s sentiments routinely based on how the latter understand their situation and not on how the former view the concern. If the child does not want to attend school anymore, parents should actively listen on how the child understands the significance of going to school and not drastically scold the child based on adult perception of education. The value of active listening in our everyday lives is also present outside our private space; for consultants and managers, listening to understand is deemed necessary to advise someone on a career move accurately, troubleshoot an organizational problem effectively, and to negotiate a deal that will be beneficial to both parties involved. One of the significances of active listening is in the area of conflict resolutions. During disputes, for instance in companies, a mediator that is accurately equipped with active listening skills should assume full responsibility and maintain unbiased approaches to resolutions. The response is always the determinant of the success or failure of a negotiation or arbitration. Richard Salem (2003) delineated the advantages of exercising active listening in conflict management: it creates confidence and respect; provides air for the disputants to express their grievances; lightens anxieties; promotes the emergence of the truth; and builds a harmless environment that is beneficial to a cooperative deciphering of a particular crisis. Active listening is not exclusively beneficial for conflict resolutions but as well an imperative skill in strengthening interpersonal efficacy of individuals both in their professional and personal lives (Salem, 2003). Where is active listening important? Active listening is put into effect by various individuals on different professions such as in education— students should feel that their opinions are valued and their emotions cared about by educational personnel so that they will be motivated to learn and contribute to the pool of knowledge; in medicine—hospital staffs should diagnose meticulously any health problem a patient has through compassionately probing and listening to their outlook on their current health situation before prescribing medical cure; in counseling—a counselor will certainly hear a lot of anxieties, emotional pain, and misery, so in order to lessen these negative feelings a counselor must open himself and offer the patient the console of being listened to. Individuals or groups undertaking continuous improvement in listening spend most of their time focusing on the speaker, on other person’s frame of reference and well-assessed decisions or judgments. Active listening has also witnessed multitudes of success in the area of trade and industry. Its promise of triumph relies on the ingenuous desire of a leader to understand and later on to be understood. The chief objective of leaders who intently and compassionately listen to the sentiments, needs, and concerns of their workforce is to produce self-managed teams. This leadership goal has to imperatively establish first an open communication system in the workplace to be realized. For whom is the benefit of active listening? The most difficult barrier to break when listening is the established paradigms that the listener has; and more frequently than not the dominant worldview reign supreme over all other through superiority. At home, parents ordinarily expect to be treated with deference by their children by consigning all the listening to them. In the business sector, the managers are not in reality the top priority but the customers hence the saying, “The customer is always right!” Active listening is never one-sided or biased; both parties involved should undergo the process of reflective listening. The realization of the advantages of active listening relies on the mutual submission of individual conveniences such as status and power to creatively come up with an agreement that would be amiable to all involved. Parents should destroy any assumptions and give up the atmosphere of authority that is already instituted before listening to their children; as an exchange, children should also listen to their parents given the assurances that they were well understood. In the business sector, costumers should not exploit the principle held by service providers that they will always be right. Customers must also learn how to listen to the current situation of the business they are involved with to confer better judgment on how to react to failures by a particular company to provide quality service. It is very important to remember that active listening requires complete cooperation from individuals involved. How active listening needs to be performed? In active listening, the listener communicates messages to the speaker on the absence of any pre-judgments, stereotypes, or insensitivity concerning the forthcoming conversation. In this manner, the listener heartens the speaker to articulate his sentiments freely and assertively. The active listener’s obligation is to neither agree nor disagree with the speaker’s contentions but merely to convey that the speaker is being well-understood. Don Sharp (2001) outlined ten basic guidelines to becoming an effective industrial leader through active listening: listen with a free mind or allow the speakers to express their ideas and sentiments albeit believing that what they are saying are incoherent or extraneous; focus not on the words being said but on the buried meanings and feelings conveyed along with the messages’ intellectual substance; respond occasionally with an attempt to clarify the speaker’s sentiments truthfully but be careful not to take sides and fabricate a conclusion; create a sociable environment through removing the established status discrepancy (manager and employee) while interspersing technical aspects of the company’s welfare in the conversation; avoid responding with insensitive statements or arguments about the facts because the germane phase of a conversation is not the flow of information but the attempt of the speaker to disclose emotions; the moment the speaker touched on an issue you seek more knowledge of, merely rephrase his statement into a question form like so that the speaker would feel no coercion but instead encouragement to elucidate further; listen for the latent intentions of the speaker that can be possibly unveiled through wary scrutiny of information that the speaker purposefully omit; if the speaker warrants your perspective on the issue being laid, be honest and neutral in your response since your opinion will certainly influence or hinder the speaker’s original arguments; while the conversation ensues, suspend as much as possible the emotions that might affect your decision since evaluation of the concerns will proceed at the finality of the discussion; and most importantly, listen quietly and emphatically. Objectives and Purposes of Active Listening During interaction, many people listen absentmindedly to one another. Barriers to active listening are distractions such as contemplating on other things while in a conversation or formulating responses at the same time the speaker is disclosing information. Active listening ensures an effectual way to listen and respond to others. It gives importance on the speaker’s perspective and it defers irrelevant judgments and stereotypes from the listener. This approach to listening displays our interest and compassion towards others’ opinions; it as well provides the listener a skillful mind in confronting life’s challenges. Enhanced listening skills prevent miscommunication hence conflict or disputes. Covey (2004 p. 255-256) narrated in his book the experience of a friend who had a deep trouble interacting with his boss whom he thought was an incompetent manager. Covey advised him to make an effective presentation to build relationship and to promote changes; his response was affirmative but his efforts utterly failed. The man was completely distraught of the fact that his boss wouldn’t listen and yet he himself stubbornly refuses to make a presentation that would somehow represent his boss’ frame of reference. After all the advice Covey offered to the man, the final decision was still “no more presentations”. Obviously, active listening is completely lacking in this situation thus resulting to a feeble relationship between the employee and the manager. Another interesting story of business failure due to lack of active listening skills within the walls of an enterprise is Dot-Coms. This company that does business chiefly on the internet crashed in the world market due to its insistence on “speed” as a cutthroat advantage. Because of emphasis on faster growth, employees were taken for granted, needs of the customers were poorly addressed, and leadership became shabby. Consequently, objectives and missions of the company were not successfully drafted because of apparent lack in communication between the employees and the managers (Walters 2001). On the contrary, conscious application of active listening in the realm of commerce and industry, promises continuous success and protracted survival. The “Team Mustang” of the Ford Motor Company was the delegated managers for the production of new car models. The team realized that higher sales and booming business outputs could be fully achieved through breaking communication barriers. They decided to relocate all the personnel from various departments under one roof; the move was clear, to maximize the productive capacity of the workforce from the top managers to the ordinary employees through active listening. Status and irrelevant judgments were barred thus creating a fertile atmosphere for unrestrained listening and responding (Nickels 2005, p.317). The late Mary Kay Ash founded her billion-dollar cosmetics company with the understanding of women’s need to feel valued and esteemed in their workplace. Her visions were catapulted by her conversations with women of diverse backgrounds. She intently listened to their sentiments and needs and then afterwards she disclosed to them her own ideas on how women can succeed; then the rest was history (Nickels 2005, p. 318). References Books Cohen, W 1990, The Art of the Leader, Prentice Hall, Engelwood, NJ. Covey, S 2004, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Free Press, New York. Nickels, W 2005, Understanding Business, McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., New York. Journals Salem, R 2003, The Benefits of Empathic Listening, Beyond Intractability Version IV, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. Sharp, D 2001, Guidelines for Active Listening and Reflection, Sales Concepts, Roswell, GA. Walter, J 2001, Why Dot-Coms Failed, Management Trends Article, World Trade Center, New York. Website Self-Help Network Center for Community Support and Research, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Wichita State University, Department of Psychology, viewed 3 June 2008. http://www.selfhelpnetwork.wichita.edu/images/pdf/activelistening.pdf Read More