Listening Skills Essay

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There are five concepts of listening that play an important role in the communication process. Sharpening our listening skills can benefit our professional lives and our customer service skills. Various techniques can help us improve our listening skills. Active listening involves sitting forward, making eye contact, nodding to prompt the speaker, asking clarifying questions, and taking notes. Distractions and personal biases can hinder our ability to listen effectively. Furthermore, effective listening is directly related to memory; improving our listening skills and practicing memory techniques often can dramatically increase our ability to capture the speakers message. Listening Skills: The Key to All Effective Communication …show more content…

It is a process of forming an opinion about the message by applying critical thinking to weigh the speaker’s remarks. People are more likely to evaluate a message positively if the speaker is clear, presents ideas logically, and gives thorough explanations to support the points they made (Wrench, 2015, para. 3). At times, our personal opinions can get in the way of our ability to evaluate a message without biases. Furthermore, personal opinions can result in prejudice evaluations. For example, listening to a speech given by someone with a heavy foreign accent can either be charming or distracting, some may even find it annoying. If the listener has a bias against foreign accents, they will not even attempt to understand the message. I good listener will remove their personal bias and try to focus on the …show more content…

Giving the speaker your undivided attention can help you focus on the important key elements of the message being sent, it allows you to ask questions that will enhance the communication process. Active listing can enhance relationships because it shows you actually care about what the other person has to say; people feel cared for when someone cares enough to listen and pay attention to what they have to say. It can also help you calm a person who is feeling very upset about a situation. Active listening is an important part of customer service, people with great customer service listen to a customer, ask clarifying questions, empathize, and offer potential solutions. Thus, calming an upset customer or showing them their business is appreciated (Janasz, 2006,

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