Personal Reflection: The Importance Of Active Listening

Although developing active listening skills undoubtedly requires some hard work, the rewards are worth it. It has proved me so far an atmosphere of mutual trust that increase bonding, cooperation and the feeling of mutual understanding.

Let´s focus on communication, specifically listening. , As employees each of you have a leadership role based on your positions. In these positions you are required to take instructions, present guidance, make decisions, and implement policy. If you cannot listen effectively, you will miss critical instructions, mislead guidance, make less informed decisions, and hopefully never implement the wrong policies.

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.

Listen even when you feel what the other person is saying isn't important; the likelihood is that it is important to them and you should give them the respect and courtesy of really listening. This also models the respect and courtesy that you would like them to display.

Use communication skills effectively, use active listening by listening to the other person and paying close attention to what they are saying, asking questions and rephrasing what the person says to ensure understanding.

Be considerate to one another- Take time to consider the position of others and issues that may be dealing with, they may act out of character due to the pressure they may be experiencing.

Listening is one of the most powerful tools of communication and is a process that is used to receive, convey a meaning, and respond to both verbal and nonverbal messages. It is what we choose to do and it requires more work than speaking. Oftentimes, people simply misunderstand the difference between listening and hearing. Hearing is a passive process that takes in sounds and noises and listening is what you choose to do. This selective process includes 5 phases that can be acquired for us to become effective listeners in the future. The 5 phases are attending, understanding, remembering, critically evaluating (listening), and responding. Once the 5 different areas are understood, we will become aware of what needs to change and how we can change them. This will also allow us to improve our listening skills in the workplace, school, at home, etc.

For example, as a LIT when faced with a problem where two children had an issue with each other, I had them explain the reasons for their issues and had them find an amicable solution for both of their issues. Moreover, to have them agree upon a solution I mediated the discussion to clear up any misunderstandings when either one had trouble explaining their point to one another. All the while, I made sure not to pass any judgement onto the kids so that neither would believe the other was more favoured in the conversation. In the end, by giving them time to explain their thoughts to each other they came to an understanding and settled their dispute. Another example was during my placement where I had to deal with a child who had a reoccurring problem of not listening to staff. Since I knew letting his past behaviour impede on how I spoke to him would only skew my chance at helping him solve his listening issue, I made sure not to treat him differently from the other kids. Therefore, I had him go over the situation he was in and think of why it was important to listen to other people, especially to the staff. In addition to this request, I also asked him to explain how he would feel if other people did not listen to him. Through this discussion, I believe he

Listening and understanding what others communicate to us is the communication process needed for interpersonal effectiveness. If you listen well, you will understand the meaning of the message. If you are unfocused, you will not know most of what the other person is saying. However, there is a range of listening skills that can be learned to develop the communication effectiveness. Firstly, encouraging listening points to the listener that is willing to do more than listen. Usually it provides feedback that supports speakers to say more. Fur...

Active leadership skills are very important however active listening confirms that the message is truly transmitted strengthening the total leadership concept. According to Colwell, active listening is not just listening with your ears, we must look at the sender to absorb there words while deciphering in our minds what is truly be said. The understanding of active listening opens people’s eyes in seeing actually how a person sees and feels about the world. Further examining great leaders, caring leaders know his/her teams and have high level...