The benefit of listening to someone closely is you come away with a greater understanding of that person. When you give someone your attention, they tell a lot about themselves. To know a person on a deeper level and understand what motivates them actively listen when they are speaking. This will also tell you about their dreams and goals in life.
While most of us hear the words that are spoken, not all people have the ability to listen as attentively as others. This is why the skill of active listening is a desirable trait that will help you develop good relationships.
When you start to listen to a person you gain more insights such as:
- Understanding what they expect of themselves and you
- Build better relationships with family, friends and your coworkers
- You will be able to resolve issues more quickly
- Have a better understanding of what people are trying to tell you
- You will know how to respond properly
- You will become a trusted and respected person
The moment you present yourself as someone who is not listening, your trust you truly hearing what another person is saying. You will need to overcome barriers in order to become good at listening. The most common ones include things like:
- Prejudice
- Language and accent barriers
- Noise levels
- Fear
- Anger
- Worry
- Poor attention span
- Hearing issues
Some barriers are going to prevent even the best listener to fully understand the issue. A great example of this is trying to listen to someone who is not speaking their native language. They may use the correct words, but the biggest handicap is their accent. No matter how hard you try to understand the words you can not.
There are things you can do if you are having a hard time understanding someone? A good active listener will often try to do the following things to improve their comprehension of the situation.
- Move-in a little closer
- Keep eye contact
- Nodding shows you understand what is being said
- Ask appropriate questions
- Try to clarify the issue in your own words
- Have them write out the word you do not understand
This will show the person that you are doing your best to understand them. This will go a long way to put the person speaking at ease. Quite often they are feeling stressed out, nervous and anxious. By helping them to put their feelings behind them, they can often explain the situation better.
Employing a few of these suggestions will greatly improve your listening skills. Just be aware that there are problems that can prevent you from fully understanding people sometimes.
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