Look around at any airport and you’ll see people surrounding outlets, sitting on their laptops and phones. According to the State of the Remote Job Marketplace report, 43 percent of the workforce works remotely at least some of the time. A major perk of distributed work is the ability to be traveling while on the clock.
Where there are people, there is conflict. It’s in the nature of humankind to have different views, interests, and desires from those around us. While most of the time these differences help us grow and make our lives richer, sometimes they can create gaps and lead to conflicts. Here’s why conflict management matters.
Most business communication is done in writing, usually via email and chat messages. According to data from Radicati, there are about 124.5 billion business emails sent and received each day. Writing skills are important.
Americans could use a vacation and unplugging from the digital world. Recent data shows that an estimated 53 percent of Americans continue to work over the weekend, 52 percent outside of designated office hours, and 54 percent still work even if they call in sick, according to Deloitte.
Lack of employee motivation costs companies billions every year. Low motivation equals low productivity, poor results and low income. Studies show that 48% of employees don’t really like their jobs, while 80% feel stressed and only 30% feel engaged and inspired. At the same time, 18% of US employees completely hate their jobs.
We’ve explored the importance of listening in this series, and now it’s time to talk about some simple and practical strategies for honing your listening skills. It’s especially important for leaders, who have employees to manage and guide. Because simply standing in the room while someone talks is not enough.
No one can deny the enormous benefits brought by digital communication. However, being able to communicate with people without actually seeing or hearing them has downsides too. We lose the social cues offered by nonverbal communication.
Listening is critical to your workday and poor listening skills can ruin it. Top executives for a Chicago manufacturing plant were asked to survey the role of listening in their plant. After hearing a seminar on listening, Ralph G. Nichols and Leonard A. Stevens explain in their Harvard Business Review article, that one of the most common responses was:
“Frankly, I had never thought of listening as an important subject by itself. But now that I am aware of it, I think that perhaps 80 percent of my work depends on my listening to someone, or on someone else listening to me.”
This is true for nearly anyone who works with other people. Having good listening skills is critical to avoiding miscommunication and staying connected with other team members and managers.
Most adults spend up to 11 hours per day digitally connected one way or another. We use screens for work, for fun, for shopping – basically our entire lives revolve around a screen. While some people don’t see that as a problem, 1 in 5 people have taken a digital detox, and 7 in 10 people are trying to limit their screen time.
Effective listening is a critical part of communicating—you can’t have one without the other. No matter where your position lies in the chain of command. Both managers and entry level employees alike need to hear feedback, take direction and understand the needs of the people around them.
