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.
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.
Having contacts is very useful for any professional. Knowing the right people can help you develop your business and offer new opportunities. For that reason, networking should be on the social agenda of any leader and entrepreneur as a must do. Attending events, such as summits, conferences, and industry fairs, is the perfect opportunity for networking and getting quality contacts.
When it comes to the professional development of their employees, companies usually come up with elaborate training programs that disrupt the activity, bring appreciated experts to share their knowledge, and follow up with some sort of examination. In doing so, they oversee what might be the most powerful learning tool for employees: learning from each other. Read further to find out why peer learning should be a priority for you and your team, and how to help your employees learn from each other.
Communication in the workplace is essential for the success of any company. Most than anyone else, managers and team leaders should master the art of communication, and be able to engage both their superiors and their underlings into meaningful dialogue. In this article we have a few strategies that will enable you to refine your communication skills at work.
Email and instant messaging have been the foundation of business communication for many decades. Email is the revolutionary medium that moved communication from paper and telephone into the digital environment. The world as we know it now wouldn’t have been possible without this simple, yet effective method of communication. As for instant messaging, even though at first it was used more for personal matters, nowadays an enormous part of business communication takes place on chat.
Executive communications are leadership informational exchange. It’s what happens when key people from the executive team have something to say. A key person may be the CEO, or any departmental head or a representative. Which means that executive communications are very important.
After all, when an executive team member has something to say, people pay attention. And departmental teams also pay a lot of attention. Also, whoever does not pay attention, stands to lose. From employees to investment bankers, everyone has an eye on executive communications.
Meetings are about to die. Particularly since collaborative work has become the staple of modern office life, they are about to die. And after they die, they will move somewhere better, virtual. Somewhere in the cloud, or in a special bundle of apps. But don’t get your hopes up high yet.
After all, there have been attempts to put new life into meetings. Some preach against inherent inefficacies. “Make meetings purposeful”, they say. Others are deluding themselves that theater methods will do. So “treat your meetings like an improv session”, they say. Seems like everyone thinks that “The Office” is a documentary. That we should all turn Michael Scott and do some improv.
