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Shamim Ansary:
Effective Listening Skills - An essential for good communication
Listening is a significant part of communication process. Communication cannot take place until and unless a message is heard and retained thoroughly and positively by the receivers/listeners. Listening is a dynamic process. Listening means attentiveness and interest perceptible in the posture as well as expressions. Listening implies decoding (i.e., translating the symbols into meaning) and interpreting the messages correctly in communication process.

Listening differs from hearing in sense that:

    A. Hearing implies just perceiving the sounds while listening means listening with understanding whatever you are listening. Both the body as
        well as mind is involved in listening process.
    B. Listening is an active process while hearing is a passive activity.
    C. Hearing is an effortless activity while listening is an act requiring conscious efforts, concentration and interest. Listening involves both
        physical and psychological efforts.

Effective listening requires both deliberate efforts and a keen mind. Effective listeners appreciate flow of new ideas and information. Organizations that follow the principles of effective listening are always informed timely, updated with the changes and implementations, and are always out of crisis situation. Effective listening promotes organizational relationships, encourages product delivery and innovation, as well as helps organization to deal with the diversity in employees and customers it serves.

To improve your communication skills, you must learn to listen effectively. Effective listening gives you an advantage and makes you more impressive when you speak. It also boosts your performance.

Effective Listening Skills:

    A. Discover your interests’ field.
    B. Grasp and understand the matter/content.
    C. Remain calm. Do not loose your temper. Anger hampers and inhibits communication. Angry people jam their minds to the words of others.
    D. Be open to accept new ideas and information.
    E. Jot down and take a note of important points.
    F. Work upon listening. Analyze and evaluate the speech in spare time.
    G. Rephrase and summarize the speaker’s ideas.
    H. Keep on asking questions. This demonstrates that how well you understand the speaker’s ideas and also that you are listening.
    I. Avoid distractions.
    J. “Step into the shoes of others”, i.e., put yourself in the position of the speaker and observe things from his view point. This will help
       creating an atmosphere of mutual understanding and improve the exchange of ideas in communication process.

Characteristics of Good and Effective Listener

Good and effective listener tries to give maximum amount of thought to the speaker’s ideas being communicated, leaving a minimum amount of time for mental exercises to go off track. A good listener:

Is attentive- Good listener must pay attention to the key points. He should be alert. He should avoid any kind of distraction.

Do not assume- Good listener does not ignore the information he considers is unnecessary. He should always summarize the speaker’s ideas so that there is no misunderstanding of thoughts of speakers. He avoids premature judgements about the speakers message.

Listen for feelings and facts- Good listener deliberately listens for the feelings of the speaker. He concentrates totally on the facts. He evaluates the facts objectively. His listening is sympathetic, active and alert. He keenly observes the gestures, facial expression and body language of the speaker. In short, a good listener should be projective (i.e. one who tries to understand the views of the speaker) and empathic (i.e. one who concentrates not only on the surface meaning of the message but tries to probe the feelings and emotions of the speaker).Concentrate on the other speakers kindly and generously- A good listener makes deliberate efforts to give a chance to other speakers also to express their thoughts and views. He tries to learn from every speaker. He evaluates the speaker’s ideas in spare time. He focuses on the content of the speaker’s message and not on the speaker’s personality and looks.

Opportunizes- A good listener tries to take benefit from the opportunities arising. He asks “What’s in it for me?”

To conclude, effective listening enhances the communication quality. It makes all attentive. It encourages optimistic attitude, healthy relations and more participation. It leads to better decision- making in an organization. Effective listening is directly related to our ability to do team work. It must be noted that “We listen at about an efficiency rate of 25 percent maximum, and we remember only about 50 percent of what is delivered during a ten minute speech/lecture/communication.”

Shamim Ansary:
Tips for Professionals to Improve Communication
One can be an extremely hard working and intelligent worker, but to taste success in the fierce competitive world, one has to be a good and impressive communicator. In corporates; you will not get too many chances to win the confidence of your boss and fellow workers, you have to create a positive impression at the first go itself. Doing your work is important but what is more important is presenting your work well. One has to be very careful about his communication skills to perform well at his workplace and have an edge over his fellow workers.

some tips to improve communication skills for professionals:

Understand the second party well. Know more about their thought process, cultural background and educational background for effective communication. The content must be designed keeping the audience in mind. For instance, if you need to address the front line staff, it is always advisable to keep your speech simple for them to understand well. For interacting with top shots don’t adopt a casual approach. Use professional jargon's and corporate terminologies in your speech for the “Bang on” effect. Always be yourself very clear what you want to communicate. If you yourself are confused, you will also confuse others. Whatever thought you want to share with others, carefully put it into sensible and relevant words for others to understand clearly. Careful selection of words is very important for an effective communication. If you want to address your team in the conference room near the cafeteria, please do mention the location very clearly. Don’t keep half of your thoughts in mind and expect the others to understand it on their own.

The pitch and the tone must also be taken care of. During presentations, seminars or business meetings, your tone must be audible to each and every participant to create the desired impact and for others to look up to you. Make sure that the individual sitting on the last bench is also able to hear you properly for him to give his best. Don’t speak too low or shout. Never rush. Speak slowly and clearly what you expect your fellow workers to do. Make your speech interesting. Don’t make long presentations or unnecessarily drag the meeting. During long meetings, monotony creeps in and individuals tend to loose interest. Do include a tea or a snack break.

At work places never interact at noisy places, cafeteria, employee’s workstations as noise acts as a hindrance to an effective communication. Prefer a conference room, a board room or a noise free zone for meetings and presentations. The speaker must use whiteboards, markers, pen and paper to highlight the important points. The listeners must also carry a notepad and a pen to jot down the important points as well as their queries. The queries must be asked at the end of the presentation. Jumping in between leads to confusions and misunderstandings and disrespect for the speaker. The question answer round must be kept at the end of presentations, seminars and meetings. The speaker must invite questions from the audience in the end and the listeners must also solve all their queries before leaving for a better understanding. Don’t feel shy to ask your queries.

While sharing any important information, do verify with the recipients whether they have understood or not. While sharing any important contact number, always crosscheck with the recipient to ensure that they have noted it correctly. Don’t dictate your email id in one go. Always break it into words which must be further broken into alphabets. For better clarity alphabets must be related with the word they stand for. For example a as in alpha, b as in beta, t as in tango, c as in Charlie as so on. Share your business cards than verbally dictating your details as chances of errors get reduced.

Don’t always depend on verbal communication. After any meeting, make it a habit to send the minutes of the meeting through mail marking a cc to all the participants for everyone to recall what happened in the meeting. Learn the art of writing business mails. Never use stylish fonts or loud colours in business communication. The agenda of the meeting must also be sent well in advance so that the participants come prepared and do not give blank expressions during the meetings.

There should be transparency among all the team members and the subordinates must have an easy access to their superiors. The hierarchy should be simple for easy flow of information among the team members. The employee must know whom to contact in case of a query to avoid dilution of the information. Never call any client or any employee when he is about to leave for the day as he would never bother to listen carefully. Also avoid discussing important matters during lunch time as the employee is altogether in a different mood.

Also take care of your dressing at work place. Never be shabby and keep your nails clean. Do not wear loud colours to office. Casual dressing is a strict no no at work places. Make sure to carry a planner or an organizer to note down your work against the deadline to avoid forgetting important assignments. In offices, always keep your mobiles in the silent mode as loud ring tones act as a disturbing element and employees find it hard to concentrate at work.

The most important of all be yourself and be very confident. Give your best everyday at work and adopt a positive approach. Nervousness and over excitement lead to stammering and ineffective communication. Learn to keep a control on your emotions and be very careful about what you say and how you say? Communicate effectively at work place to be successful.

Shamim Ansary:
Tips for Students and MBA Aspirants to Improve Communication
MBA Aspirant needs to master his communication skills to perform exceptionally well in MBA from a reputed Business school and prove his mettle while studying as well as in the corporate world. He should definitely have an edge over the other candidates, if he has excellent and impressive communication skills.

Let us go through some handy tips to improve the communication skills:

Read a lot. Reading is the key to an effective communication. Pick up any magazine, journal, novel or for that matter the daily newspaper and do make it a habit to read it aloud. It has generally been observed that when an individual speaks, he falls short of words. The words are somewhere hidden in his brain and refuse to come out. When you read aloud, after sometime, words automatically fall into your mouth and thus improve the communication skills. If you come across any new word, do check out its meaning and try to add it in your speech the next time you speak. Reading also enhances your general knowledge and makes you aware of what is happening around you. Read anything which interests you.

   

Who says Television is an Idiot Box ? One can gain a lot while watching Television. If you are watching any talk show or interview of any great personality don’t just stare at the pictures, try to follow the way participants interact with each other, carefully observe their accent and also learn new words from them. It is okay to watch movies sometimes but not always, an MBA Aspirant must watch some educative channels to improve their general knowledge as well as communication skills. Remember there is no end to learning. An individual can learn new things at any age. While interacting with anyone, if you come across any unknown word, do not feel shy or hesitate to find out its meaning. No one will make fun of you, instead would appreciate you for your initiative to learn more.

A child has to first learn alphabets to be able to make new words. In the same way, for an effective communication one should be very clear with the basic concepts of communication. Learn tenses, homophones, homographs, hetero-graphs, vowels, consonants, verbs, phonetics as they are the stepping stones to an effective communication. Ignoring the above things will never let you communicate correctly and effectively. Always adopt a step by step approach.

Be patient. Don’t be in a hurry to hone your communication skills in a day or so. There is no medicine or any magic stick which can improve your communication skills in a day. You have to be patient and give yourself time. Never feel dejected if others speak better English than you, instead learn from them and seek their guidance. It is rightly said” Practice makes a man perfect”. Practice a lot. Whatever language you want to master on, try to interact in the same language with your friends and family for the perfect flow of words. Never feel embarrassed if you are wrong, learn from your mistakes. Stand in front of the mirror and speak to yourself. Ask yourself questions and answer them. Be your own critic. It works.

One has to be very confident and must adopt the right attitude. Nothing is possible if you don’t have the right approach and attitude. Motivate yourself to communicate effectively. Whenever you learn a new word, treat yourself with a chocolate.

Your thoughts ought to be very clear for an effective communication. Haphazard and unorganized thoughts lead to an ineffective communication. Be very clear what you intend to communicate. Don’t just speak for the sake of speaking. Carefully select sensible and relevant words to put your thoughts into a content to be shared with others. Don’t keep half of your words in mouth, speak properly and clearly. You yourself have to be very clear with your thoughts for others to understand it well. Design your content by keeping the audiences in mind and don’t make it complicated. Keep it simple.

Be a patient listener. An individual cannot be a good communicator, unless and until he is a good listener. Never interrupt any speaker in between The other individual might not be as learned as you, but you should always respect his opinions. Even if the other person is wrong, don’t criticize him; instead wait for your turn to speak. Always listen to the other side of the story and then only give your expert comments.

An MBA student throughout his two years of academics has to do exceptionally well in presentations and seminars. You just can’t escape them. One has to be a very good speaker to fair well in presentations and stand apart from the crowd. Never ever panic and do create a friendly ambience while delivering a presentation.One has to understand the importance of non verbal communication as well. Keep a control on your hands and emotions while speaking. Don’t play with your pen or handkerchief and never smile unnecessarily. Don’t start sweating in between presentations. The audience will never bite you, so please do make an eye contact with them. Do not forget to greet them well with a warm smile.

MBA doesn’t only mean learning the four P’s of marketing or cramming Philip Kotler. It’s much more than that. One needs to be an extrovert and must know how to brand oneself. You must know how to position yourself in the market place and impress others. Be very careful about your pitch and tone. Never murmur while speaking. Don’t speak too slowly or never be in a hurry to speak. Speak loudly and clearly so that you are audible to one and all. No one will notice you if your tone and pitch is not clear and you will be lost in the crowd.

One might be good in academics, might be very intelligent, but to carve a niche in today’s competitive world, one has to be an exceptionally good communicator. Impressive communication skills coupled with your MBA will definitely take you to the pinnacle of success. Always remember confidence, clarity in thoughts, practice, good listening as well as reading skills are the main ingredients of good communication skills. One has to take good care of all the above to emerge as a winner and rule the world.

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