Tag Archives: listening

The Importance of Listening Skills for Managers

Posted on by
Reply

The Importance of Listening Skills for Managers, by Jackie Edwards

Listening. Today, around 40% of employees do not feel valued or appreciated, and around 70% would be willing to accept an offer for another job or are actively looking. This issue stems from a difficulty in communication within the workplace which, as a manager, it is important to address.

While it is widely recognized that managers must be excellent leaders and problem solvers, a very important and often underlooked managing skill is also listening. This skill can make you a better and more effective manager; employees will strive hard to do their best for a manager who actively listens to them, leading to a more productive and motivated team. Here are our tips to help managers improve their listening skills.

1) Focus on Your Employees (and Avoid Electronic Distractions)

When an employee is trying to have a conversation with a manager, all electronic devices such as mobile phones, tablets or computers are distractions. A manager may not realize this, but checking their emails during a conversation does not come off as respectful to the employee trying to convey a specific message. The speaker will probably feel unimportant and underappreciated and the manager might miss out on important information. Ditch the electronic devices to avoid distractions and focus your attention on the speaker. 

2) Be Patient!

Even if you are dying to jump in and express your point of view, allow the person who is speaking to you to finish. It’s probably hard for the speaker to come in and start the conversation in the first place, and they may feel devalued if interrupted continuously. Listen quietly and express your views after the speaker has finished. 

Furthermore, research has shown that managers that respond too quickly to statements made during meetings and discussions usually miss the point of what their employees are trying to say. When your employees have finished talking, repeat the key points back to them to make sure you’ve understood their message correctly and to reinforce it yourself. 

3) Be an Active Listener!

Don’t focus only on the words that your employee is using; nonverbal cues can convey essential information if one knows how to read them. Look out for changes in intonation, volume, pace and flow and keep an eye on facial expressions and body language. All of these can be quite informative and reveal a lot. 

4) Avoid Misunderstandings

We’ve talked about body language; just as you can gather information from the speaker’s body language, they can do the same by looking at you. Resist the temptation to roll your eyes, grimace or make a face. 

Ask your employee to clarify if you really don’t understand what they’re trying to say and remain focused for the whole duration of the conversation. Selective hearing leads to misunderstandings as you hear only portions of what the speaker has said and you might miss important parts of the message.

An Effective Management Strategy

Remember, listening skills enable a manager to understand intentions and feelings of their team, an essential skill for team management. Your employees will be more open, positive and motivated if they feel they are being heard and will strive to do their best for the team. 

The best managers don’t give orders; they are first of all excellent communicators, and effective communication starts with listening. 

Listening and Speaking Skills

Posted on by
Reply

Listening and Speaking Skills by Walter McIntyre

A process improvement team is from the beginning a team of investigators. They investigate process performance by looking for improvement opportunities and the root causes of problems. All of us have seen detective programs on TV where a sleuth investigates a crime. They ask questions, listen, set up stakeouts, and eventually discover what really happened. Process improvement teams follow the same strategy. They ask questions, listen, and monitor processes. All of this to discover the root causes of process problems. An improvement team will use all four basic communication skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. These skills become the lubrication that allows a diverse group of team members to work through an improvement project successfully.

We are taught early and often in school to read and write while constantly being told, not taught, to listen. The result is that we are generally poor listeners. If you are not a good listener, you will miss much in life. In the case of a process improvement project, asking questions and listening will take up the bulk of your time. In fact, listening skills may be more important than your statistical prowess. Much of the contextual information surrounding a process will be obtained through interviews and simply listening to the “shoptalk” of process owners.

Here is an exercise to help develop listening skills. The next time you are at a group function like a party or meeting, try not talking about yourself. Instead, try to learn specific and detailed information about as many people as possible. This will require you to listen carefully and ask many questions. It will not be hard, because people like to talk about themselves. All you have to do is be quiet and listen. The next time you interact with these people, you will be in a superior knowledge position because you will know a great deal about them, but they will not know much about you.

Getting the support and resources necessary to move forward in an improvement project also requires well-developed speaking skills. This is because of the need to ask questions and to tell the process’ story. The best discoveries and ideas in the world are worthless if they cannot be expressed to others. Here is an exercise that will help improve speaking skills. The next time you have a presentation to make, videotape yourself giving the presentation beforehand. When you view and listen to it, you will see and hear what others see and hear when you are speaking. You will find that you neither look nor sound like you might have thought. With this visual and audio information, you can make adjustments and increase your chances of a successful outcome.

Additionally, successful public speaking involves subject matter knowledge, good diction, projection, and some knowledge of the target audience. All of these boil down to being prepared. You must know what message you want to deliver and what terminology your audience is used to hearing. You must also anticipate the questions that will be asked and what personal motivations will be in play. A prepared speaker will know how to answer these questions and what threshold of value will be needed to sell the audience members. This way, the presentation will speak with its own merits and not be held up by the skill of the presenter.

Good diction and pronunciation are a matter of practice and feedback. Listening to yourself and getting the feedback of a test audience will be of great value. As far as pronunciation goes, make good use of a dictionary. Don’t make the mistake of having your audience thinking about how you mispronounced a word rather than the merits of your business case. It is also a good idea to use words that you are comfortable using everyday. Trying to impress by using big words that are not generally part of your vocabulary will trip you up.

Projection involves two things: speaking loud enough to be heard without being too loud and speaking with conviction. You should know the layout of the room where the presentation is to take place and what audio or visual aids will be available. A strong confident voice will go long way to building and conveying conviction. Not sounding confident or being difficult to hear will be like blood in the water to the sharks that are looking for a reason to not provide the resources you need in order to be successful with your project.

Lastly, the knowledge of who your audience is and what their value prepositions are is critical. Do not forget that you are trying to motivate them to action on behalf of your project. This means that you will need to frame your presentation around their interests. A little research ahead of time before you build the presentation can give you this information.

All of the above is meaningless if you do not believe in what you are doing. Participating on an improvement team for political reasons is unproductive and can hurt your career rather than help it. People can hear conviction, or the lack of it, in your voice. Be engaged, be productive, and have fun with the process. Being a change agent is not easy. You will make friends and enemies. Do not confuse friends and enemies with allies. An ally is simply someone who shares a similar value proposition as you do. Much of your time will be spent building strategic alliances that can help your team succeed.

Selling

Posted on by
Reply

After putting in several years as a manager in a sales organization, I have found that the key to training up a quality sales person is developing their understanding of what I would call the essence of selling. The misunderstandings that exist regarding selling and the sales process are many and profound. Sometimes these misunderstandings are right there in the hearts and minds of the trainers who are teaching your staff to sell.

At its heart, selling is an interpersonal experience that is focused on an exchange of value. Too often the focus of sales training is on one or the other, relationship or value exchange, when both are required. This mistaken approach comes from a failure to see that both parties are part buyer and part seller. Both sides pitch their perspective on the value of their side of the potential transaction. A successful sale happens when an agreement is reached about the perceived value of each side of the exchange.

Each side of the value equation (buyer and seller) sees the potential exchange differently. For example, a car sales person sees a particular tipping point between the value of their merchandise and the value of the proposed dollar amount being offered by the prospect.  The person considering the purchase of the car sees a different tipping point.  The tipping point for each side is where the perceived value exchange favors their position. In other words, there will be no deal until both sides see their value proposition being satisfied.

If a sales person listens for the potential buyer’s value proposition, and then frames the value exchange around that information, they will be well on the way to closing the deal. For example, if a prospect wants a sporty vehicle that has room for their family and luggage, the sales person will not be successful in trying to sell them a standard cab pick-up at a low price. The perception of value for the prospect is not just about price in this case. On the other hand, if the sales person tries to sell a more expensive sport sedan with a large trunk, they will be more successful.

Selling is about listening to the other person and applying what you hear to the value proposition. An educated buyer will do the same thing. The best listener will nearly always win.