Listening(Presentation),Business Communication

2. P R E S E N T E D B Y : Z U H A I B H U S S A I N
P R O G R A M : M A S T E R O F B U S I N E S S
A D M I N I S T R A T I O N ( M B A )
S U B J E C T : B U S I N E S S C O M M U N I C A T I O N
“LISTENING”

3. Contents:
Listening Skills.
Importance of Listening.
Barriers to Listening.
Strategies for Effective Listening.
Listening in a Business context.

4. Listening Skills:
1. Hearing: You need to pay attention to make sure that you
hear the message clearly.
2. Interpreting: Analyze the speaker’s words based on your
experience, attitude, knowledge & background.
3. Evaluating: Evaluating the information received and make
decisions accordingly.
4. Responding: Let the speaker know whether you have
understood the message and respond to it.

5. Listening Process:

6. Importance of Listening:
Why do we need to listen well?
 Listening leads to understanding of
facts.
 To avoid miscommunication
during interactions.
 Listening helps to gain new
knowledge and also for enjoyment.
 How well we listen has a major
impact on our job effectiveness and
on the quality of our relationship
with others.

7. Barriers to Listening:
• Genuine hearing problems or deficiencies
that prevent them from listening properly.
Distractions in the environment such as the
sound of a TV or the smoke of cigarette etc.
Physiological/Physical
Barriers:
• Preoccupation with personal or work related
problems can make it difficult to focus one’s
attention completely on what a speaker is
saying.
Attitudinal Barriers:
• It is wrong to assume that communication is
the sole responsibility of the sender or the
speakers and listeners have no role to play.Wrong Assumptions:

8. Barriers to listening:
• Accents can be barriers to listening,since
they interfere with the ability to
understand the meaning of words that
are pronounced differently.
Cultural
Barriers:
• Most people are very average listeners
who have developed poor listening
habits that are hard to shed and that act
as a barrier to listening.
Bad Listening
Habits:
• Listening is not an inborn skill. People
are not born good listeners. They have to
develop the art of listening through
practice & training.
Lack of
Training:

9. Overcoming Barriers to Listening:
Lower barriers
of physical
reception
Focus on
speaker &
analyze what
you hear
Be open minded
Write Down
Improve your
memory

10. Strategies for Effective Listening:
Be attentive.
Ask Questions.
Don’t interrupt Unnecessarily.
Use body language.
Empathize.
Take Notes.

11. Listening in a Business Context:
 Effective Listening is one of the
essential qualities of a successful
manager.
 Good listening skill can help you
locate job openings, farewell in
job interviews & be selected for
the job.
 Listening mistakes can lead
costly errors such as retyping of
important documents,
rescheduling of important
meetings.
 It can boost quality, profits and
productivity, whereas poor
listening has the exact opposite
effect.

12. Listening to Customers:
 Organization today are
beginning to recognize the
importance of being customer
oriented.
 Customer orientation means
identifying and then satisfying
customer needs, which in turn
involves listening to what the
customers really wants.
 A dissatisfied customer can
create negative word-of-mouth
publicity for your product &
organization.
 Some approaches for handling
customer complaints is listening
to customers.

13. Listening to Employees:
 Top managers need to be open minded to
the suggestions & complaints of employees.
 This will indicate that they are listening to
the employees.
 Listening also means inviting suggestions
& personal opinions of employees through
consistent downward communication.
 Downward communication also includes
performance appraisals.
 A manager doing a performance review of
subordinates should avoid doing a
destructive review by criticizing the poor
performance of the employees.
 Manager should also practice “therapeutic
listening” by counseling the employees on
how to improve the performance.