This document discusses listening skills and the importance of effective listening. It outlines the listening process and various barriers to listening such as distractions, preoccupation, wrong assumptions, cultural differences, bad habits, and lack of training. Some strategies provided for effective listening include being attentive, asking questions, avoiding unnecessary interruptions, using body language, empathizing, and taking notes. The document also discusses the importance of listening in a business context for managers, customers, and employees.

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

2. 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.

3. Listening Process:

4. 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.

5. 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:

6. 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:

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

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

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.