Question

reflect on a situation in your professional or personal life where poor listening skills created a problem. Briefly describe the situation, then spend the bulk of your reflection analyzing what went wrong in terms of listening and how, specifically, effective listening would have made a difference. Be sure you incorporate terms from the text of effective listening skills as you analyze the situation and suggest ways it could have been improved.

Answer 1

The situation: A company was suffering from huge attrition rates and on having an exit interview, it was found out that the employees did not have job satisfaction due to their manager. He was the only speaker and decision maker of the company. He had a constant habit of interrupting while listening to them. In other times he used to be busy continuing with his own work while asking the employees to express their views. He was very target oriented and used to not seek much explanation on failure.

Analysis: In the above case, the manager is a poor listener. Some signs of his poor listening are interrupting while others are speaking, not maintaining eye contact as he stays occupied in his own work while letting others talk, not understanding situations, etc. These are all signs of passive listening which is a poor listening skill when it comes to a position that requires active listening. Due to his poor listening skills, the manager was unable to comprehend the situations of his company well.

Good listening is not just hearing. It is understanding, comprehending and responding. It includes both verbal and non verbal behaviour. A body language in which the manager continues with his chores when others are talking to him, would lead to a communication gap. This is because the manager would not be able to read the facial expressions and the body language of his employees and also, the employees would get a cold image of the manager. This gap does not stay bounded to communication alone, it then reflects in work and productivity leading to job dissatisfaction.

Some ways of improving these barriers could be having face to face conversations with the employees atleast once a month in which they are allowed to speak up their mind. While listening the manager should put aside his own work and maintain eye contact and positive body language with them. The manager should ask relevant questions in between in order to improve his understanding and paraphrase too. Most importantly, the manager should analyse his own strengths and weaknesses and then apply them at work.