Career growth, and personal growth, depends on both hard and soft skills. One particular soft skill every professional should learn or improve upon is listening. A good listener benefits the team and a company’s customer service. Unfortunately, becoming a better listener is easier said than done! How do you become a better listener at work? By practicing Active and Empathetic Listening.
What is Active Listening?
Active listening is the practice in which you focus on the message being delivered rather than only the words the other person is saying. The key term there is focus. You’ll want to focus all of your attention on the speaker. Listen to not only their words, but their non-verbal communication as well. What does their body language tell you? Then, when they’re done talking, reflect back what you think the message was to get a clearer understanding. It may also help to ask questions that prompts them to open up even further, such as, “What do you think about that?” or “How do you feel about that?”
Benefits of Active Listening
Active listening increases your value as an employee. It’s the starting point to developing other skills that are rare and badly needed, such as attention to detail. It also further develops relationships on your team, as it builds trust and communication. Team members enjoy working with others that listen to them and take their opinions into account. Lastly, you learn a lot by listening. Actively listening to others explain their expertise or their passions increases your knowledge on a variety of subjects and allows you to provide better value to your team.
What is Empathetic Listening?
Empathetic listening is similar to active listening, in that you focus all your attention on the speaker and don’t plan your response ahead. However, it’s different in purpose. With empathetic listening, the purpose is not only to understand the message the speaker is getting across, but to empathize with them. Listen to their experience, match it to something you’ve experienced in the past, and identify how that made you feel to empathize with what they’re feeling now. Active listening is a small step within the act of empathetic listening.
Benefits of Empathetic Listening
Why is it important at work to care about, and to listen to, how team members are feeling? As a team, it develops better communication and collaboration to complete projects more productively. As a manager, it helps you lead the team more effectively. It builds trust and team members like to feel cared about, giving them the confidence to perform their best. Moreover, as a manager you can understand how best to communicate with each member of the team and their methods or processes that work best for them to complete their work, to meet them at their level.
Becoming a better listener can help you grow in many facets, but it especially helps you grow professionally. For more advice to further grow your career and yourself, and to become a more valuable employee, keep following our blog for the latest blog posts and don’t miss an episode of our podcast.
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