One of my tasks during office meetings is to take the minutes and produce a summary report of the action plans discussed. It was tedious because our meetings take more than half a day, at least twice a month.
With more than eight years of doing the task, I have learned a valuable skill that helped me become productive in what I'm doing - the ability to listen well and process ideas.
Listening is one of the soft skills we need to have in the job. We need to listen well when given instructions and when discussing ideas with peers. We need to listen well both for verbal cues and for non-verbal messages. Without parties willing to listen, there will be disorder in any organization.
Listening can help improve our productivity, and we can leverage its benefits.
Listening makes you attentive to details.
As you develop your listening skills, you will see that your ability to weed out details from general information improves. When you've been doing the same routine for quite some time, you'll realize that you can already recognize some voices and tones of people even without personally seeing them. You will also learn to distinguish statements, recognizing who says who. And when there's a lot of ideas on the table, it will be easy for you to spot what's helpful from what's plain noise.
Listening makes you a likable person.
A listener is a likable person compared to a babbler who is often not seriously taken. We are attracted to people who know when to shut their mouths and listen more than someone who just talks non-stop, no matter how big their ideas are. Also, listeners are always thought of to be serious and deep thinkers. Listeners are empaths. They are fun to be with, as they are the best friends to have.
Listening opens up a plethora of ideas.
When we learn to shut our mouths and keep our ears open to what other people have to say, we open up the doors to lots of ideas. We discover that even the timidest person in the group has some wild and out-of-the-box suggestions. We find that this idea works best when we incorporate someone else's approach. Moreso, we bridge our intellect with every people in the discussion when instead of talking, we listen.
Listening helps you do more than talk more.
Excessive talking is annoying, but we seldom hear about too much listening. While talkers waste their time babbling, listeners can start working on the job. In the end, it's the result that matters. Listeners expand their horizons with the ideas they gather and incorporate them into their idea pool, improving their craft. Talkers keep on spewing ideas while their work awaits.
Listening energizes your mind.
Listening is an exercise to the brain as the physical workout is to the body. When we listen to various ideas, we teach our brain to process these data into valuable information. We cannot shut down our minds from all the information available around us. However, we can train our minds to sort out helpful ideas for us. It helps energize our mental faculties.
In a world where everyone wants to speak their mind, listeners can maximize their craft by being more productive by listening. Listening fosters relationships, improves teamwork through communication, boosts engagement, develops empathy, and makes possible a give and take scenario between talkers and listeners.
Active and effective listening must be present in organizations and relationships to reach the desired goals. When listening seems to be a foreign element, no one will dare to share their ideas. People will feel undervalued, and everyone is just vying for attention. There will be no real organizational growth, and thriving relationships are absent.
