How Honing Your Listening Skills Can Help Your Career

Want to improve your career prospects? Improve your listening skills.

After all, the best leaders are generally the ones that possess excellent listening skills. As good managers know that making employees feel like their opinions are heard is important, the ability to listen well tends to bring out the best in people. Further, when you have good listening skills and an interest in coworkers, positive relationships can easily develop. Besides these benefits, great listening skills will also help you in these specific areas:

You will better understand the tasks that are assigned to you at work. In other words then, you will know exactly what will be expected of you and the best way to implement these tasks.

You will be better able to give relevant feedback comments.

You will become the “go-to” person at work as you will be able to answer specific questions about topics at work. In turn, both your employer and your co-workers will appreciate your abilities.

All that said, not everyone on Earth is born with the innate ability to be a focused and engaged listener. Luckily though, proper listening skills can be learned – for instance, during a conversation, you should:

Remember not to interrupt the person who is currently speaking.

Make direct eye contact. By maintaining eye contact, you are showing that you are focused on the speaker and that you are actively listening.

Nod your head and use other body language when appropriate during a conversation. Again, this action shows that you understand what is being said.

If you have inquiries, ask these questions once the other person has stopped talking. By asking questions, you are clarifying what the speaker said to you and also demonstrate that you are actively engaged in what the speaker was saying.

Upon conclusion of the conversation, ensure that you remember exactly who told you this information. After all, you do want to give the proper person credit when it is due.

As there are a number of benefits to being a good listener, working on improving your listening skills can go a long way when it comes to furthering your career prospects.

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Larisa Redins is a full time writer and editor with degrees in both Arts and Biological Science. She writes about career issues and other topics for a variety of international websites and magazines.