LISTENING: The part of communication that is IGNORED!

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said” 

–Peter Drucker, Management Theorist

While expressing your thoughts in a coercive, powerful manner is crucial to being a good communicator and manager, this is, in fact, only half of the battle won. The other, equally important aspect of good communication involves developing your listening skills.

As a manager, good listening skills are especially important to you in order to help you develop a better rapport with your team members, understand and hence resolve any problems with customers and colleagues more effectively, and to ‘read between the lines’ more adeptly to gain a clearer understanding of how well or otherwise your audience is responding to you.

The first step towards developing good listening skills is to want and consciously intend to do so. The second step is to acquire and master certain behaviors that will help you to be a better listener.

1. Know your objective

Determine the purpose for, or objective of, your listening. For instance, you could be trying to empathize with someone, or analyze or solve problems when communicating with someone else.

Being clear about your objective will help you to be more receptive to cues in the conversation, and hence sift through all the clutter to retain only those bits that are most pertinent to you. Knowing your objective will prove invaluable in situations where the person you are conversing with either rambles, or talks about multiple topics as the same time.

2. Actively interact

While being a patient, quiet listener has traditionally been confused with being a ‘good listener’, it is important that you learn to distinguish between the two. A quiet listener may not gain complete understanding of what is being communicated to him/her, and will also fail to inspire confidence in the speaker since he/she is unsure about whether or not he/she has succeeded in capturing your attention.

Communicate your interest by asking questions, seek clarifications where required, and even feel free to disagree in case of differences in opinion. Further, when asking questions, prefer ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions that require a certain amount of elaboration, as opposed to those that can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

3. Stay focussed

Simple as it may seem, but focus is probably both the most important and most difficult of all listening skills. Listening well requires self-control and to not allow your mind to drift into random thoughts. Consider the case of a college lecture: most students accurately comprehend and retain only about half of what they hear in a 10-minute period. Therefore, students who can stay mentally engaged and focused on listening to their instructors during class stand a much better chance of learning the material presented, and accurately applying it in assignments and examinations.

One way to increase your focus is to first be clear about your objective, and subsequently the value you will gain from the interaction. In the case of a lecture, for example, tell yourself that you are going to find some nugget of valuable information or thought stimulator in what you are about to hear. Think of it as a treasure hunt, a game or a challenge, and you will automatically find it much easier to stay interested and hence, focused, on the interaction.

The growing need for Employability Skills in India

Recently I attended a webinar co-hosted by the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) and National Skill Development Corporation of India (NSDC) discussing the opportunities in skill development for businesses in India over the next few years. In the one hour presentation they spoke about initiatives, programs and competitions undertaken by the NSDC and how businesses must focus on skill development for a country which will soon have the largest working population in the world. Though the opportunity is great and the platform might seem perfect to tap the commercial potential, the information and numbers raise a bigger issue (and one that was left unanswered in the webinar) that what are the skills that an emerging India needs?

Academic skills and technical skills have often been the core focus of the government and the result has been fairly limited, with minimal increase in opportunity or empowerment. Of late, there has been an gradual shift towards vocational skills, which is definitely a breath of fresh air, for both job-seekers and employers alike. In fact Corporate India, with each passing year, renders the current crop of graduates more and more unemployable. For a country where the working age population will very soon be far in excess of those dependent on them and will continue to do so till 2040, this is a very disturbing statistic. (source: World Bank).  Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, in my opinion, hit the nail on the head when he said 'India does not have problem of unemployment but that of unemployability'. Hence the focus must undoubtedly be on developing skills that transcend technical or academic capability and help create professionals who are not only ready to face the challenges of a dynamic and competitive business world but also have the flexibility, intelligence and practical skills to sufficiently excel in their respective roles within an organization.

According to the survey, carried out by a number of agencies (and endorsed by the PM’s National Council on Skill Development and the NSDC), the top three most important general skills identified were motivation, reliability and teamwork, while the top three most important specific skills are entrepreneurship, effective communication and use of modern tools and technologies. This is some very important information coming directly from the corporate world and should almost become the tenets of basic skill-based training in India. The importance of the survey results and the focus on developing these skills (both general and specific) cannot be emphasized more, because they have a three pronged effect. 

First, they provide individuals seeking employment with a first hand account of what skills they must possess and, if necessary, develop in order to catch the eye of a potential employer. Of course, recognizing skills and developing them are only primary steps, putting them to practice and creating a habit of learning new skills is the ultimate goal. The onus to do this is not just on the job seeker but also training organizations and businesses to identify innovative methods of developing and teaching these skills. In todays digital age, the use of technology is imperative for educational and vocational institutes to attract the youth and make the learning as enjoyable as possible. Learning happens best when the learner is so engrossed and engaged that he does not realize he is learning. 

Next, by developing these skills individuals are not just molded to excel in corporate or government positions but also develop a sense of innovativeness and creativity. There in lies the hope that we are not just empowering job seekers to achieve career goals but also create a section of individuals that will take the entrepreneurial path, at some point in their careers, and will eventually become job creators. 

Last, through the development of these skills job seekers will find it mush easier to accentuate their core academic and technical skills and employers will find that (a) hiring candidates becomes much easier (b) their investment in training new employees and in turn, attrition rate is lower and, (c) productivity is greatly increased because now corporations can focus less on teaching people how to do work and more on actually assigning them to more complex, diverse projects. Hence, to summarize, the development of these skills greatly improves the chances of (a) getting hired then, (b) staying hired and finally, (c) personal and professional success. Could there be more valuable advice for new graduates and young professionals? I think not.

Here is an info graphic that Last-Bench created almost a year back highlighting the importance of soft skills for job applicants. In fact the development of these skills must become a compulsory module in a lll colleges and universities to ensure graduates receive complete education.

If you have any questions, comments or would like to learn more about any of the tools or techniques to improve your soft skills please write to us at chalktalk@last-bench.com

For more information on our skill development programs please click here.

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