One of the greatest gifts as humans we have ever received is listening. It is also one of the greatest gifts we can give to anyone. We live in a world where each one of us is always talking and very few are listening. 

Listening is a difficult task. Not all of us have this art. We need to learn to listen. Like we do in case of every skill, the more we practice the better we become at it. This Transformation Tuesday, let us look at how can we improve our listening skills:

Be Present

We should always be present in any conversation that we make. Sometimes We are often distracted by a lot of things around. We try to listen to people while we are on the mobile phone or are watching TV. We need to be fully present. To be fully present we need to avoid all such distractions and focus on listening to the other party. It takes a lot of effort to be present now. We need to learn to focus on listening and give all ears to the other party with open hearts and ears. 

Question

We need to train ourselves to ask more questions. Rather than just commenting when it is your turn you should ask relevant questions based on the conversation with the other person. Maybe you can ask questions about something that the other person mentioned, and it needs more explanation. It might happen that you need some more examples to understand it better. Nevertheless, a question can improve the discussion further.

Ask more Questions

Asking more questions is a necessity for great conversation. It is always good to ask questions. It is even better to ask tons of questions. The more you listen, the more understanding you collect and the more appropriate your remarks will be.

Be in Other Person’s Place

Words are only part of the interaction. Sometimes we need to be in other person’s shoes to really understand what they are going through. We need to listen to another person with open hearts, and minds.

Confirm Their Feelings and Thoughts

As we learn to listen to others, we need to learn to validate their thoughts and feeling. The kind words that we use as we validate their thoughts and feelings help to make the conversation more engaging and meaningful.

Repeat

When we do this—and do it accurately—we communicate that we understand. It also gives us an opportunity to recalibrate our understanding if we misunderstood something.

Many of us are good talkers. Few of us are good listeners. If you work on developing your listening skill, you will be invited to incredible conversations that would not have happened otherwise.

Written & Compiled by Faber Mayuri

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