So, what is the role of active listening in your work?
This was one of the questions after two days of training.
I never thought that listening could be a training subject in itself. But now that I’m aware of it, I think 80% of my work depends on how I listen or make myself listen.
Interestingly, in recent years I have thought of so many ways to improve communication in the company. I thought I had covered almost every facet of communication. On all levels. How could I have overlooked the listening? It’s like I’ve lost a link. The most important. And also the weakest.
It can be said without a doubt (we just proved it today) that people, in general, do not know how to listen. They have ears that hear very well, but they rarely have the necessary innate skills that would enable these ears to be effectively used for what is called listening. And what is not innate, is acquired. Don’t leave the potential unused.
Active Listening: The Corporate Superpower You Didn’t Know You Needed
Let’s be real: in most meetings, active listening is about as rare as free snacks in the breakroom after 3 PM. But in the corporate world, mastering active listening can be the difference between being the office hero or the person everyone avoids in the hallway.
Active listening is not just nodding while secretly daydreaming about your weekend plans. It’s the art of actually paying attention—like a cat hearing the can opener. Imagine if everyone in the office genuinely listened to each other. Projects might get done on time! (Crazy, right?)
Here’s how it works: Step one, stop texting under the table. Everyone knows you’re not taking “meeting notes.” Step two, maintain eye contact—but not the kind that makes people wonder if you’re plotting their downfall. Step three, ask clarifying questions. If someone says, “Let’s circle back on this,” you don’t respond with, “Yeah, sure,” when you have no idea what “this” is.
Research shows active listening boosts collaboration, reduces misunderstandings, and lowers the chance of someone rage-quitting Slack. It’s like corporate therapy without the awkward group hugs.
So, next time your boss says, “Thoughts?” don’t just mumble “good point.” Listen. Respond. Who knows? You might just earn that promotion—and first dibs on the snacks.
Active Listening and Intelligence
We often assume that listening ability is highly dependent on intelligence and that intelligent people listen well. It is undeniable that a low IQ has something to do with the inability to listen, but the importance of intelligence in listening is greatly exaggerated. A poor listener is not necessarily an unintelligent person. To be good listeners, we apply certain skills that are either acquired through experience or are innate. If a person has not acquired listening skills, their ability to understand and retain what they hear will be low. This can happen to anyone.
Any effort to improve listening should have these results:
- To construct the awareness scheme of the factors affecting listening ability.
- To build a certain listening experience that can produce good listening skills.
Generally, people say that the problem while listening is concentration. The problem is caused by the fact that we think much faster than we speak. It’s a race in our brains, faster and faster. This means that when we listen, we are asking our brain to register the words at an extremely slow rate compared to its capabilities.
In this situation, it might seem logical to slow down the pace of thought when listening, but slowing down the thought processes is a very difficult thing to do. When we listen, we continue our thinking at high speed, while spoken words reach us at low speed. It means that in the act of listening we operate with hundreds of words in addition to those with which our thoughts speak.
So, we can listen and still have some free time left for thinking. The use or non-use of this tense contains the answer to the question: are you listening to answer or are you listening to understand?
