Hone Your Listening Skills To Boost Your Career

Good listening is crucial to effective communication and career success. However, only about 10% of us listen properly. Most of us don’t know how to listen intelligently, systematically and purposefully.

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Think about your most recent conversations at work. If you remember what you said better than what you heard, you’ve probably developed some pretty bad listening habits. Instead of really listening, you let your mind wander while others were talking. You were thinking about what you were going to say before the others had finished. Poor listening can cause snafus in the office such as missing important appointments, misunderstanding directions, misinterpreting valuable suggestions or addressing the wrong problems.

There is little doubt that disgraceful listening habits have hindered many managerial careers. According to several estimates, about 45% of a manager’s typical day is spent listening. Some managers believe they earn up to 60% […]

Can A Smile Change Your Day?

fun-20008_1280CJ McClanahan, President of Reachmore Strategies is our guest blogger today.  To learn more about Reachmore Strategies please check out their website: http://www.goreachmore.com/

Can a smile really change your entire day?

 I would argue that for many (if not most) of us the answer is yes!  Consider what is going on in the workplace today.  Much of our communication is being reduced to email, instant messages, texts and now even “tweets”.

As a direct result, we have less and less meaningful face to face communication with actual human beings. So, when we do (even if you aren’t a social person) we crave the personal interaction.  In addition, we tend to pay attention to less of what we hear out of their mouths as what we see in their appearance and expressions.

Consider the following scenario…

You have a 5 minute meeting with your […]

Listening is a Sign of Respect

listening-157386_1280Think of your last conversation.  If you remember what you said more clearly than what you heard, you probably need to work on your listening skills.

Listening is a sign of respect.  It shows that you value what the speaker has to say.  If you take the time to listen to someone, take the time to listen properly.  Set aside what you are doing so you can focus on the speaker, showing them that they are important to you.  This will encourage the speaker to crystallize his message instead of giving you a shortened and vague version.  If you continue to focus on your work, you may miss key gestures or facial expressions that may indicate the speaker’s true feelings differ from his words.

It’s not always easy to focus on what a speaker is trying to say, especially if he has distracting idiosyncrasies.  […]

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