Friday, January 30, 2009
Attributes of Good Listening
"listening involves hearing, sensing, interpretation, evaluation and response"
Good listening is an essential part of being a good leader. You cannot be a good leader unless you are a good listener. You as a leader must be very aware of the feedback you are receiving from the people around you. If you are not a good listener, your future as a leader will be short. I might add that being a good listener is a skill important in many other settings. For example, being a good listener will enhance your social relationships of all types, marriage, dating, parties, work, etc.
Have you ever stopped to think that we require courses and training in our education in speaking and writing, but not in listening? Why not? Are such skills important? Yes! Can you or I improve our listening capacity through purposive efforts? Again, the answer is clear: yes! Do we know what it takes to be a good listener? Another, yes. Why do we leave the learning of good listening skills to hard-earned experience or chance? Probably, the only answer is tradition. The people who established "reading, writing and arithmetic" as the content of American schools did not recognize the need for other skills such as listening. And even today, how many parents will insist that their child develop good listening skills through training in schools or elsewhere? All to few!
