The meaning of listening is to pay attention to sounds and the hearing with thoughtful attention. We spend more time at work listening than we do in any other activity. Listening is significant in attending meetings and briefings, when giving and receiving instructions, during interviews, when making decisions based on verbal information, managing employees, helping customers and assisting other departments or agencies.
On the other hand, valuable or dynamic listening is hard work and requires energy and effort on everyone's part. In order to succeed in business, it is significant to learn listening skills that will help you give and receive feedback, screen out distractions, listen vitally for information and evidence, and be open, interested, and conscientious.
A lot of people are poor listeners, even in everyday life. They are apt to pay attention and think about something else at the same time. This happens even more regularly when people are in conflict. Rather than carefully attending to what the other person has said, a lot of people think about their response as the other person is talking. In addition, they tend to interpret things to coincide with the views that they already have. For this reason, they assume they know and understand what other people are saying, as they assume that it corresponds to their own expectations about what the person is likely to say or "should" be saying. In view of the fact that people in conflict tend to develop hostile and distrustful images of the other, their interpretation of things the other side says or does is also likely to be hostile and distrustful. Ambiguous messages are interpreted in the worst possible way; even clear messages tend to be ignored or disregarded, if they are inconsistent with one's original negative view.
Such poor listening makes good communication.........
