5 Tips To Becoming A Great Listener

We often don’t pay as much attention to listening as speaking our mind. Nevertheless, if we are to achieve success, we have to be able to become a great listener and observer, besides being able to put our point across. More often than not, a person’s inability to listen to his family, friends, relatives, or colleagues leads them to a predicament. 

So how does one improve their listening skills? Here’s how:

Monitor yourself

Observe yourself carefully in every situation and figure out what makes you not be an active listener. It could be around a particular or person or certain situations that you deem right to not listen to what’s being said. Moreover, track down where your mind goes when it wanders. You could be using your mind as an escape to avoid uncomfortable situations or interactions with people you don’t like but is it really worth letting go of the important information you can gather just by being a good listener?

Manage your Emotions

If you are not careful, your emotions can get the better of you. Sometimes, our emotions pop up at the wrong time and prevent us from listening to what’s being said. Therefore, we must be able to manage our emotions daily. 

Keep away from distractions

One of the reasons why we are unable to be an active listener is the distractions that are around us or in our mind. Our attention spans have gotten shorter because of our constant interactions with our smartphones and laptops. We tend to check our phones every now and then without any reason and as a result, we tend to not pay attention to what’s being said. Not to mention, human beings tend to fantasize over the future and ruminate over the past by ditching the present. This keeps us from paying attention to the conversation being held in front of us and weakens our ability to listen.

Ask more questions

Asking questions is one of the best strategies to wire your mind to listen to the conversation at hand. When you ask questions, you become invested with the ongoing topic and as a result, you pay special attention to everything that is being said. You can also ask questions when you start to feel bored. Asking questions might also yield you answers that are specially designed for your comprehensibility.

Practice listening

You can practice listening in your day to day life through soft skill training. Listen to what’s being discussed around you and pay attention. Be an active member of the discussion. When you have mastered listening to outside voices, dive inside yourself and try to listen to your thoughts and ideas.