Workplace Listening and Nonverbal Communication

Having successful relationships in the business environment entails effective workplace listening skills and effective nonverbal communication skills. If you want to have a successful career within the organization you are working for nowadays, the listening skills you possess need to be better than ever. The text below covers the following on workplace listening: poor listening habits, types of workplace listening, the listening process and its barriers, and keys to improving workplace listening. Additionally, the text below covers the following on nonverbal communication: communicating through nonverbal messages and forms of nonverbal communication.
Workplace listening
Listening skills are imperative for career success, organization effectiveness, worker satisfaction, and because we spend ample time in the workplace doing it, we should maximize the way we listen. Experts say that we only listen at 25% efficiency which may be due to lack of training, competing sounds, slowness of speech, and daydreaming. There are three types of possible workplace listening. One type of workplace listening is listening to your superiors: you should listen to instructions carefully, take notes and paraphrase what you hear, and do not interrupt. Another is listening to co-workers: you have to listen critically and engage in discriminative listening. Last but not least, as it is arguably the most important, involves listening to customers: organizations that listen to customers’ needs & wants acquire increasingly loyal customers which yield higher sales and profitability. The listening process contains four steps: perception of sounds, interpretation of those sounds, evaluation of meaning, and action. Moreover, there are different types of listening barriers: the mental barriers and the physical barriers. Therefore, we can improve our listening skills by controlling distractions, becoming actively involved, separating facts from opinion, identifying important information, not interrupting, clarifying what we do not understand, paraphrasing, capitalizing on lag time, taking notes, and noticing gender differences.
Nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communications, which are the unwritten and unspoken messages, play a huge role in communicating information. The most essential function of nonverbal communication is to complement & illustrate, to reinforce & accentuate, to replace & substitute, to control & regulate, and to contradict. However, when the nonverbal and the verbal messages say the opposite, the listener will more frequently believe the nonverbal message than the verbal message. Nonverbal communications comprise the following: eye contact, facial expression, posture, time, space, and appearance. Finally, there are specific techniques for improving non-verbal communication. For instance, it is very good to have eye contact but should not extend too long so that it becomes disturbing. Another case in point would be your posture since the one you adopt represents your interest and reveals a great deal about your self-confidence.

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