Aviation Leadership – How to Develop Your Listening Skills

What do we mean by Listening Skills?

· Listening is our ability to accurately receive and interpret messages.

· Listening is key to all effective communications.

· Effective listening is a skill that underpins all positive human relationships.

It is important to realise that without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood with variable consequential outcomes but usually not a positive in any circumstances.

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Take Measures to Develop Effective Listening Skills

· If possible, face the speaker and maintain eye contact for as long as the speaker is talking.

· Ensure you focus on the message, remain attentive and try to relax to make the speaker comfortable. (try to screen out all distractions)

Note to Self - Never spend listening time preparing what you are going to say when it is your turn

· Keep an open mind means listening without judging the other person or jumping to conclusions. (If you try to process information while it is still being delivered you will for sure disconnect)

· Wait for an opportunity to clarify if necessary (for example when the speaker pauses) – Of course if you do not understand you must stop the proceedings and ask a question – but interrupt sympathetically & diplomatically

· Allow your mind to create a mental model of the information being communicated stay focused, and when listening to a long monologue try to concentrate to remember any keywords and phrases

· Try not to interrupt as long as the conversation is making progress and match your pace to the speaker become a more thoughtful communicator and never suggest “instant solutions”

· Show the speaker you are engaged with the tone of the conversation may be to provide facial expressions nodding for example and or gentle noise of agreement

Body Language

Monitoring facial expressions can indicate the mood & attitude of the speaker for example by observing the expression around the eyes, or how the speaker holds his mouth. These non-verbal clues also carry a significant part of the message.

General Comments to Improve Listening Skills

Understanding – Take the opportunity to consider the meaning behind the message be open to different interpretations and if possible, test your understanding. (Ineffective listening can potentially have negative consequences)

Note Perceptions and Experiences can Influence our Understanding

How to Remember? – To remember later the information, we must understand what we are hearing in the first place. It is essential we listen attentively and to consider that one common reason for not remembering is that it was not fully understood in the first place.

Evaluating – This is the point where we attempt to connect with the value of the message to test it against our subjective background knowledge and experience. Different people will have different interpretations and it is important to be as open as possible and to avoid the potential for bias.

Feedback— How you deliver feedback is as important as how you accept it, because it can be experienced in a very negative way. To be effective you must be tuned in, sensitive, and honest when giving feedback. Just as there are positive and negative approaches to accepting feedback, so too are there ineffective and effective ways to give it.

The feedback that is vague and judgmental serves almost no benefit in promoting effective communication whereas.
Clear communication translates into the need to ask clarifying questions as well as a mutual understanding of the sent and received information, we must always speak in specific not general terms.

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