in the work place environment

8/2/2019 In the Work Place Environment

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SHARDA UNIVERSITYSCHOOL OF ENGINEERING &

TECHNOLOGY

ESSENTIALS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

LISTENING AT WORKPLACE

2011

SUBMITTED TO:

SUMIT BHARDWAJ

1/1/2011


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LISTENING AT WORKPLACE

Group Members :

AAKANKSHA RASTOGI ( 090101001)

ALOK SINGH ( 090101

ASHWANI SINGH (090101

KANAV CHADHA (090101

KUNAL JINDAL (090101

HIMIKA RANA (090101

HIMANSHU SHUBHANI (090101

HARRINDER KUMAR (090101

HEMLATA (090101

GIRISH PRASHAD (090101


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We take immense pleasure to express our sincere gratitude to our

Essentials Of Public Speaking Professor Mr. Sumit Bharadwaj , who

has an attitude and the substance of a Genius.

We were privileged to experience a sustained enthusiastic andinvolved interest from his side. This fueled our enthusiasm even

further and encouraged us to understand the concepts of Public

Speaking.

His able guidance and useful suggestions, helped us in completing

the project work, in time.

We would also like to express our heartfelt thanks to our beloved

parents for their blessings, our friends/classmates for their help

and wishes for the successful completion of this project.

Last but not the least we would like to thanks the almighty for

guiding us.


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CONTENTS

1.Introduction

2.Types Of Listening

3.Active listening

4.Types of work place listening

5.Why You Need Good Listening Skills

6.Barriers to Listening

7. How to listen well

8. Bibliography


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INTRODUCTION

In the work place environment, there are many factors that help

determine an organization's ability and skill in maintaining the

stability and organization among its employees/members.

One of these factors includes attaining an organizationalcommunication process through effective communication skills.

Communication is the sharing of ideas and information. It is

primarily in oral or written form but communication is much more

than that. It is exchanging of information, signals, or messages as by

talk, gestures, or writing.

In communication, listening is regarded as the most importantelement.

Work-place communication that results in a misunderstanding is

often the result of poor listening habits. Establishing yourself as a

leader (no matter your position) and a good communicator is more

than just what you say and how you say it-it is understanding when

you need to be quiet and pay attention to what others are saying.Short attention spans, numerous distractions, prejudging and well,

pitiful manners are just a few reasons why you and your co-workers

may be poor listeners. The best communicators know the power of

conscious listening.

Listening well is as powerful a means of communication and

influence as talking well. This quote by John Marshall makes it all


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the more clear how important being a good listener is than just being

someone used to talking and being heard.

Hearing a conversation is quite natural, but to listen intensely and

grasp the essence of the conversation the way the speaker intended

you to, is what effective listening is all about. This is highly beneficial

to you as well as people around.

There is a process involved in Listening, played by the listener,

speaker, message and visuals.

Speakers, for instance, pre-judge their listeners. So they adapt a wayof speech that they think will best suit so that their listeners could

comprehend the meaning of their message according to them and

could get exacly what they are saying.

The Complete listening takes place in four steps:

Perception It is the immediate or intuitive recognition of what

speaker is saying by the listener.The process by which an organismattains awareness or understanding of its environment by organizing

and interpreting sensory information.

Interpretation- It involves interpreting and decoding heard

messages.

Evaluation- Evaluation involves separating facts from opinions

objectively. We often listen with prejudices and biases. This,

primarily, is what hampers effective listening. Effective listening is an

important part of building trust and strengthening business

relationship, which in turn are inevitable ingredients of building

empires.


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Action- Action involves retaining ,reacting, or providing feedback.

At work-place there are many forms of messages which are

interacted between the people.

These messages may be between officers, officers and customers ,

officers and subordinates.

Work-messages are very efficient and important for any organisation

which are well-utilized in the workplace.

These messages allow co-workers to collaborate easily without

having to leave their cubicle or office. It is important to do so in aprofessional manner to avoid any misunderstandings or blunders.

These messages are:

Straight forward instructions given by officers to their

subordinates. They may be any order about any consignment to

complete the work before deadline. May be about the format to be

followed to complete a certain job.

It may be a complicated conversation, such as an obtuse

interaction between several people, involves officers ,customers.

It may be any discussion between colleagues about any project.

To communicate well, one must master listening process.


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TYPES OF LISTENING

1. Discriminative Listening

This is the most basic type of listening, whereby the difference

between the sounds is

identified. Unless the differences between the sounds is identified,

the meaning expressed by such

differences cannot be grasped.

2. Comprehension Listening

Once we have learnt to discriminate between the different sounds,

the next step is to try to

comprehend the meaning of these sounds. In order to do this, we

require a dictionary of words,along with the rules of grammar and syntax.

3. Evaluative Listening

This kind of listening involves making judgments about what the

speaker is saying.We listen critically and try to assess what is being

said as good, bad, worthy or unworthy. We generally resort to this

kind of listening when the other person is trying to persuade us,

change .our behavior or convictions. The tendency then is toquestion what the speaker is trying to say.

4. Appreciative Listening

This kind of listening could be in the form of paying selective

attention to certain kinds of

information which might be relevant to us, or which helps to meet

our needs and goals. The tendency is to appreciate such information

better. Appreciative listening is also used when listening to good

music, poetry or a powerful speech.


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5. Empathetic Listening

In this type of listening, we try to put ourselves in the other persons

place and understand the moods, beliefs, goals and feelings behind

the speakers words. It requires excellent discrimination and paying

attention to the nuances of emotional signals. It also requires a high

degree of sensitivity and tactful probing on the part of the listener.

Empathetic listening is most often needed at the workplace, when

dealing with customer complaints, employee feedback and

problems. A manager doing a performance appraisal with an

employee for example, should listen to the employees point of viewand understand the real reasons for lack of performance.

6. Therapeutic Listening

In this type of listening, the listener goes beyond merely empathizing

with the speaker and tries to help him to change or develop in some

way. In other words, he plays the role of a therapist, by diagnosing

the problem at hand and offering a remedy or solution. It is

important in job situations, where managers try to solve the

problems of employees. Taking the same example of a manager

doing a performance appraisal, the manager should not only

understand the employees problems, but should also counsel him,

by suggesting what measures he could take to improve his

performance in future.

7. Dialogic Listening

As the name suggests, this type of listening involves listening and

learning through dialogue. This implies that listening is a two way,rather than a one way process. It involves interchange of ideas

and information between the speaker and the listener. This type of

listening is active listening, whereby the listener continuously seeks

clarifications, gives feedback and engages in conversation with the

speaker. Another name for this is relational listening, since are

relationship is established through the exchange of ideas


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ACTIVE LISTENING

Active listening is a structured way of listening and responding to

others, focusing attention on the speaker. Suspending one's own

frame of reference, suspending judgment and avoiding other internal

mental activities are important to fully attend to the speaker.

Active listening is a communication technique that requires the

listener to understand, interpret, and evaluate what (s)he hears. The

ability to listen actively can improve personal relationships through

reducing conflicts, strengthening cooperation, and fostering

understanding.

When interacting, people often are not listening attentively. . They

are often distracted, half listening, half thinking about something

else. When people are engaged in a conflict, they are often busy

formulating a response to what is being said. They assume that they

have heard what their opponent is saying many times before, so

rather than paying attention, they focus on how they can respond to

win the argument.

Active listening is a structured form of listening and responding that

focuses the attention on the speaker. The listener must take care toattend to the speaker fully, and then repeats, in the listeners own

words, what he or she thinks the speaker has said. The listener does

not have to agree with the speaker--he or she must simply state

what they think the speaker said. This enables the speaker to find

out whether the listener really understood. If the listener did not, the

speaker can explain some more.

listener understood what happened, but can indicate that he or shealso understood the speakers psychological response to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attentionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_interactionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_interactionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention


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TYPES OF WORKPLACE LISTENING

1. listening to superiorsThis includes :

hearing instructions

assignments

tasks

explanations of working procedures carefully, by taking concise

notes, paraphrasing what you hear, and not interrupting.

2. listening to colleagues & teammatesThis includes :

engaging in critical listening discriminative listening.

3. listening to customersThis includes :

Organizations that listen to customers and take action increasingly

acquire loyal customers which, in turn, yields higher sales.

Taking into consideration the customers needs and wants


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WHY YOU NEED GOOD LISTENING

SKILLIn a word, the better at listening you are, the more productive you

will be in your career and more opportunities will come to you.

Those who are most skilled at listening are able to better understand

work they have been given, as well as what is expected of them.

Those who are unable to listen well, on the other hand, are more

likely to fail when they are given an assignment, or to turn in work

that is of much lower quality than is expected.

If you are a good listener, you should find it quite easy to establish

positive working relationships with bosses, clients, as well as

colleagues. Do you find that you have difficulty getting along with

others in your profession, that people quite often avoid you? Then it

might have a lot to do with how others perceive your listening skills.

If you are perceived as a bad listener, then oftentimes people will try

to avoid you altogether rather than spend the energy it requires to

communicate complex matters to you. You might then find yourselfmissing out on a lot of opportunities that would come to you quite

readily otherwise.

Good listeners are also quite adept at showing support in the work

place. They are people who sense when something is going wrong,

and then offer to jump right in when they are given the chance.

This earns you a lot of respect. Try to be aware of things that are

happening in your environment at all times even if they do not

directly concern you.

Thus good listening techniques help us to show support and

enhances the ability to work better in a team-based environment.

It provide us the quality to understand and visualise the situations

well , we can easily resolve problems with customers , co workers

and bosses. We can immediately answer any query and can easily

find underlying meanings in what others say.


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BARRIERS TO LISTENING

Bias or prejudice:

It lead us to the "knowing the answer" barrier, means that you think

you already know what the speaker wants to say, before she actually

finishes saying it. You might then impatiently cut her off or try to

complete the sentence for her.

This causes the listener to pre-judge what the speaker is saying a

kind of closed-mindedness.

A good listener tries to keep an open, receptive mind. He looks for

opportunities to stretch his mind when listening, and to acquire newideas or insights, rather than reinforcing existing points of view.

language differences or accents:

Language barriers often add misunderstandings in the workplace.

When a person speaks little English, he/she can be intimidated and

frustrated trying to communicate with English-speaking supervisors

or co-workers and visa versa. Workers may act like they know what is

being said, but in fact, may not know. In some jobs, this can be

dangerous.

Noise:

Noise is a barrier that prevents people from listening to messages.

External noise includes anything that makes it difficult to hear and

pay attention to a speaker, such as sirens blaring outside of awindow, other people talking and dogs barking.

Worry, Fear Or Anger :

Listeners may also get distracted by internal noise, which is anything

they may be thinking about that prevents them from listening.

Relationship problems, a death in the family or worrying about

money may create an inner dialogue that makes it impossible to

concentrate on what someone else is saying.


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Attention Span

Lack of attention span:

An attention span is the amount of time a person will pay attention

to a message before getting distracted. Most people's attention span

will accommodate only messages that are short and relatively simple

and do not put heavy demands on their ability to concentrate.

Watching television can shorten people's attention spans if they

engage in channel surfing -- frequently changing channels to find

something different to watch. The short length of commercials also

has accustomed people to hearing short messages.

People also have the tendency to fake attention, so that a speaker

does not realize that audience members are not actively listening to

the message. This is a habit that many people learn as young

schoolchildren, making it easier for their minds to wander during a

message because it looks as though they're paying attention.


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HOW TO LISTEN WELL

maintain eye contact; don't interrupt the speaker; sit still; nod your head; lean toward the speaker; Feeling rushed can be a significant distraction to effective

listening;

repeat instructions and ask appropriate questions when thespeaker has finished;

In order to ensure that you have understood what has beensaid, periodically summarise the essence of the discussion;

When confusion occurs during the interaction, clarify thematter as soon as possible so that further listening is not

compromised;

When listening to complicated discussions, consider makingnotes in a notebook to ensure that you get the critical details;


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CONCLUSION


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. www.google.com2. www.wikipedia.com3. www.exforsys.com
http://www.google.com/http://www.google.com/http://www.wikipedia.com/http://www.wikipedia.com/http://www.exforsys.com/http://www.exforsys.com/http://www.exforsys.com/http://www.wikipedia.com/http://www.google.com/

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