 If more of us used effective listening skills at work and outside work, we would improve the quality of our communication and relationships with others. In any business, ask the employees what are the biggest problems and communication is nearly always top of the list. If you think about it, half of communication is how to listen effectively. If you're speaking but no one is listening, are you communicating? How many times are you speaking but have the strong sense that the other person is just waiting for their turn to speak? Not really taking in what you're saying. And how does this make you feel? Using effective listening skills for managers is an exercise in exerting and increasing your influence on your team and in the wider business. Listening is an essential skill to connect with others, to build rapport and to build trust. All essential elements in any relationship and as a manager, a massive part of your job is building and maintaining relationships. Effective listening skills are underrated and underused by far too many people, trying so hard to get their own message out. Improve how you communicate and how quickly you can build trusting relationships through improving your effective listening skills. I am covering these five ways for how to be a good listener at work and demonstrate that you are really listening to the speaker. And at the end of the video I share tips on how to further improve your effective listening skills. Learn and practice really listening to others and they will be a lot more prepared to listen to you. Effectively listening to others is a very effective way to build trust and get your message heard. If you know more about them, you can tell your message to them which improves their ability to understand and take it in. My name is Jess Coles and if you are new here, Enhance.training shares people management expertise, resources and courses to speed up your journey to become a great manager. I have included links to additional videos and resources in the description below as well as the video timestamps so do take a look at these. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. So what is effective listening really about? You have after all been listening to others all of your life so you definitely have listening skills. Knowing that how many times in the last week has someone truly listened to what you are saying. You know that feeling that they were 100% focused on what you were saying, their body language is shouting that they are only focused on you and when they talk or ask questions they demonstrate that they have taken in what you have said. It is a great feeling as a speaker and yet it is a rare feeling. Active listening skills is how you provide feedback to the speaker that you are taking in what they are communicating and I use communicating to mean more than just the words being said. So let's cover how to provide non-verbal feedback to show that you are actively listening. When you are listening maintain eye contact, you know don't look around or stare towards their face with that kind of glazed look. Actively maintain your eye contact even when they look away to show that you are concentrating on what they are saying. Use your body to show that you are listening and following what they are saying. You add in small nods of encouragement in natural pauses of their communication. Hold your body upright, alert and attentive towards the speaker showing that you want to hear more. And keep your facial expressions alive and active. Avoid the kind of less mobile often frozen or glazed look we have when we are trying to think about what we are going to say next or whenever we are not really present in the conversation with our minds elsewhere. Keep yourself in the present and 100% focused on the speaker. Secondly, to demonstrate your effectively listening provide verbal feedback to the speaker. Again, in the natural pauses or at the end of a point made use short words of encouragement such as mmhmm, yeah, of course, I understand. You know, these words or phrases are short so that we don't interrupt their flow of thinking and speaking. Those using effective listening skills at work ask relevant and open questions to firstly demonstrate that they are taking in what the speaker is saying and thinking about it. Secondly to ask the speaker to expand on points made or to provide different information so they can better understand the points being made. And third, to guide the conversation while encouraging the speaker to continue. These questions don't divert the topic of the conversation, they keep it on what the speaker is talking about. These questions are part of the natural back and forth in a conversation. When they ask you questions or wait for you to contribute, keep your answers short and concise and then ask a question to get the speaker to continue with their subject. Finally paraphrasing or repeating parts of the conversation and providing short summaries are further ways we can demonstrate to the speaker we are actively listening to what they are saying and taking it in. To be effectively listening, you must keep the conversation focused on what the speaker is talking about, not what you want to talk about. Third, when using effective listening skills, keep your mind open to what is being communicated to you. There have been so many times that I thought I understood a situation yet after asking questions and listening I realised that I was wrong and needed to change my assumptions or the solution that I had in mind. If you don't accept that your assumptions or preconceptions might be wrong, no matter how hard you might go through the motions of listening, you won't take in the full implications of what is being communicated. So keep an open mind as you listen to others. This massively increases the value of actively listening to others. Fourth, when using effective listening skills for managers, be very conscious of the nonverbal clues the speaker is communicating. Do they look relaxed or are they a bit nervous? Are they confident, too confident or not confident enough? Is their nonverbal communication aligned with their verbal messaging? If not, ask questions to find out why. I found out some of the worst problems and the best solutions by spotting this behaviour and nicely asking questions until I understood why the verbal and nonverbal messaging was confused. As you are actively listening to the speaker, also think about what is not being said. What areas are they avoiding that seem odd not to include? Has the speaker communicated their needs or wants clearly? And just remember, the speaker may not be conscious of what they really want or need. Effectively listening and asking questions can be very valuable in helping them understand what they want. Fifth, when using effective listening skills, take action and follow up. There is no stronger message than taking action to demonstrate that you've been listening carefully, taken in everything they have told you and considered it. Your action might be to implement their suggestions or agree to their request or confirm their decision or to help and support them with a particular issue. Even if you're telling them about why you are not going to do what they've asked or suggested, explaining why and bringing up their points in your discussion is a strong demonstration that you have effectively listened. So, as promised, tips to further improve your effective listening skills as a manager. Improving your effective listening skills, particularly as a manager, is one of the best time investments I can suggest you make. You learn a huge amount through actively listening to team members and colleagues. I personally love learning and figuring out solutions to problems and I've found that developing my effective listening skills as a manager has been absolutely invaluable to become successful as a manager. Everyone likes talking to those who truly listen to them. So why do so few people improve their listening skills and become above average listeners? Effective listening is a choice, yet we have to actively commit to listening to others. Effective listening is fairly hard work, which is why so many choose to remain average listeners. The good news is that like all skills, effective listening becomes easy with practice. We get better at it and use less energy actively listening for the same benefit. A good starting point to improve your own effective listening skills is to make time to listen to yourself. You'd be aware of your own emotions and responses in every situation you can. What do you fear and what do you want or need? Building conscious knowledge of ourselves and our reactions gives us a better understanding of them and better control over them. With better control, we find it easier to put them aside and be fully prepared to listen to the other person rather than worrying about how to deal with our own reactions and sensitivities. Active or effective listening is all about the other person and making them feel safe and comfortable sharing their thoughts, emotions and ambitions with you. So in summary, improving effective listening skills in my view is a vital investment to make, particularly as a manager. If you don't listen very well, you will not learn nearly as much, which will make it harder for you to do your job. And if you don't effectively listen to your team and colleagues, building trust and productive relationships will be a lot harder and take a lot longer. Can you afford not to improve your effective listening skills? And just to recap, we have been over, firstly, providing nonverbal feedback, secondly, providing verbal feedback, third, the importance of an open mind, fourth, be conscious of the speaker's nonverbal communication, and fifth, take action and follow up. And we've touched on the tips to improve your active listening skills. And if you have any questions about improving effective listening skills as a manager, please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.