What are People Skills Part I - Listening Skills

What are people skills? Part 1 Listening Skills

Often referred to as soft skills, those are skills that help you build better relationships and communicate effectively with people around you. This is easy when you get on with people. Soft skills are not something we learn at school, yet most conflict and misunderstanding you will experience is due to clashes of personalities.

Learning people skills can help you to adapt the way you communicate with different people. It will help you to understand the differences between you and those who are the opposite.

Listening Skills

The first and most important skill you need to learn is to actively listen. We can all hear and respond to what people are saying but, unless you’re really listening, with your ears and eyes, you will only pick up what’s important to you. Just like any skill, you won’t need to use listening every time you engage with another human being. However, it is important you know when it is important to listen carefully.

Situations where you might have to switch to active listening are:

-Potential conflict or misunderstanding

-Providing emotional support to someone in distress

-Coaching, Counselling, Therapy

-Negotiations

-Sales (yes, if you’re in sales it’s so important you listen to your prospects and clients needs more than you talk about the service or product you’re trying to sell!)

So, if you feel like you’re not getting through to people or that the circle of people who ‘get you’ is small, you need to start listening and adapting to others. How do you do that?

Remove barriers first. Read my article on barriers to effective communication to learn more about what is stopping you to listen in the first place. Once you become aware of internal and external blocks, it will be easier to manage. You can read my blog here.

The most important word in Listening is STOP.

STOP and remove barriers

STOP and think what the ideal outcome is you want out of the conversation. Is it to solve a problem? Understand someone better? Be there for someone in distress? Understand your clients needs?

Once you’re in a conversation STOP internal chat and the need to fill the silence.

START listening. It’s not just the words you need to pay attention to. Have you ever read and email or a text message and misinterpreted it because the tone was missing? Or most likely depending on your emotional state you read it in a way that suited you, only to find out that it wasn’t mean that way? This is exactly what happens when you concentrate on the words only. Tone of voice, timber, speed- all these matter in effective communication. If you listen carefully, you will be able to hear the words, the other person put emphasis on. If you don’t listen carefully, you will only hear words that are important to you. Another important part of listening is body language and non-verbal communication but more about that next time. (Sign up to my newsletter at the bottom of this page to never miss a blog)

What if you’re really listening but still don’t quite understand the situation?

You ask questions. If you need factual answers, closed questions are fine. (Closed questions require yes or no answer). If you need more information that Open questions will enable you to find out more. Start with Where, How, What, When, Who but try to avoid Why. Why? Because questions starting with why often sound judgmental. And in most scenarios, you want to avoid this. If you know conflict is a possibility, think about possible questions before you enter the conversation. Say them out loud and think about emotions your questions might trigger.

Avoid making assumptions at all costs. As human beings, most of us are designed to think of worst-case scenarios. This isn’t helpful in any conversation. Instead, be curious and ask questions. Clarify information presented to you, making sure you do understand what is being said from the other persons perspective. Even if you paraphrase (expressing the meaning using different words) or use the same words.

Now, onto the most important part of the conversation. And that is SILENCE. Many people feel uncomfortable when no one is talking. Yet we all want to feel heard. Silence is especially important after a clarifying question. The other person might need to re-think the words or meaning of what they have just said. If you don’t give them the time, they need to process this and think of other ways to say it, they might as well give up if you keep filling the silence with more questions or suggestions. Unless your job is to interrogate people, use silence to give the other person time and space to explore their own feelings and thoughts. If they ask you, why are you not saying anything, be honest and tell them, that you’re giving them space. This often opens the doors to more open conversation.

You’d be surprised how much we think we listen yet; we’re just hearing what we want. What we take for granted is the use of words and their meaning. Not all words have the same meaning to every person. And therefore, active listening is important especially in situations where emotions are high. Be it conflict or crisis.

Next time I will talk about non-verbal conversation, but you can also have a look at behaviours that can trigger unwanted reactions in my article: Are your employees behaving like children. Which will help you understand why some people or even you respond the way you do.