Listening Is a Skill

Effective listening is a learned skill; it does nit happen automatically for most people. In addition, there are few rewards for listening, but there are punishments for not listening. How do you feel when listeners are not playing attention to you by looking at their watches, doing soma activity or not acknowledging what you've said? You probably put down or even worse, you felt like you were talking to a wall. Listeners have a lot more power and impact on the talker than most people realize. 

In addition, many people tend to assume listening is basically the same as hearing-a dengerous misconception that leads to believing that ffective listening is instinctive. As a result, supervisors make little effort to develop listening skills and unknowingly neglect a vital communication function. Research show that the average person on the job spends 40 percent of his time listening, 35 percent talking, 16 percent reading, ang 9 percent writing. 

On average, people only are about 35 percent efficient as listeners. This luck of effective listening often results in missed oppertunities to avoid misunderstandings, conflict, poor decision-making or a crisis because a problem wasn't identified in time.