Listening – A Basic Art And Science That Improves Your Behavior

By Author: Mark Bennett
Total Articles: 109
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In todays fast pace life, many of you forget the pleasure of having great gifts. These great gifts eyes, ears and lips bring joy and the ebullient mix of these three things helps one to climb the career ladder. You could even say that like Dish TV Offers these are very much important in our lives.

Seriously, the splendor of the sight, wonder of sounds and the enthralling delight of taste and touch are the joys that are needed in our life. Among these components of joy, the ear is the one which is ignored the most. Why? It is because they suffer for the crime of never being visible. Ears are as much as for hearing as for listening. This is what many of us are forgetting.

You may feel that both listening and hearing is the same, but there is a slight semantic difference between both these words. In our daily life, recognizing this difference may lead to a more meaningful social life and a greater delight in conversation. Hearing involves primary use of our ears whereas listening requires a coordinated effort from ears, eyes, lips and most importantly mind.

When we hear, we hear for sounds, words, sentences, ...
... and meanings. But when we listen, we listen for ideas, thoughts, beliefs and feelings. A conscious effort towards listening makes us alive to the person’s whole being. This effort in contemporary language is called as active listening. So you could term listening as an art and science. Now you may ask why. Well, it is simple. It follows the logical rule that a number of factors combined in an appropriate proportion produce desired results.

A liberal dose of ears, a delightful dash of eyes and a restrained use of the tongue will result into a meaning that may escape ears alone. When the essence of heart is added to this heady concoction, it becomes an art. By listening from heart, one makes a supreme offering to the other; an offering of attention, culture, and his or her own self. This simple act has the potential to transform an existing relationship positively or to create a meaningful long-lasting bond between two people.

Simply speaking, active listening compromises a set of activities. This set includes not talking and concentrating on words spoken, paraphrasing and asking questions for clarity, appropriate body language like nodding of the head or creating a distraction by unnecessary gesticulations, not readying oneself for a response or a battle of words. Instead of listening and being alive to value judgments arising out of speaker’s upbringing and culture; many people follow the unwanted step.

The modern workplace is characterized by frenetic activity and frequent evaluation of performance. The activity and performance can be excellent only if they have the sharpness of focus and meaningfulness of spirit. A person adept at the art if listening likely to have the benefits of both. Ears may or mayn’t add beauty to our visage, but definitely they add a sublime dimension to our personality. It is often said that big ears indicate to a genius and genius is certainly not a talent that can escape through the ears.

In short, listening skill is as important as communication skills. You need to have efficient and good listening skill to be a problem solver and a vivid team player. Many of the eminent organization development speakers have said that to be a good team leader you need to have a good listening skill. You need to hear out the problems, solutions, etc of the team members and make them feel a part of the organization.

Being a freelance writer and active blogger, Mark likes to share his thoughts with the rest of the world and to source out some great deals on home services like the one offered by Dish TV Offers