Slice of Thoughts

Continue from previous post Listen to Our Soul which emphasized listening to our soul first, now I will share what i have learned about listening to others. Listening can be a really powerful tool to achieve personal or corporate goals in different contexts; also different peoples and cultures, when we understand how to maximize its full potential through our brain ability to process information and expands our wisdom and knowledge throughout our life time.

There are major changes on the values of talking and listening. The imbalance composition between talking and listening of the modern world emerges because the westernization of world cultures happening globally. I recommend Susan Cain’s book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” as a good start to grasp the bigger picture of this matter. Dale Carnegie is one of the important ‘westernization’ icon of this century who has influenced and redefined the proportion between talking and listening.

I can guarantee, most of greatest persons we know and respect are usually great listeners. They are great communicators who able to build engagement through the conversations. Rather than just want to be heard and increase the volume of their voice of authority, they build an effective two ways communication. There are deep sensations built when we listen more than we talk. Human loves to be listened.

If you are a quite person just like me – in case you need someone to understand about being quite – we have another one of powerful skill to be developed: listening. It doesn’t mean peoples who love to talk can not learn about listening, but quiet peoples have a natural, intuitive tendency to be more aware of signals, face expressions, gestures from person to whom we listen. I can conclude that intuitive quiet people can really read between lines and somehow make us already know the direction of that conversation. Listen is not the same as hearing because in listening, we process the information carefully. We are actually on a purpose of having a better understanding about someone’s perspective and we should respect their opinions whatever they are.

Following are some benefits for being a good listener:
Accustom us to think before we speak. Listen to others with empathy and mindfulness help us to discern the right time to say something or not to say something, which can help us to give a right respond to the speaker so the communication process can going on smoothly and reduce conflict’s possibility. Keep in your mind, the thought that we keep as our solution right now is not an absolute solution for every problem.

Gain information. Everyone have a unique dictionary of knowledge which each of us don’t or haven’t had those experiences in our journey. Our life, career, knowledge is not mere about us. Our modern social life was first being established by collective knowledge of people from different backgrounds, otherwise we would be back to the prehistoric age when human cared only for themselves. Your perspectives as a writer from creative industry may be different from someone from hospitality industry. There are things you know, they might be don’t know. Vice versa.

Build trust. When we are working in a team, listening is one of the key to ensure a project will be successful or not. We are human, and we need feeling of being understood and  needed by others. With a good relationship between team members, trust will be established. The success percentage and productivity of a project will increase significantly. Trust create opportunity in the present and future. It will bring long term benefits to both side, it might be in personal or business contexts.

Things like mood, stress, deadlines, sense of urgency keep pushing away the role of listening within a proper two ways communication. We also avoid listening carefully to them who have dissenting thoughts and opinions to be shared with us, because we afraid to add stress to our mind. However, I think its gonna worth our time and energy. Research shows that 85 per cent of our learning is from listening. I don’t know the exact percentage of verbal and non-verbal listening here, nor the details of the research, but I am sure that listening is a very crucial point – same value as speaking – for them who thriving to be a better person competently and compassionately. Let’s start our journey of listening from now! 🙂

Postscript: Currently I am working as a graphic designer for a small creative editorial team, and also in a small start-up business, in which listening is really crucial for teamwork process since the temperament of each personnel is unique with their strengths and weaknesses. Those might contradicts elements of personal idealism between the members. Listen carefully and give correct response really helps us to understand each other better, reduce conflicts, and increase productivity.