[University Affiliation]
Abstract
This study is aimed at assessing the best practices in workplace communication and has identified listening skill as the most important skill required for an effective communicator. The assessments were made based on the review of relevant and available literature in this subject. As communication is about conveying the information to the target audience at the needed times, it is required to understand the target audiences from different perspectives so as to get appropriate responses. The effectiveness of the communication depends mostly on the responses. Listening skill in fact provides ample opportunity for the communicator to understand the needs and capabilities of the target audience and this would facilitate in developing positive relationship between the communicator and the target audience. Listening skills are essential for making communication and interactions with individuals and teams, since it gives opportunity for the sender to present information in ways that would be acceptable to the target audiences. Developing appropriate communication strategies appear integral to enhancing the functional capability and competency of an organization. So acquiring and developing active or critical listening skill facilitates the communicator to devise the right communication strategies for making the target audience to be interactive and responsive to desired levels. In today’s competitive environment getting desirable responses and output from the work forces are essential for attaining competitiveness. So, developing critical and active listening skill facilitates right levels of communication at individual and organizational levels, which in turn could result in delivering appropriate outcome.
Functional capability of an organization relies a lot on how communication strategies have been optimized in alignment with organizational objectives and requirements. At work places, communication is found to influence many key organizational activities such as knowledge and data exchange, decision making, team work, coordination, etc and so it is highly relevant to adopt the strategies that are befitting to the organizational purposes (Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010). As communication is basically about conveying the right information to the right sources in needed proportions, the employees also should be made competent enough to understand and perform their communication tasks responsibly and effectively. Managers of different cadre need to display strong communication skills for directing and motivating individuals and groups in to desired action. So in addition to developing the most suitable communication strategies at organizational levels, there is need for ensuring that the employees also possess required and right levels of communication skills that are complementary. Though it is a requisite for the work forces as well as the leaders to possess diverse communication skills, listening skill appears to be the most important capability for becoming a good communicator as well as to replicate success and the details of the assessments are presented.
Relevance of listening skill
Communication is all about building up relationship between individuals and groups, through conveying the needed information to the target audiences at the right time. Information sent by the sender need to be deciphered, grasped and responded accordingly by the target audient or audiences. So, proper understanding on the target audiences forms integral to making communication effective and responsive. Listening to the target audiences through diverse communication channels appears to be relevant in developing proper insights and understanding on the needs and capabilities of the target audiences as well as for making communication to be effective enough to reach out to them.
According to McLean (n.d.) listening skills are essential for making communication and interactions with individuals and teams, since it gives opportunity for the sender to present information in ways that would be acceptable to the target audiences. In addition to that, listening to oneself is also equally important to perceive and express ideas in a more interactive and receptive manner. In order to substantiate his opinion regarding the power of listening skill in communication, he establishes linkages between listening and thinking (McLean, n.d). Listening to himself as well as to the target population in fact enables the communicator to think about ways that are suitable enough to reach out to them. In agreement with the views of McLean, Harp (2011) also claims that listening to the people in fact provide the reader ample opportunity to communicate ideas freely and appropriately. Ultimately, through acquiring listening skills, messages or ideas can be effectively conveyed to the user without any major barriers.
According to Harp (2011), the skills required for becoming a good communicator needs to basically focus on understanding the pulse and the expectations of the target audiences from different perspectives. The knowledge or understanding on the target audience has to be utilized for the purpose of devising messages or information in ways that would be acceptable by the majority. A person who has developed the skill of listening can easily understand the target audiences and thereby device appropriate strategies for conveying the needed information. This makes this skill to be highly important for a communicator to convey the messages effectively to the target audience as well as to engage them in desirable ways. McLean (n.d) claims that a leader without proper listening skill would not be able to deliver the needed message to the target audiences and hence such leaders would find it difficult to develop, enhance and maintain functional efficiencies in organizations. Such leaders or communicators who do not posses good listening skills would not be able to maintain competitiveness in today’s world as optimizing the functional capabilities of the work forces appear to be key to attain needed levels of competitiveness.
In the highly competitive business environment that exist in today’s markets it is imperative for organizations to identify the leaders and managers who have the capability or skill to motivate and guide the work forces in to desired action. Such a scenario calls for the managers or the leaders to be sharp and precise in acquiring all the relevant communication skills. Hence the need for acquiring and developing especially the listening skill and its application in their work places is great. Ergen (2010, p. 5) considers that listening has a pivotal role in communication and claims that the “adoption of listening or listening related processes among co-workers, either in upward, downward or lateral communication, plays a significant role in terms of functioning effectively in the organization”. In unison with the views of Ergen, Ferrante (2010, p. 5) opines that listening skills could improve the overall competence and capability of the communication process and its outcome in organizations.
Moulic (2012) has opined that lack of knowledge with regard to listening skills and its relevance in communication or poor listening skills itself could form a major obstacle in advancing further in the business administration and related aspects. This shows that strong linkages exist between listening skill and functional efficiency of organizations. This is particularly true because listening skill forms integral to communications, which have greater degrees of influence on the functioning of organizations. There exist certain wrong notions regarding listening skills, which need to be clarified in order to enhance the capability of leaders, managers and all who wish to advance further in leadership roles. The wrong notions regarding listening skill include that it does not require any proper training as this skill is a capability that is present in all individuals in different proportions (Moulic, 2012). But the reality is that listening skill can be developed and created through proper trainings. There exist different types of listening skills and it was found that active or critical listening skills would be effective in gathering wider and in depth knowledge on the subject matter as well as for getting better insights about the people with which they associate and interact.
Ergen (2010) considers that the individual who posses active or critical listening skills not only understand what is spoken by individual or groups, but they even identify reactions or goes even wider to collect more personal information. It is considered that active listening could lead the way towards becoming an effective and successful leader in future. Linkages that exist between competitiveness and listening skills also clearly indicate the relevance of listening skill in devising communication strategies of organizations and individuals. Building up effective relationship in different functional areas could also be facilitated through acquiring and developing proper listening skill. According to Conrad and Newberry (2011), through developing proper listening skill, managers or leaders or individuals would be provided with greater opportunity to understand each other better as well as to attain greater levels of collaborations between them.
Developing listening skills in fact better the opportunity to build up complementing working relations between individuals or teams as well as within teams. This supports leaders and managers in developing greater levels of functional efficiencies through guiding the work forces in to desired actions (Conrad and Newberry, 2011). Such competency building is essential for attaining success in this highly competitive environment. Despite lot of positive influences of listening skill, many of the leaders or managers have not recognized the need for building up listening skills at individual or group levels and hence they were unable to sustain success or competency to needed proportions.
Conclusion
Studies on the best practices in workplace communication revealed that listening skill could be considered as the important skill required for an effective communicator. This is specifically because listening skill provides opportunity for the communicator to understand the target audiences for diverse perspectives and thereby could develop appropriate strategies to convey relevant ideas or information to the audience. Conveying the information in suitable ways would incite positive responses from the target audiences and such responses are essential for organizations for building up competencies. Though different levels of communication skills are essential for becoming and sustaining as an effective communicator, a leader possessing all other communication skills except active or critical listening skill cannot accomplish greater heights. This is basically due to the fact that a leader lacking listening skills would not be able to convey relevant information to the target audiences in acceptable ways as the leader do not possess the capability to understand the target audiences. On the other hand, proper understanding on the target audiences forms integral to making communication effective and responsive. Listening skill is relevant in developing proper insights and understanding on the needs and capabilities of the target audiences as well as for making communication to be effective enough to reach out to them. Listening skills could improve the overall competence and capability of the communication process and its outcome in organizations and so leaders need to develop such skill to become effective communicators.
References
Conrad, D. and Newberry, R. (2011). 24 Business Communication Skills: Attitudes of Human Resource Managers versus Business Educators. American Communication Journal , 13 (1): 4 – 22.
Ergen, E. (2010). Workplace Communication: A case study on informal communication network within an organization. Retrieved July 22, 2013, from http://www.ergen.gr/files/WorkplaceCommunicationInformalCommunicationFramework.pdf
Ferrante, P. (2010). Risk and Crisis Communication. Journal of Professional Safety, 38-45.
Harp, A. L. (2011). Effective Change Communication in the Workplace. Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2011. Retrieved July 22, 2013, from http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/975
McLean, S. (n.d.). Business Communication for Success,v. 1.0. created by Flat World Knowledge and licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA. Retrieved July 21, 2013, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868990/
Moulic, M. (2012). Developing Effective Listening Skills to Enhance Professional Efficiency. International Journal of Business and Management, 3: 64 – 86. Retrieved July 23, 2013, from https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CFQQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fiamure.com%2Fpublication%2Findex.php%2Fijbm%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F272%2F266&ei=BmztUZXGAseMrQext4CgAQ&usg=AFQjCNGJN6aLAPIkb8jHCK0vv7Z_bTtnLQ&sig2=J0J6NF6lnohzzzFOtVNHdA
Myers, K. K. & Sadaghiani, K. (2010). Millennials in the Workplace: A Communication Perspective on Millennials’ Organizational Relationships and Performance. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25 (2): 225–238. Retrieved July 20, 2013, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868990/
