Guides to Effective Listening

You can appreciably increase your ability to listen by adhering to these practical suggestions:
1. Realize that listening requires work on the part of the listener. Listening is characterized by faster heart action, quicker blood circulation and a small rise in body temperature.
2. Recognize your own biases. Try to keep them from interefering with the message.
3. Resist distractions. Good listeners adjust quickly to any kind of abnormal situation. Poor listeners allow bad conditions infringe upon conversations; in some cases they create the distractions themselves.
4 Find an area of interest. Good listeners find ways to make even the most boring routine messages relevent to themselves and/or their jobs. Make your listening efficient by asking yourself: what is he/she saying that can be mutually beneficial? What is the most worthwhile point of his or her message?
5. Show empathy. If you show empathy we create a climate that encourages others to communicate honestly and openly. To see the speakers point of view.
6. Be patient. Don't interrupt the speaker. And delay making judgements about the speaker's personality, the principal points of the message and the approiate response until you understand what the speaker means.
7. Capitalize on thought speed. Most of us think about four times faster than the communicator speaks. The good listener uses the "waiting" time to think about the message.

These thoughts work extremely well in my interviewing of respondents whom I deal with while working for the Government.