First off, let us get a grasp on the meaning of the word listen. In a simpler term, listen/listening is the act of paying attention to a sound or taking note of a sound. Now if we compare it with hear/hearing, we will see that you don’t need to pay attention to hear a sound. If you are not a deaf person, you must hear sounds every time, but you don’t listen every time. By listening, you are taking conscious note of the meaning of the sound; if it is either a song or noise from the immediate environments.
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In its essence, to listen or the ability to be a good listener is a skill everyone must have if we want to build better relationships with people in our immediate environment and at our places of work.
Just stop for a moment and imagine what our world will look like if everybody is talking at the same time and no one is listening, pretty sure we are going to have a chaotic world. Also, our world will be a large land mass filled up with naïve people because for instance people that are supposed to teach us won’t be needed since they won’t be listened to and as a result the world will happily swim in ignorance.
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Now, let us take things into perspective to see the supposed benefits of listening. From my personal experience: I attended a free internet business development seminar last year to increase my knowledge in the online business world. At the beginning of the lecture, the facilitator announced that at the end of the lecture, there will be free packages (a t-shirt having a beautiful logo of the seminar organizer’s company and the seminar theme, a flash drive and a comprehensive eBook) for all the attendees. I was quite delighted and instinctively I turned around to see smiles on the faces of the attendees. Of course, who doesn’t like free stuffs? At the end of the lecture, so many attendees heaved a sigh of relief (as they anticipate the freebies earlier announced) for it was a lengthy lecture. The freebie was given as promised but also some questions pertaining to the lecture was asked in a bid to give extra assistance to the person(s) that got the answers right in starting their internet business till it break even.
The attendees were shocked at this! if so many of them had listened to the facilitator throughout the lecture, they would have benefited from the extra assistance but I presume that they had their mind fixed on the freebie and paid very less attention to the lecture. I and three other attendees benefited from the extra assistance and I was so happy I had developed my listening skills years earlier.
You need to be a good listener; to excel at business presentations and closing deals thereafter, to perform brilliantly in school, to be a good parent cum adviser to your children, to be a good companion to your partner especially in critical situations etc. the list they say is endless.
If you should interview notable billionaires/resourceful persons around the world; Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill gates, Aliko Dangote, Richard branson, Warren Buffett to mention but a few, you will realize that they possess this high profile skill (the listening skill). This skill has helped them to successfully close huge business deals and form a strong network with high profile persons and companies thereby quadrupling their wealth and contributing largely to the world.
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So next time you are in a conversation, endeavor to shut all distractions and listen consciously without interrupting the speaker. Be sure the speaker is done talking before you start talking, because the truth is when you interrupt someone halfway in his/her sentence, the complete sentence might be gone forever if the speaker fail to recall the sentence he was earlier making. That forgotten sentence probably would have been the game changer for you in your area of specialty.
Even if you already know what the speaker is talking about, keep on listening because chances are that you might still learn something new in the process.
I wish you a good listening experience even in the midst of our noisy world. We all are still learning and apart from the reading feature there is no other major feature to add to the learning curve if not the listening feature.
STAY SAFE!