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Do you need active listening skills to function well in your job role? This article provides a guide on how you can develop the skills and include them on your resume.

 

What Are Active Listening Skills?

Active listening is the act or process of giving appropriate attention to the speaker while the various sense organs are involved. It comprises focusing on the speaker alongside comprehending the message being passed across and responding coherently.

However, there are several techniques involved or employed in the performance of active listening. An active listener must pay close attention to the content and goals or aims of a conversation. The manner of body language alongside verbal cues is also important to take cognizance of. Also, an active listener ought to be able to masterfully paraphrase whatever message or information that is being conveyed and ask intelligent questions. To crown it all up, an active listener must avoid being judgmental at all costs.

 

Importance of Active listening skills.

The soft skill, ‘Active Listening’ is very important in any organization.

• It helps leaders and directors not only organize workloads but also to train employees and subordinates to fulfill their innate abilities.
• Active listening helps develop powerful relationships alongside trust. This further creates an avenue for healthier working interactions with one’s colleagues, comrades, and team.
• Active listening serves as a medium through which conflicts, misunderstandings, and disputes can be resolved. Misunderstandings and misconceptions will certainly arise so long as people interact with each other. However, active listening is vital in such events as it helps people to view issues from diverse points rather than a single perspective.
• In addition, active listening provides the opportunity to grasp important information. One of the core aims of active listening is the need to assimilate targeted details from conversations and interactions. When a person calmly receives directives and training, such a person will be able to recall the information passed across easily.

Nevertheless, active listening aids in the development and building of more knowledge, understanding, and skills to go about daily activities both in the workplace and outside the work arena. It is often stated that “knowledge is power”, therefore, paying attention to details as one employs active listening makes it possible to gather, possess, and assimilate information and comprehend diverse fields and topics better. It also helps in empowering an individual thereby building confidence.

 

How to Improve your Active Listening Skills.

This section will highlight some of the ways through which a person can improve his or her active listening skills.

• An active listener ought to face the speaker and observe eye contact. Behaviors such as gazing out a window, texting, or scrolling through a gadget must be avoided at all costs. Distractions should be avoided.
• Keen attentiveness alongside alertness must be observed without being tensed up. Nonverbal signs such as body language and tone must be placed under consideration.
• Always create a mental image of what the speaker is saying. Empathize and visualize all that the speaker is saying without being judgmental.
• Endeavor to provide feedback such as sending signals to the speaker so they recognize you are actively listening but do not interrupt even when someone is delivering their message slowly. Rather, cultivate patience and wait for the person at the other end of the talk to finish.
• Ensure you do observe to keep an open mind alongside staying focused. Ask only necessary questions and not aimless or off-point questions. These questions should be geared towards clarifying any misconception or doubt that might arise.

 

Jobs that Require Active Listening Skills.

Various jobs require and employ the use of active listening skills to achieve productive and targeted results. However, for this write-up, we would be discussing jobs such as translator, principal, customer service representative, mediator, guidance counselor, social worker, and hairstylist.

• Translator: A person who aids people who converse in diverse languages to communicate or who takes a speecor write-upup in a specific language and puts it into a different language for people to understand. Therefore, a translator is a person or professional who speaks multiple and different languages. However, a translator uses his or her excellent listening skills to translate speech and text from one language to another. To be a result-oriented translator, one ought to have the ability to pay attention to details. Thus, the translator’s main aim is to change messages in a way that preserves the original meaning while sounding authentic in a new language.
• Principal: An educational professional that heads a school. He or She is in charge of directing all the managerial affairs, activities, and programs of the institute of learning. The Principal is usually the one who selects the annual curriculum, enforces the school budget, and passes down instructions to subordinates. To arrive at productive decisions that would help gear the upliftment, progress, and interest of the students: Principals go in search of feedback and advice from teachers, staff members, and parents.
• Customer Service Representative:  Communicates with clients and customers concerning their experiences with a product or service. Customer Service Representatives actively to customers to help improve their businesses. The feedback that is being gathered from customers helps service Representatives to know how the customers genuinely feel about the products and services being offered.
• Mediator: Aids the settlement of the conflict and also establishes an agreement between two or more people or groups by performing the role of an intermediary. This is usually achieved through the technique of talking. Actively listening to people speak is vital because it creates an understanding of the problems that disturb them. When crises, quarrels, disputes,and conflicts, it could be a result of the inadequacy of one of the parties. For instance, a parent may accuse the teacher of not helping out with the children. The accused teacher on the other end may be thinking that the parent proposed or expected duty is unnecessary or an inconvenience to him or her (teacher). The teacher may feel that by teaching and assessing the child academically, there is no further need to ensure that the child finishes his or her meal before leaving the school for home. The teacher feels he or she has done the utmost part of the teaching job. Therefore, a Mediator by listening, asking questions, and narrating exactly what ought to be done, gives room to the teacher and parents to make clear their expectations so that both parties feel that no one is found wanting.
• Guidance Counselor:  An individual who performs the function of advising students about careers and personal problems. Active listening skill for a guidance counselor is a gold mine that creates and helps clients open up and share their feelings and thoughts. This further ignites the acquisition of valuable information that would make the counseling session a success.
• Social Worker: An individual (profession) who is trained to help downtrodden and vulnerable people and societies to scale through the challenges they go through in their daily lives. Social work helps a social worker to impact lives positively. However, a Social Worker ought to be able to ask the right questions and listen attentively to people without being judgmental or biased. This would further help the Social Worker to understand the client’s problems and proffer long-lasting solutions.
• Hair Stylist:: An individual saddled with the job of cutting or styling hair to alter or maintain a client’s personality and image. Therefore, active listening ensures that the hair stylist understands exactly what the client is demanding in aspects of hair care treatment, cut, and style. It is very useful in cases where the client did not come along with a picture of what they desire to get.

 

How to Include Active Listening Skills on Your Resume

• Describe your Previous Experience: one of the best ways to include active listening skills on your resume is to discuss your previous experience on how you engage active listening skills. Discuss the methodologies you adopted and how you were able to successfully engage the skills. Use a remarkable experience you engage in that brought your organization tremendous growth and success. You can also share your mistakes and discuss the lesson you learn from them.
• Emphasize your Communication Skills: Listening is communication and to be an excellent listener, you must be an excellent communicator. You need to discuss how you are very excellent at communicating and how you are very patient for others to speak after you have communicated. Do not focus on the speaking aspect only but showcase that you are a good listener.
• Highlight your Skills: At this juncture, you need to highlight the skills you possess as an active listener, you need to take note that there are soft skills and hard skills. The following are some skills you can highlight:
  • • Eye contact
    • Smile
    • Nodding of head
    • Display of empathy
    • Asking questions
    • Short verbal affirmations
    • Ask open-ended questions
    • Paraphrase
    • Attention to the detail
    • Patience
    • Reflection

 

Examples of how to include Active Listening on your Resume

Customer Representative Resume Sample

• Answered product and service questions and gave information on related products and services. Boosted new customer scores by 10%.
• Placed and terminated an average of 200+ orders from customers, distributors, and agents in a week.
• Sustained customer account information database which includes canceling and updating customer accounts
• Drafted monthly reports on customer satisfaction
• Assisted to resolve a recurring product complaint by analyzing reports and identifying major process bottlenecks which led to a 70% reduction in the number of tickets for this specific issue
• Sustained a customer retention rate 40% above the company average.
• Won associate of the month Award 3 times.

Call Center Supervisor Resume Sample

• Oversaw 13 direct annual, quarterly, and monthly performance reports for call center agents.
• Designed tactics to boost agent efficiency, increasing performance by  20%
• Carefully scrutinized metrics to constantly look for improvement potential, eventually leading to noticeable 6% revenue growth.
• Co-operated with the sales team to develop promotional and marketing strategies.

 

How to Demonstrate Active listening Skills in an Interview

• Maintain Eye Contact: One of the ways to showcase active listening skills in an interview is by keeping your eyes on the interviewer during the interview session. This will help you to be able to nod your head, smile,or display another facial expression which will let the interviewer know that you are following the interview. You can always nod your head if you agree with what the interviewer is saying.
• Ask open-minded questions: this is very much crucial, one of the ways to show someone that you are following a conversation is to ask follow-up questions to the conversation. You should ask the interviewer questions to demonstrate that you have been listening to the conversation and also that you are interested in the conversation. Ask intelligent questions and don’t just ask questions for asking sake.
• Be Patient: be very much patient for the hiring manager to speak, do not be in haste to speak but demonstrate that you are a good listener by waiting patiently and following the conversation. If you are someone who argues a lot, you need to calm your nerves down. One of the metrics to measure a good listener is the ability to be patient.

 

Examples of Interview Questions to test Active Listening Skills

• How will you describe yourself as an active listener?
• What are some situations in which you demonstrated that you are an active listener? Give me practical examples.
• What do you understand about how to paraphrase what someone has said? Can you give me examples of how you engage this technique in the past?
• Do you think asking questions is a good attribute of being a good listener? If yes Why and If No, Why not?
• Have you ever encountered a misunderstanding with someone because they were not listening to you enough? How were you able to resolve it?
• In your opinion, is there a difference between empathy and sympathy? Can you explain the difference?
• What do you understand about body language, and how does it affect communication in your opinion?
• What role does eye contact play in communication?

 

Resume Skills