Listening Skills Training

Listening skills and ability to effectively communicate are critical for everyone in the business arena.

Effective communication and listening skills are vital in sales, developing and retaining customers and winning business. Listening skills help us to effectively communicate with our customers. Your listening skills will determine how well you sell and your sales will reflect your level of skill and commitment to your customers.

The goal of these active listening practice materials for coaches is to assist your coaching course participants to improve their listening skills in a real world situation. The coaching tools focus on five main areas: eye contact, body language, listening skills, asking questions and listening attentively. These five areas of focus are equally important regardless of the type of coaching you are doing; however, in a group setting, asking questions and listening carefully to others becomes particularly important. This is because it is difficult to engage in a group discussion when one person's attention is focused on the action of another person.

An active listener is one who can truly take in the thoughts of another person and understand what they are trying to say. Active listeners are able to pick up the nuances of another person's conversation and are able to understand how another person is processing information. A good listener knows how to put himself in the position of the target of his or her conversations and can effectively diffuse any difficult situation. The primary goal of this training is two fold; first, to give the coach an overall knowledge of effective listening and conversational skills; and second, to prepare the coach to be able to effectively deal with difficult situations in a real-world setting. The combination of having a broad and deep understanding of how people process information and being able to apply that understanding in a real-world situation is extremely valuable to the coach and the company.

The second part of the program deals with developing good listening skills training. In order to develop good listening skills, it is important for a person to be comfortable and confident in applying their communication skills when communicating with others. Developing confidence in your listening ability is critical for self-esteem. When you lack self-confidence, you tend to sound mechanical rather than engaging with the other person's needs. By practicing effective listening skills, which include being attentive and paying attention, a person can become more confident when they communicate and this can have a powerful effect on their entire organization.

Developing the ability to listen actively requires listening carefully to the speaker. In order to do this, the audience must be heard over the speaker and not just the words being spoken. This is where role playing by the trainer is critical to improving the performance of the speaker. Rather than simply repeating the information being discussed, a trainer can role play and ask questions to help clarify points or clarify how the speaker is communicating.