When I first entered the workforce, a senior once told me: “There is one workplace skill you must master in your first year on the job, and that is listening.” In a survey of 1,000 people In a workplace survey of workplace executives who were asked to list their desired workplace skills, listening ranked first. Explain that most managers consider workplace listening to be the most important workplace skill for a person's career success.

In addition to learning to listen in the workplace for personal growth, effective listening is critical to organizations, helping to increase productivity, improve quality and reduce costs. Conversely, ineffective listening can have many detrimental effects on organizations and individuals. So, what barriers affect workplace listening?

Barriers to effective workplace listening:

One study showed that the average listener can only remember about 50% of the information after listening to a 10-minute speech, and less than 25% after 48 hours Content.

When communicating and communicating with people, there are three types of "noise" that can hinder effective listening: environmental, physical, and psychological.

Workplace Listening Barrier 1: The Environment

When we communicate or talk with people, if we are in a noisy environment, it will definitely make it difficult to receive information because of inaudibility. An overly stuffy office or uncomfortable chair can also be uncomfortable, which can lead to poor hearing and communication.

Of course, there are also some of the communication tools we take for granted, like ringtones, text messages, and emails, that distract us.

Workplace Hearing Disorder 2: Physiological

Some people's inability to listen effectively may be due to physiological reasons, such as hearing deficits or slow processing of information in the brain, which may also result in the inability to effectively receive information from others.

Workplace Hearing Disorder 3: Psychology

Relative to the above two, the most common and scary barriers to effective listening are psychological barriers, such as mind wandering, egocentrism, ethnocentrism, fear of losing face, information overload, etc.

4 types of listening in the workplace

Sociologists tell us that not everyone listens the same way, and everyone has a specific type of workplace listening or workplace listening habits.

1. Relational Workplace Listening

Relational listening is about understanding how others are feeling, sensing their emotions, and giving them quick responses. What they care most about is their emotional connection with others.

The main advantage of this type of listening is that the person "listening" is more comfortable and therefore more satisfied with relationships and life. The downside is that "listeners" tend to become overly involved in other people's emotions and even lose the ability to evaluate the value of other people's information, internalize and adopt those perspectives.

2. Analytical workplace listening

The habit of analytical listening is to listen to the details and analyze the problem from different perspectives. It is not only content to have information, but is more inclined to think systematically.

The advantage of this type of listener is that their analytical value is especially important when the problems they face are particularly complex, but this approach is time-consuming and labor-intensive and takes a long time to reach a conclusion.

3. Task-oriented workplace listening

People who prefer task-oriented listening are most concerned with efficiency, and they are preoccupied with getting the task done.

These types of listeners are often impatient and want to communicate straight to the point, which helps the task run efficiently in a fast-paced business environment.

4. Critical Workplace Listening

Critical listeners have a strong willingness to analyze information, tend to focus on accuracy and consistency, and are accustomed not only to trying to understand the intent of the conversation, but also to assess the quality of the conversation.

Critical listening is very effective when the goal of the conversation is to investigate a specific issue, such as in a financial audit or a police investigation. However, critical listening can easily demotivate the other person and can easily be seen as overly critical.