The best way to engage your employees

The definition of the verb listen is to give one’s attention to sound.

The word is used to tell a person to listen to what you have to say to them. At the core of listening is the act of hearing and trying to understand what is being said by someone else. I believe that the power of listening is the most important ingredient for having a strong conversation, and for building a better workplace. I am also going to be talking about how you can better your listening skills for the future. Think of a  time when you felt like nobody was listening to what you had to say. Think about how it made you feel about yourself.According to the psychologist (Carl Rogers), listening is a big communication skill.  In his works he talks about how you should give your “free and undivided attention to whoever else is talking”.

Rogers also says that this one of the most effective agents for individual change and group development. Our education has placed an emphasis on teaching us how to communicate through reading, writing, and speaking. It doesn’t prepare us to listen to what others are really saying to us. Listening, with the want to really understand what the other person is trying to communicate, is the only true form of listening. Try to be a good listener,  and encourage others to talk about themselves. Try to become interested in what the other person is saying to you, and try to honestly see things from the other person’s point of view, and be sympathetic to the other person’s ideas and desires.

According to the book (The One Minute Manager), the best way to engage your employees is to make time to listen to your employees. Listening can help managers to get feedback and proactively find out about problems before they can begin to escalate. It’s also the only way for management to get to know their employees as individuals and ensure that they will feel genuinely valued at the workplace.

Waggl is a communication platform that sources feedback while also sparking engagement. According to the (Huffington Post), Waggl asked 500,000 business leaders, Human Resources leaders, and consultants whether they believe that listening to their employees and incorporating their ideas is critical to an organization’s success. The Huffington Post states that a huge majority 97% of them who participated in answering said yes. Then, when asked whether hearing from employees once a year via annual survey gives organizations the information that they need to be successful, 38% of those people said yes. These responses point to a significant gap between the intention and the practice of business and Human Resources leaders in listening to their employees.

If listening is important, how can hearing from employees only one time every year be an effective frequency of communication? Then, when the workers were asked the following questions: 1. Do the leaders in your organization do an excellent job of actively listening to the needs and wisdom of the workforce? And 2. How do you think your organization could be improved if leaders took a more active approach? 57% of the workers felt that their leaders do not do a good job of actively listening to what they have to say. The most said answer to how active listening could improve the organization was “I think that leaders would understand some of the complexity in the issues that lead to our suggested fixes.”So, how can all of us  better our  listening skills? 1.

Build a foundation on solid values. 2. Open your mind and recognize that great insight can come from anyone. The stronger we feel about a topic, the less likely we will be able to accept an opinion from someone else. 3. We don’t listen when we aren’t interested in something.

When we do listen, we tend to only remember about 17-25% of what is actually being said by someone talking. So, try to do your best and listen to what others have to say. In conclusion, listening makes for better relationships, and a better workplace.