THE ART OF LISTENING

Nowadays, most of us just want to speak, don't want to listen. In the race of proving that we know about the topic, we don't listen to others and keep on making out(thinking) next point to be spoken,  in mind. Ya speaking out on a topic is good and definitely stands you out of the crowd depending upon the quality of content you spoke. But, while doing so we should not forget that listening and speaking together is important for a productive discussion. I personally think listening as more important part. There are few points I can lay down to support this:

• You make a healthy relationship with the speaker.
• You can get a completely new view/dimension of the topic, so your knowledge base is increased.
• Your personality as a professional grows more.
• You can make better points by including all relevant views of others.
• Usually, the person who listens more and speaks less with relevant points are the one who gets more attention of other listeners.

How to become a good listener?
This question was going from many years in my mind. Why people don't give others the chance to speak. Why is there always a race of speaking only, by, interrupting others, not listening others and even in many cases, not allowing a person, known to be less knowledged for a topic, to speak(by different ways). 
        I understand that when there are a lot of speakers and competition around us, we, ourselves, have to grab our chance for putting our points, else we will be left aside. But why this race always exists even when there is no competition or a general discussion. Why intervening in others point and putting forth our point is becoming part of our every now and then activity.

I correlate listening as learning and whatever speaker are speaking as data. Then, even if the speaker's data, is wrong, you still learn. As in any case you are going to research about that data that you listened(and learn relevant part from it. Technically forming information from data :D). Having read many sources, I put some points into becoming a good listener :)

• While participating in a discussion, treating listening as an important part of learning and getting many other dimensions of the topic rather than an overhead on your speaking time helps to concentrate on listening.
• Concentrate on speaker and the topic by avoiding any distraction. Distractions can be your phone, laptop, TV, songs etc. If it's some work that you are doing then tell the person to wait. While doing multiple stuff together you cannot concentrate on speaker's data. So it's not true listening.
• Don't interrupt the person or change the topic.
• Use the data and find relevant information from it and use it while putting your points. It not only proves that you listened what others spoke but also creates you as the aggregator of the important points which is one of the important feature of a leader. By doing so you can also remember the factual data for long as you have used both the listening and speaking tools.

There are infinite number of things that are to be learned by us, as human. By treating listening as an art and motivating it, we welcome the world as our teacher.

Thanks for reading,

Nisha Mishra :)