How much workplace inefficiency would be eradicated?

Setting expectations for your employees is an essential responsibility that many business owners gloss over. Clear employee expectations benefit not only your staff, but your business as a whole.

If worker always fully understood managerial expectations?

Be aware that there’s always noise interrupting a conversation as well.

?This noise can come in different shapes and forms. Sometimes it can be actual noise when you’re in loud surroundings, sometimes it can be your thoughts or assumptions, and sometimes it’s a feeling or an emotion that you’re experiencing that might have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

The more you train your listening skills, the more you will be able to filter the noise from the actual conversation. And as mentioned earlier, it’s not only about what the person is saying, but also how they say it and how they speak with their body.

Every employee wants to be successful at work, and this can only be achieved if they know what is expected of them from their organization and their team.

?Regular discussions between employees and their supervisors should be conducted, including reviewing performance contributions, goals to set for the coming year and their professional development opportunities.

Ripple effect

Listening to your team members and employees will make you a well-appreciated and respected manager.

You’ll reap the fruits of your efforts in no time, because your employees will feel appreciated, heard and seen, and isn’t this what we all long for in the end? As a consequence, your employees will be more engaged, and it’s no surprise that engaged employees are also more productive and motivated to come to work and give their best.

Words have power

This brings us back to you and how you talk to yourself.

Yes, we all have those internal dialogues with ourselves. Sometimes there’s a critical voice and other times it’s a caring and compassionate voice.

Unfortunately, the latter is often not as determined and loud as the critical voice. Observe what kind of messages these voices transmit and do a little reality check from time to time to see if what they say is really true.

Disclaimer:?The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensure discussion or debate.

Thank you?...Once you manage to listen better to yourself and determine what is really true, you’ll see that it will also be much easier to treat your employees with compassion and empathy. Leading by example is after all a skill that one cannot deny.

If you model being a good listener, your employees will follow and do the same. Consequently, you will not only change the relationship you have with your employees, but also the relationships between your employees.

Like that a true culture change can happen and everyone will be able to listen to their heart.

First things first, to be able to listen to someone, you need two well-functioning ears and of course another person who you’re interacting with. There’s of course the option of you talking to yourself, but we’ll come to that later.

Hearing vs listening

In general, we don’t need to push any particular button to listen to our interlocutor, it comes naturally. However, there’s a big difference between hearing what the other person says and genuinely listening to the person.

According to Albert Mehrabian’s 7-38-55 Rule, words only account for 7% of the overall message that we hear and 38% accounts for the tone of voice and 55% for the body language.?

As you can see, communication and listening in particular isn’t as easy and natural as it might seem at first glance.

Do you want to add a word or two?....

Four ears principle

Moreover, it’s not only about what the person actually says (facts), but also about the perspective the person has and who they are (self-revelation), how the sender of the message relates to the other person (relationship) and of course the underlying intention the speaker has (appeal).

For a better understanding, here’s a graphic that shows all the four sides of communication. Friedemann Schulz von Thun created this model, which is sometimes also called the four-ear model of communication. It beautifully illustrates that we’re not listening with only one ear, but with four!

Four sides model of communication according to Friedemann Schulz von Thun

In the motivational world, a lot of thought is given to how, when and why we should talk. We’re told to express ourselves, to externalize our inner thoughts and feelings, and to explain ourselves more readily and more unashamedly.

And there’s good reason for this. Timidity isn’t a success trait, and in a world full of so much noise, it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

The mistake lies in thinking that the opposite of speaking is listening.

In fact, more often than not, people who stay quiet in meetings aren’t actually paying all that much attention to what’s going on — it’s difficult to hear the world around you when your mental space is fully occupied by regrets, frustrations and self-recrimination.

Misunderstandings Waste So Much Effort

Today’s world is more competitive than ever before. As a result of population growth and leaps in technology, the pace of daily life has quickened enormously. Everything needs to be done right away or you risk falling behind — or at least that’s what you’re expected to think.

The problem with this approach is that it prioritizes progress above all things, regardless of the exact nature of said progress, and sometimes progress isn’t the good kind but the damaging two-steps-back kind.

Imagine this workplace scenario:

You’re given an important task to do.

Eager to get started and work through it, you attack it with enthusiasm.

Once finished, you submit your work.

You discover that you misheard the task to begin with and must start all over again.

While it’s generally slower to get started if you genuinely and carefully listen to your instructions, you don’t run the risk of wasting a lot of time producing work that won’t be fit for purpose. How much workplace inefficiency would be eradicated if worker always fully understood managerial expectations?

Perspective is Invaluable

I’ve spent my entire life hearing my own thoughts and opinions on any matters I’m introduced to.

In the marketplace of ideas that is my mind, my inner monologue longs to forge a monopoly, and monopolies don’t produce innovation. They stagnate. Old ideas become set in stone, and any fresh ideas that somehow appear are rejected as foreign threats.

This self-obsession is exceptionally dangerous.

It is only by learning new things for which we must learn how to listen to them) that we can usefully develop our opinions, thoughts and stances on minor and major issues alike.

Instead of being protective of our ideas, coddling them, wrapping them in protective bubbles to keep them from harm, we must pit them against fresh competitors — any opinion that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny is not worth keeping.

Just think how much we can learn from each other; how much knowledge is out there just waiting to be passed along to someone, anyone, who’ll listen.

Open up your ears and you open up your world.