Top Tip: The Art of Listening

Bhavini our awesome Production Manager, graces us with this weeks Top Tip on the art of listening!

She has some great advice for when it comes to dealing with frustrating situations, and her personal discovery of the the art of listening…

Do not listen to reply, but to understand.
Evaluate and then respond.

There are often times when we are frustrated with a team member, client or situation, and as human beings we have the tendency to have an outburst. Unfortunately, this isn’t the most constructive way to respond to a situation, and it usually comes along with some unfavourable consequences.

None of us are perfect, I’m certainly not, and there isn’t a magical fix to the art of frustration… but I am trying to master the art of listening.

Just by listening to others, I have gradually seen myself becoming less impatient and impulsive over the years… so something must be working!

But alongside the listening, I have two other tricks to disperse the frustration:

• Type everything out that is running through your mind, either on a notepad or an email- just make sure you don’t send it to anyone!
• “Idiots react”- so avoid saying something that you’d know that you would regret later. It’s a phrase a former boss of mine once used, and he has been a great mentor for me over the years.

So there you have it, who’d have thought the art of listening would be so important.
There’s lots of books on the subject why not swot up!