Effective Communication - the Importance of Listening Actively

Effective Communication

People who are able to explicitly communicate are highly valued in organisations, in comparison to those who are unable to demonstrate a similar skill (Murhy et al., 1991). The exchange of messages such as information, ideas, emotions, attitudes, opinions and instructions between individuals and groups is known as communication. Effective communication has been a top criterion for managerial success ever since 1964 (Bowman, 1964). However, employers believe that many people, especially talented millennials in the current era, lack this essential skill (Hartman, 2011). Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to outline how active listening, feedback, high and low context communication and technology can influence the effectiveness of the practice of communication.

The importance of listening actively

According to John Kotler, “the problem with very successful people is that they suffer ego expansion. It crushes everything in its path. It also becomes a wall” (Kiechel, 1990). As a result, active listening is a requisite to avoid the irrationality of one’s perceived power. Caproni (2012) refers to active listening as a means to understand the perspective of the other person without any evaluation or judgment. This entails empathy, which is both a behavioural skill, which involves responding to other people in ways that allow the validation of perspective, and perception skill, which involves empathy to understand that each person has a different view of the world and hence, respecting the differing view. Nevertheless, active listening is often hindered because of the existence of impressions and stereotypes, emotional instability, emphasis on certain elements and the wandering of the mind (Caproni, 2012).

However, an individual can overcome these hindrances by listening with intensity, which involves directing all focus towards the speaker; listening with empathy, which involves respecting the speaker’s opinion and listening to the differing point of view; demonstrating acceptance through an open mind; taking responsibility for completeness, which entails aiding the illustration of information via further questioning, paraphrasing and clarifications; and, lastly, being genuine and natural, rather than compulsive. An example includes the leader of a team at a fortune 500 company, who felt the plateauing of career and hence, felt demotivated (Keyser, 2013). A survey of the leader’s team showcased that the leader failed to listen to its members by jumping to conclusions, and finished sentences before a member could finish because of impatience and an unempathetic attitude. This eye-opening feedback made the leader realise the importance of listening, which further lead to the decision of engaging in self-observation practices that enabled improving the listening abilities. Consequently, this was highly appreciated and the team acted positively towards the improvements in interaction. This example is a testament of Madlock (2008)’s conclusion, that a supervisor’s communication competence is the greatest predictor of an employee’s job and communication satisfaction. Thus, this most neglected, yet highly critical business skill requires attention to ensure strong organisational and business success.

Giving and Receiving Feedback: a means to ensure continued success

The above example of an unaware team leader highlights that feedback is an essential element in order to aid the development of employees. Feedback can be described as any information that reflects on an individual’s performance. It enables individuals to guide, inspire and strengthen efficacious behaviours and ultimately eradicates ineffective team working as a whole, subsequent to effective communication strategies. It is noteworthy to discern, however, that managers often resist feedback because of the perception of ‘hurting’ employees. This is a deleterious approach as it could be much more costly in the long run due to sustained inefficient and wrong practices and behaviours; thereafter, an employee’s redundancy can seem more emotionally painful because of long run unworthiness conveyed through the sudden firing of the candidate (Ashford, 1992). Hequet (2004) asserts that 60% of European and US companies that participated in a conference board study identified the lack of proper and adequate feedback as a primary source of deficient performance. Although this may be true, researchers believe that this can be changed by creating a feedback-friendly environment and by promoting effective feedback techniques.

One technique that effectively measures a manager’s performance is 360-degree feedback, which is a multirater used by all Fortune 500 companies (Ghorpade, 2000). This methodology involves comparing the self-assessments of a manager with colleagues’ rating. Research suggests that most effective managers tend to rate themselves similar to those of its colleagues, demonstrating high performance with the accuracy of perception. On the other hand, managers with higher ratings than colleagues tend to perform poorly and believe that ratings are inaccurate and not useful (Joan, 2001). Although this approach is promising in terms of improving overall performance, it does not guarantee success always, as managerial and organisational success is contingent upon the characteristics of the person receiving feedback and the way the feedback process is implemented. Nevertheless, it is important to identify that giving and receiving feedback alone is not a solution to effective communication, as other factors such as culture and technology may continue affecting the process of communication (Hillier, 2012). 

Understanding high and low context communication

People with different backgrounds and cultures communicate in different ways. This is important to understand to avoid any misunderstanding during communication. Rutledge (2011) suggests that it is often not dissimilar languages that cause the greatest problems but rather much more mundane and harder to detect cultural differences. One such difference is that of a high context culture versus a low context culture. Edward T. Hall’s theory of high- and low-context culture enables understanding the differences in communication in collectivist (high context) versus individualistic cultures (low context). Collectivist cultures exist in Asia, Middle East, South America and Africa, preferring group harmony and consensus to individual achievement. In contrast, Individualistic cultures exist in North America and much of Western Europe, where people are independent, action oriented and direct.