The impact of listening in business communication

Introduction

Listening is an integral part in communication. 45% of the time is spent on listening while engaging in a conversation. Listening impacts the business communication in the sense that, understanding the perspective of the team members is possible.  Informed decisions are made at a better pace when listening skills are used in business communication. By listening carefully, the enhanced clarification of the requirements in the business deals is understood and avoidance of errors that are costly can be removed.

Not only that, active listening also helps companies and organizations to listen to the needs and requirements of the customers which helps the company to increase their brand value as well as customer service. In this assignment, the importance of listening has been taken up and discussed. For understanding the impact of listening in business communication, the process of listening and also the different barriers that are present in a diverse workplace have been taken up. 

Processes of listening

There are several processes of listening, and Receiving the message is one of them. The procedure is crucial because listening without hearing any short messages is insufficient. At this point, all that matters is that the message, which may be vocal or nonverbal, is understood. It takes being there and paying attention to the speaker to receive the message. After receiving the message the second process of listening and understanding.  In this step, the significance of the messages that were received is being learned and identified (Blanco & Guisado, 2018).

Being able to understand the message clearly is crucial because failing to do so increases the likelihood of making mistakes. Because of that reason understanding is an important part of the process of listening. After that, the process is remembering. It has been observed that failing to remember the message is evidence of improper listening. Following listening, remembering is necessary in order to retain crucial knowledge. It's difficult to retain the information and compile crucial knowledge without recalling what people heard. A message evaluation is the fourth step.

Since received and remembered information is useless without evaluation. Each listener's interpretation of the message will be different. A message's accuracy is ensured via review, and it also helps to prevent misunderstandings (Nguyen, 2020). The decision-making process is assisted by the evaluation. The last process is responding, responding is important because this helps to give feedback and also proves the active listening. The response always provides the summative as well as the formative feedback from the perspective of the listener. And this is considered as the last and final process of listening.

Benefits of listening in business communication

Listening has immense importance not only in personal communication but, also important in business communication. Some of the noticeable benefits of business communication include increased productivity, rapid progress, and better relationships among co-workers (Jonsdottir & Fridriksdottir, 2019). Effective listening in business helps in understanding the activities and policies of the organization.

Further, it helps in understanding the staff members including their strengths and weaknesses. Based on the potential strength of the staff responsibilities can be assigned which results in the growth of the organization. Listening helps in creating a cool, calm, and collaborative working environment where the opinions of everyone are heard and respected.

This also results in effective policy-making for the organization important for its growth and innovation. The risk of financial loss decreases within the organization where effective listening is carried out. Further, if managers listen to the opinion of employees patiently employees feel more encouraged and motivated to share their opinion. 

Moreover, employees get a feeling of engagement and contribute to the organization's growth willingly. Effective listening in business communication helps in effectively managing dispute or challenges to the organization (Yue et al., 2020). Listening to business communication plays an important role in the innovation of the organization. Further, the chances of errors, faults, and miscommunication decrease and save the organization from huge losses.

It helps in creating a better bond among the employees important for teamwork in the organization. Effective listening in business communication also helps in reducing conflict in the organization. Listening is also important for effectively serving the customers in the business. Customer satisfaction and loyalty increase in the business organization.

Different barriers in communication in workplace diversity

The different barriers to communication that might affect workplace diversity are listening, and speaking. Diversity in the workplace happens with members who are from diverse cultures and backgrounds. They are the ones who have the potential to create a difference in the process of active listening (Patrick and Kumar, 2021). Here every team member might not be able to communicate with each other in a better way and this will create a situation where the employees feel demotivated. Thus, these employees are not able to provide their 100% at work.

This might also happen that they converse and make wrong decisions and thus they approach conflicts in a different way. This sometimes creates a major challenge to them.  In many cases, the voice of tone also affects listening. The main problem that happens is that the individual does not speak the same language as that individual. This creates a difference in language and this creates more communication. Whenever two individuals speak in different languages it is very difficult to communicate and this leads to misunderstandings and misinterpretations between the two people.

The cultural barriers also pose another barrier in the means of communication and this difference in culture and norms eventually creates a difference in communication styles. This eventually leads to more miscommunication and misunderstanding between the people. This creates a lack of awareness and understanding as these people will have no knowledge about their perspectives and experiences and this creates a lack of empathy in the process of communication.  Listening skills are the most important skills that should be present in an individual and then only the entire process of communication takes place.

Impact of Technology on listening abilities

Technological impact on listening abilities has been seen in workplace communication. The introduction of video and audio conferencing has increased the facilities of active listening in business. As video conferencing can be taken up from any remote part of the world, increased communication has been possible. Increased listening skills because of the communication facilities have helped quicker communication allowing the people to listen in an appropriate manner.

Access to voice recordings and podcasts has helped in the increased listening skills of the people. Another technological invention is the interactive learning (Ra et al., 2019). Different tools of interactive learning like voice recognition apps and language learning apps are present that helps in the removal of any problems present in the business environment. The technology of speech recognition can allow people with hearing impairment to participate in the business meetings. This has reduced the barriers in effective communication and has increased the concept of an inclusive workplace. 

Transcription services have made it easier for the transcription of the video and audio content more accurately which again improves the listening quality. Active listening also comes from the aid of these technological advancements. Transcription services are very useful in areas of legal and healthcare business environments where the necessity of accurate transcription can be stressed (Ruben et al., 2021). Several tools of collaboration again help an individual to improve their listening skills. Team chat apps and platforms of project management allow the team members to communicate easily. Sharing of information in real-time and tracking the progress requires the complete attention of team members is required. 

Conclusion

It can be concluded with that effective listening is crucial for successful business communication. It is essential for developing relationships, resolving disagreements, and for achieving shared objectives. Those who actively listen to others can better grasp their needs, viewpoints, and concerns and respond to them accordingly. Meetings become more fruitful as a result, and teamwork and customer relations also improve. The many listening processes have been covered in the study.

People can make wise decisions by listening and basing them on correct and pertinent information. It assists individuals in determining the reliability of sources, weighing their options, and selecting the most appropriate action. Better business results and more profitability follow from this.  The study has also discussed the several benefits of listening in business communication and how listening helps in business communication also. The study has also described how different barriers in communication and how that impact workplace diversity as well. 

References

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Jonsdottir, I. J., & Fridriksdottir, K. (2019). Active listening: Is it the forgotten dimension in managerial communication? International Journal of Listening, 34(3), 178–188. 

Mukhtar, M., Risnita, R., & Prasetyo, M. A. (2020). The influence of transformational leadership, interpersonal communication, and organizational conflict on Organizational Effectiveness. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL REVIEW, 2(1), 1–17. 

Nguyen, M. T. (2020). Understanding listening comprehension processing and challenges encountered: Research perspectives. International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 9(2), 63–75. 

Patrick, H.A. and Kumar, V.R. (2021) “Managing workplace diversity,” SAGE Open, 2(2), p. 215-461. Available at: 

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Yue, C. A., Men, L. R., & Ferguson, M. A. (2020). Examining the effects of internal communication and emotional culture on employees’ organizational identification. International Journal of Business Communication, 58(2), 169–195.