Listening is one of the key skills that a person should be possessing. It’s a beautiful combination of hearing what the other person has to say while at the same time being able to involve oneself into their thought. Listening is considered as a language skill but moreover overlaps itself into the space of a soft skill.

The most important skills that any person should possess are reading, writing, speaking and listening but I personally believe the most importance has to be given to listening. In this digital age, through all this noise many people take refuge in their headphones rather than listening to the sound out there, the unique frequency bands and the beautiful amalgamation of how disturbance carries so much information that we can’t just comprehend. When we hear closely, we can clearly distinguish the sounds, a street hawker selling his fruits ad vegetables, the noisy traffic, the beautiful synchronous music that the tea vendors made by rattling the glasses with the spoon, the birds chirping, dogs barking and so many more. All these sounds are lost because we fail to listen, we hear passively and do not want to make sense out of this information. The psychological process, which involves making meaning out of what we hear, is the lost art of listening.

Why do I call it the lost art? Well … Listening is one of the toughest soft skills to master. Since history began, mankind could never master the art of listening which resulted in recording of that information which they listened, initially on stones and later onto leaves, paper and now digitally. All this information present in this format has resulted in people become lesser and lesser attentive because of the fact that this information can be recalled anytime they wanted.

As a CEO/CTO or a manager, having the skill of listening, plays a very important role in resolving conflicts within an organization. Though listening can be classified into many different categories appreciative, critical, empathetic and evaluative listening are the skills that are required in order to manage people in an efficient manner while at the same time maintaining progress within an organization. At the school level, listening is one of the most important skills a student has to learn, this process involves hearing, thinking, learning, recalling and judging the content that he/she has listened to. I believe that schools have to teach children this art so that the children have the flexibility and courage to question what they’ve heard, increase their memory capability while at the same time, learn to accept others’ view point completely.

A personal reason why I feel listening is the most important soft skill is because of its ability to keep relationships together. Many a times, two friends fight due to silly reasons most of which are due to miscommunication. In some cases they end up not talking to each other rather than sitting down calmly and resolving the issues. One of these experiences happened with the software development team that I lead, A person blamed the other for something and both of them got into a heated argument which slowly turned into cursing each other. I called them off and sent them to two separate locations. Then I called each one of them one by one and asked them to narrate the incident. As expected both of them had a different point they wished to convey to each other and disagreement over that resulted in a heavy argument. Later I called in both of them at once and explained them the complete situation. It was then that I realized cutting short a person as he/she speaks and not hearing them completely before going into the process of listening creates a lot of problems and especially those which escalate very quickly. Resolving such problems can only be done by clear communication between the two parties, by giving them a medium to do so, they understood each other’s mistake, which brought them closer together and at the same time the harmony in the team was brought back resulting in a much faster work progress.

Listening also plays an important role in maintaining relationships in families, Men expect women to listen to them and vice versa because spending a lifetime with someone who cannot appreciate what you’re saying is a life sentence.

The more you listen, you realise that not only you become a better problem solver but also a better person. It is not just about listening to the words that are thrown at you, it is about understanding their meaning, how they are emotionally charged, the implications and above all: what they are transmitting. Listening is a skill, a skill that’s not being taught in schools. Effectively teaching listening in our schools could transform the educational system and bring out better leaders. An important part of teaching is modelling and schools would have to listen to the individual needs and concerns of students if listening were effectively modeled. This understanding would lead to the realization of how the artificial structure of classrooms and grades interferes with how children naturally learn. It would become listening as a subversive activity.

Listening is maybe the best-kept secret of leadership. It’s the best form of respect anyone who’s talking to you can get.