ABSTRACT
The difference between hearing and listening is substantial. Hearing is merely an involuntary physical response to the environment. Listening, on the other hand, is a process that includes hearing, attending to, understanding, evaluating, and responding to spoken messages. It’s a sophisticated communication skill that can be mastered only with considerable practice. And, while improving one’s listening skills is difficult, demanding, and challenging, it can be immensely rewarding. Many business executives, however, take listening skills for granted and focus instead on learning how to articulate and present their own views more effectively. “This approach,” says, Bernard Ferrari, a former McKinsey consultant, “is misguided. Good listening – the active and disciplined activity of probing and challenging the information garnered from others to improve its quality and quantity – is the key to building a base of knowledge that generates fresh insights and ideas.” “Put more strongly,” he says, “good listening, in my experience, can often mean the difference between success and failure in business ventures (and hence between a longer career and a shorter one).”
