Soft Skills lesson 4 : Listening skills

Soft Skills lesson 4  : Listening skills


Embarrasing situations and myself run parallel to each other in life. My indiscretions have become so grave and frequent that that I want to forget the incident the moment it happens. Probably, I am too mortified to accept the kind of awkwardness I have put myself into and sometimes others aswell.


As they say,"Commit mistakes, but do not repeat them. Make new ones."

So, I have now resolved to look into my embarassing encounters and learn some perennial lessons from them.Trust me, it is like living your own clumsiness all over again, going through the 'What a fool I am' phase afresh, accompanied by an apologetic smile, flushed cheeks, something churning in tummy, and a deep desire to erase the incident from either memory or life..

Well, after extracting enough courage from inside myself, I am reflecting on my recent faux pas and trying to learn a lesson from it too. I was at my husband's colleague's place, who had thrown a farewell party for us as we leave London for good. There were other colleagues and their families aswell. Now, we have all known each other for over a couple of years and share a good rapport.. Me and a colleague's wife were sitting across each other on the dinner table and a third lady was standing closely overlooking us from the open kitchen plan. This lady from across the table, passed a polythin bag to me saying " This is your hubby's jacket ( which he had left at our place last month). Without listening to the bracketed words, I chose to say "What is the need for this? I am not taking any souvenirs. We'll be in touch then why the formality. She restated  sheepishly" No No  it's your hubby's he left it at our place".To save both of us from the awkwardness, I asked " O really, when did he leave it". The damage, anyways, had already been done.

I had not only thrown an egg on my own face but made her uncomfortable too by making her feel that I was expecting a farewell gift.

Never before have I felt the need to be a good listener than the way I felt today. Had I let finish her sentence and then responded, I would have saved myself this piece of writing at 2 in the night.

Some research has pointed out that our listening skills have become so poor that even before people finish what they have to say,we are framing answers in our minds.

It is also pertinent to note that listening  is not the same as hearing.  Hearing refers to the sounds that you hear, whereas listening requires more than that: it requires focus.  Listening means paying attention not only to the story, but how it is told, the use of language and voice, and how the other person uses his or her body.  In other words, it means being aware of both verbal and non-verbal messages.  Your ability to listen effectively depends on the degree to which you perceive and understand these messages. Lesson well learnt !!!