We get it: you’re busy. You have meetings and projects and tasks and emails and sometimes the last thing on your list is checking in on your staff. We’re here to argue the importance of listening to your workers. Whether you’re hearing complaints about a project or you’re scheduling one-on-one meetings, it’s essential to take the time to truly listen to your staff. Active listening is the practice of truly hearing input and reflecting it back to the speaker to show you understand. Here are three reasons you should use active listening with your employees.
1. Listening Builds Trust
When you take the time to communicate with your staff and utilize active listening practices, you’ll create a great rapport with your staff. You want your workers to trust you, and you also want to support them. The more trust you can build within your team, the more success you’ll see.
2. Listening Boosts Productivity
Five minutes with a staff member can often generate amazing results. Taking the time to catch up with an employee and listen to their updates can often lead to results. Even when you make the best delegation decisions, your staff may need information from you to continue their work. If you’ve assigned something to your team, check in frequently to make sure productivity is flowing.
3. Listening Fills You In
Even if you don’t partake in gossip, it can be beneficial to listen for personal reasons. We’re not talking about “who’s seeing who.” Listening to your staff can fill you in on pertinent info that will affect your day to day. For example, if you find out about a violation during a conversation with a staff member, you can use that heads-up to decide your course of action.
Need help leading your team?
Managers need more than great soft skills to lead a team. Human resources are vital to the success of an organization. If you find yourself needing recruits that can help your business succeed, contact Job Store Staffing®. One of our four Colorado locations can help you identify top talent ready to jump in, so check us out today to learn more.