Online Course Development: Listening Skills

This workshop is definitely not one students eagerly anticipate. After all, they already know how to listen, right? Of course we all know how little we all actually listen. Excellent listening skills is always one of the first skills employers tell us students need - and don't have! Convincing students of this isn't easy however.

A recent campus panel of marketing professionals was asked what the most important thing a new hire needed in a marketing position. I think students were shocked when the response was "great listening skills." They went on to explain that if you could not LISTEN to your clients and deeply understand their needs, you would not succeed. I remind students how true this is in every profession - sales, marketing, consulting and so on. You cannot satisfy someone else's expectations if you can't listen and understand them.

The Listening Skills workshop discusses active listening techniques. I then ask students to consider their own listening preferences. I go on to discuss how they can assess others' listening preferences so they can adapt their communication appropriately. The related assignment asks for ways students can recognize listening preferences and techniques they can use to adapt their communication to their conversational partner's preferences.