Norris Wise
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, USA
Title: Listening and its impact on productivity in the workplace
Biography
Biography: Norris Wise
Abstract
Communication is a process of transmitting information from a designated source to a receiver, and providing feedback to the understanding of that transaction. In human communication, listening is a substantial part of this communicative act. Definitions of the term (listening) are noted by various scholars but most are germane to cognition; listening as a behavior has been overlooked. Poor listening skills hinder productivity in organizations; thus, this study focuses on listening and its impact (behavior) on productivity, which is relative to performance. Flynn, Valikoski & Grau (2008), posited for over five decades that business experts believed that productive listening ranks high on the list of priorities in the workplace. The purpose of this research was to determine what impact listening has on productivity in the workplace. Three specific objectives included: (1) to determine the impact listening skills have on productivity in the workplace, (2) to identify factors that influence listening skills and its impact on productivity in the workplace, and (3) to provide recommendations to improve listening skills to improve productivity in the workplace. A survey was used to solicit responses from participants from two nonprofit organizations, which provided quantitative and qualitative data. The results revealed that listening has a significant impact on productivity, listening skills training was identified as increasing productivity and that listening skills training should be implemented in the workplace.