Communication Skills: Application of Listening, Feedback, Questioning

This essay delves into the significance of communication skills in the workplace, focusing on three key interpersonal skills: listening, feedback, and questioning. It begins by defining communication and highlighting its importance in fostering teamwork and preventing errors. The essay then explores the benefits of active listening, emphasizing its role in gathering information, building relationships, and identifying problems. It discusses the importance of asking questions to gain clarity, save time and money, and understand issues thoroughly. Furthermore, the essay examines the role of feedback in motivating employees, correcting mistakes, and aligning individual performance with organizational goals. The essay provides real-world examples and references academic sources to support the arguments. The essay concludes by summarizing the importance of these skills in achieving effective communication, enhancing teamwork, and promoting efficiency across various professional settings.

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Business communication skills
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Communication is the act of passing information from a person to another, and it
involves a message, a recipient and the sender of the message. Excellent communication skills
are very important in every place of work because one cannot work alone and need to
communicate with others in the process of working. It’s through good communication that
people are able to work as a team. Workers have to report to their employers. The manager has to
brief workers on what they are expected to deliver. Poor communication can cause mistakes and
therefore leads to failure. Effective communication has many benefits such as, avoiding
confusion, managing workers differences, solving problems and establishing a strong team.
Effective communication involves skills such as listening, questioning, and feedback. Each skill
is very important for good communication (MacCutcheon, Hurtig, Pausch, Hygge, Fels & Ljung,
2019).
Listening needs one to concentrate in order to process the meaning of each word of the
sentence or all events making sounds. Listening and hearing differ in that listening require
attention and focus. When holding a conversation, one has to listen carefully to understand the
intended meaning by hearing all words, noting the tone and observing the body language of the
speaker. To be a good listener, one does not have to listen with the intention of replying or
winning, one should look with an aim to understand what the partner is saying. Active listening
has a number of benefits such as helping to strengthen teams, solving conflicts building trust and
inspiring people (Kennedy, Cheyney, Dahlen, Downe, Foureur, Homer & Soltani, 2018).
In case of a business set up an effective listening has a number of benefits on of which is
gathering important facts used to make the right decisions. Managers should listen more to
supplier, investors, and customers in order to get the collect information and then make
decisions, they should carefully listen to the investors who want to invest in their businesses and

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understand their real intention before deciding to accept their offer. They also need to understand
the suppliers to find out the quality of the raw materials they will supply, prices and the duration
taken to supply before they decide on contacting them. They also need to listen to customers to
know the level of satisfaction by their products and also find out any need of their customers that
are not met. This will help them retain their customers thus increasing their profit margins
(Shader, 2019).
Listening also helps the managers to discover underlying problems. A manager with
excellent listening skills will try finding out the story that caused the message or the opportunity
outside the problem. Listening is all about finding out something new. It does affect not only the
present but also the future. While listening to employee’s managers can quickly identify a
problem in the organization that requires his/her attention, they could also discover a profitable
opportunity by carefully listening to the needs of the people in the society. Manager with
excellent listening skills also have a good relationship with the employees, directors and other
stakeholders, people tend to feel appreciated when they are carefully listened to. As a result, they
cooperate and work to their best of abilities; good listeners have a more significant influence of
persuasion as they raise your spirit to shared feelings.
Active listening managers also appreciate what is done by others, through active
listening, they discover something they never knew about the contribution of others in terms of
ideas, energy, and results. When one decides to speak less and listen more, you will only give
what is required which makes a more significant influence. This avoids meaningless
conversations that may lead to conflict among employees with the management or disputes
among themselves (Mattick, Brennan, Briscoe, Papoutsi & Pearson, 2019).

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Questions drive individuals to come up with the answers by themselves. It helps
individuals to discover their approach of thinking and helps them to achieve set goals. People get
the right answers they require to carry on with daily activities in life, if they can ask the right
questions. In business asking the right questions has several benefits such as getting better
answers, learning, among many others. In a business set up too, asking questions has a number of
benefits.
One of the benefits of questions in business is that it saves money as well as time;
business owners may benefit a lot from asking. Getting better prices from sellers, better loan
terms and discounts made on purchases can help save the organization’s money that could have
been lost if there were no negotiations. On the other hand, allotting duties and requesting for help
saves on time. Employees also negotiate for higher salaries, more off-days and other issues with
the management, if they aren’t bold enough to ask for them, they may end up working under the
same conditions throughout their employment life (Arnold & Boggs, 2019).
It is through asking that the managers clearly understand the problem he/she intends to
address. The manager has to get clear and accurate information before deciding on a particular
issue; this can only be achieved by asking several questions concerning the issue. Managers also
need to get information while resolving conflicts among employees in order to make a fair
judgment, if need to know the root cause of the conflict from both parties, he/she can only do so
by asking several questions. Employees should also ask questions concerning their duties to
make sure they have clearly understood what they are expected to do; this enhances efficiency in
their work.
Feedback is another skill of communication and is the information everyone needs to be
effective at their workplace, and it helps people remain focused and allows people to understand

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how others view their work performance. In businesses, feedback is vital as it motivates and
energizes the employees, a positive feedback on their performance makes them feel satisfied and
productive; thus, boosting their morale. Feedback also enables the employees to keep on track
through correcting mistakes made on the previous task, and they also remain focused on
achieving the objectives set. Employees are expected to give feedback to their managers or
supervisors regarding their task, through this the management can know the effect of strategies
implemented to the business and decides whether to change the strategies or continue with the
same plan (Van Quaquebeke & Felps, 2018).).
In summary, proper communication is essential to all work-places for development of a
good teamwork and efficiency. Communication skills such as feedbacking, asking questions and
proper listening are very important to have a proper communication. While conversing people
should not listen to answer but should listen with an intention to understand the intended
meaning clearly. Asking questions helps one get a correct answer and also get the accurate and
required information, feedback is vital as it helps people understand how people view their
performance and also correct mistakes that could have been made in the process of performing
their task. In business, good listening skills help managers develop a good relationship with
employees, discover new and profitable opportunities and also get the information required to
make the right decision. Asking questions make it clear for employees to understand their tasks
and also get better working conditions, it also saves money for business owners. Feedback is an
essential communication skill in a business set up as it gives morale to employees and helps them
to remain focused in achieving the set goals, they are also able to correct errors done previously
(Hassan, Dias & Hamari, 2019).

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REFERENCES
Arnold, E.C., and Boggs, K.U., 2019. Interpersonal Relationships E-Book: Professional
Communication Skills for Nurses. Saunders.
Hassan, L., Dias, A., & Hamari, J. (2019). How motivational feedback increases user’s benefits
and continued use: A study on gamification, quantified-self, and social networking. International
Journal of Information Management, 46, 151-162.
Kennedy, H. P., Cheyney, M., Dahlen, H. G., Downe, S., Foureur, M. J., Homer, C. S., ... &
Soltani, H. (2018). Asking different questions: A call to action for research to improve the
quality of care for every woman, every child. Birth, 45(3), 222-231.
MacCutcheon, D., Hurtig, A., Pausch, F., Hygge, S., Fels, J., & Ljung, R. (2019). Second
language vocabulary level is related to benefits for second language listening comprehension
under lower reverberation time conditions. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 31(2), 175-185.
Mattick, K., Brennan, N., Briscoe, S., Papoutsi, C., & Pearson, M. (2019). Optimizing feedback
for early career professionals: a scoping review and a new framework. Medical education.
Shader, R. I. (2019). Seven Aphorisms About Therapeutic Relationships and Listening.
Van Quaquebeke, N., & Felps, W. (2018). Respectful inquiry: A motivational account of leading
through asking questions and listening. Academy of Management Review, 43(1), 5-27.

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