Practical Ways To Improve Active Listening Skill At Work On The Go

Active listening along with other soft skills has become super crucial for the SEO professionals to take their careers/services to next level in 2022. SEO's exbit their soft skills mostly during their client meetings/ manager discussions to understand their point of views, drafting the scope, building good relations, and staying empathetic.

Why SEO Professional Should Be an Active Listener?

At work during my discussion with developers about seo changes to website, listening carefully to the reason team shared for not making the changes, help me to frame an mutual beneficial solution and get my work done.

The poor listening skills let the SEO professionals miss out crucial details mentioned during client catchup/meetings and can result in delivering inappropriate SEO projet scope. This alltogether hamper businesses/seo agency with escalations for not delivering the client’s requirements and lot more.

How To Improve Active Listening Skills?

My current role demands me to build active listening skills on priority to advance my career to the next level. So I have framed a plan for my self for improving the listening skills.

Active Listening Habits/Activities that supported me to become an active listener

• Take on responsibility of sheduling, organizing meetings, sending out meeting agendas/ followup emails for both internal and external stakeholders.

• Drafting & Sending Meeting Agendas help me learn how to focus on intent and purpose of any converstaion

• Practiced the way of prioristization of important meetings against my availability. This helped me improving an ablity to prioritize the most important SEO tasks against biggest impact, quick wins, resource allocation and time range.

• Sending out MOM(meeting of minutes) to the audience after every meeting. Also asking audience to feel free to include the missing details and others to test my listening skills

• Made an habit of keeping gadgets/devices away during any type of interactions with others

• Practiced to maintain eye contact with the speaker virtually or physically

• Learned to ask multiple questions for clarification to understanding more details whenever required. This allowed me to enhance my curiosity skills

• Also practiced to emotionally invest in what speaker is saying. This one is really the hardest to master.

• Finally, mad an habit of reiterate details at the end of every meetings so that we will not miss the details that are important i.e. clarify any points which are misunderstood or understood what they said

All these activities/habits helped me become an active listener, also enhanced following SEO soft skills required for my new level of effectiveness.

• Drafting or Writing an Email

• Speaking & writing

• Way of Prioritization

• Staying curious & Asking relevant questions

• Understanding intent, purpose and and deliver scope of work

• Master the way of Hosting Zoom Meetings,

• Staying with empathy

• Stake holder management & Networking

• Workplace relationship skills

• Presentation Skills

Resources For Improving listening skills and other soft skills required for SEO

1. https://www.3qdept.com/blog/7-critical-communication-skills-that-get-seo-recommendations-implemented-and-retain-clients-long-term/

2. https://ca.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/active-listening-skills

3. https://blog.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com/how-to-practice-active-listening-in-sales

Next Steps:

Please let me know additional activities, hobbies that helped you to improve listening skills on the go at work through comments.