Listening is one of the top ten skills that consistently gets ranked by employers who are asked what qualities and skills they want to know their employees have, whether hiring them for the first time or considering someone for a promotion.

Understanding how we listen can help us improve communication, the results we get, and our relationships. We can hear and be attentive to someone's message but still not get the entire meaning of the message if we do not listen properly.

A typical dialogue involves a rotation of the roles of listener and speaker. Generally, a conversation will move along without any acknowledgement of how the parts and pieces interact together. Face-to-face, telephone, and even e-mail communication includes a message delivered by a sender who encodes what he says through his own perceptions.

Left unattended without effective listening habits, we may or may not get "the message'." Both the sender and the receiver have to engage their hearing...