Active listening and the success of a professional relationship

Our life revolves around relational structures: we relate to family, friends, co-workers, people on the street, in the store, we relate to ourselves. Relationships exist only in the context of communication. Without communication the relationship disappears. Communication can be healthy, fluid or on the contrary - it can be difficult, and as a result: the quality of the relationship depends on how well we communicate.

The professional environment regulates, through communication policies, the type and quality of relationships that are established or can be established between members of the organization, but regardless of organization or communication policy, active listening plays the main role in initiating, maintaining and developing relationships.

Active listening is the ability to not put yourself in the first place, the ability to temporarily detach yourself from your personal emotional and cognitive baggage, to offer the person you are in a relationship with the right to be the most important, the expert on the subject, the main actor. The one who listens actively, does not assume that he understands everything "from the get-go", regardless of biological age, expertise in the field, social status, etc.

Active listening is the unseen, silent, painstaking engine of healthy relationships that lead to results, that save energy and bring with them the feeling of fulfillment, belonging, humanity, states that we want, consciously or not, at work - no matter the function and role we hold.