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With the large number of people each employee must work around and see daily, and the wide spectrum of backgrounds, it is almost a sure bet that conflicts will occasionally arise. There may be personality clashes, misunderstandings, miscommunications, disagreements, or just plain dislikes. Whatever the reason, every employee, sooner or later, must learn how to cope with, or handle, conflicts.

Are you as good a listener as you would like to be? If not, this article will show you how to effectively restate, respond to feelings, respond to non-verbal cues, and to summarize. All of these techniques aie essential to becoming a good listener. President of Consult ing Resource Associates, a com pany that trains managers, supervisors, and employees; and a licensed building contractor. Dr. Knippen has written over one hundred articles, cases, papers and books in management, train ing, supervision and construction management He has a PhD. and an MB.A. in Management from Florida State University and a B.S. from the University of Hawaii. When another person is talking, what are you doing? If you are like most people you are thinking about what you are going to say as soon as there is a break in the conversation. If no break appears shortly you rehearse what you plan to say. Is that you? Do you know what the other person said? Can you repeat what has been said or do you merely know what you are going to say? Embarrassing, isn't it?There is a technique called active listening that can help you overcome this habit. Active listening is where the listener takes an active role in the communications process by applying four techniques: restatement-restat ing or paraphrasing a message, summary-summarizing the main issues of a series of important points, responding to non-verbal cues-acknowledging and verbalizing the presence and effect of non-verbal messages, and re sponding to feelings-acknowledging and verbalizing the presence and affect of the feelings expressed.Restatement is simply restating or paraphrasing a message that has been communicated by someone. For example, "What I hear you saying is that you would actually prefer a management position in manufacturing rather than one in sales." The advantages of restating is quite obvious. It gives the message sender an opportunity to hear in the receiver's words how the message was perceived.The summary technique involves summarizing the main issue or a series of important points made by the communicator (i.e., "If I understand you correctly, you feel like we should move ahead and hire four new people for the second shift by the first of the month, conduct the heavy equipment training program the week of the 22nd, and begin working them into our regular production shifts the following week.") This tells the message sender exactly what the person receiving the message thinks was impor tant. If the summary is wrong then the communicator has an opportunity to clarify the communication.Responding to non-verbal cues is acknowledging and verbalizing the presence and affect of non-verbal messages which are being sent by the communicator. In many instances the non-verbal cues will be different from the verbal. For example, the employee who just finished listening to

Discusses the importance of feedback to employees and how they can instigate the process. Provides details of a procedure for obtaining feedback from a reluctant boss, and supplies examples of dialogue to initiate conversations.

Numerous barriers lie in the path of clear communication. These barriers frequently result in the misunderstanding and misperception of messages. As a result, it is extremely important for managers to find ways to improve communication. One means of achieving this improvement is to focus on understanding the messages of others. While there are several ways of doing this, one of the easiest is through the effective use of questioning.