The hardest place to listen for most people in business communications is the teleconference. The Long long teleconference, you can't see anyone, they can't see you. The temptation is to, you know, do other work, perhaps read a good book, there's so many temptations, and especially if the teleconference is going up 30 4060 minutes an hour, sometimes three hours, you've got to figure out what's important. If there is fluff, you can ignore that. But again, my recommendation is, don't try to multitask. Because if a boss or a client says something really important, two hours and 15 minutes into the teleconference, and you didn't listen carefully, it could have severe repercussions to your career.

So we're going to give you more techniques later on in the course, taking notes, following up with questions, so Email memos summarizing what was said. But just be aware right now there are some things that are harder and easier to listen to than others. Your boss storms into your office stands over you and starts talking heatedly. For most people, it's pretty easy to listen in that situation. But most business communication isn't going to be that dramatic. And you've got to really learn a lot of very specific skills on how to listen for every single category of talk speech presentation that you experience in the workplace.