Forget about giving people another pair of socks for Christmas this year. Instead, give them the gift of listening. What do we mean by listening? This action, if done correctly, can be a thoughtful and important gift for your team.

When it comes to gifts for family, friends and colleagues, the unwritten rule is to be thoughtful. Listening is a skill that’s hard to master but is extremely useful. Communicating with colleagues and listening to their pain points will give you a unique insight into their workflow. The smallest alteration could make the biggest difference from office furniture to the software they use daily.

Recognising room improvement

Next time you have a conversation with a colleague or employee, pick up on anything that might imply something in their workflow that could be improved. An example from when we recognised room for improvement was around the introduction of our feature Form tasks. Recognising pain points can be from things like confusion or a workflow that’s taking up too much time. After communicating with our clients we could pick up on a pain point, which led us to the next stage; Ask: what’s the problem?

Ask: what’s the problem?

Actively listening will enable to you recognise there’s room for improvement. If you can pick up on some of these pain points, it’s important to ask the right questions. Open-ended questions like, can you explain what’s confusing you? How would you improve the workflow? Once you ask the question then you have to be silent and listen.

Be silent and listen!

Listening isn’t as simple as it seems. You have to keep quiet and let the person talking have the freedom and space to explain what they think about the problem. Reassurance, or even a nod, could be enough to let them feel like they’re being heard. Don’t butt in or try to answer; use this time to try to understand. When listening to our clients, we were able to integrate data capture and task management facilities that formed the Form Tasks feature. We used this technique to understand the client and through listening we came to a conclusion of adding the feature.

What to do next?

Hopefully, you’ve recognised, asked and listened to your colleagues or employees. You’ll now have an idea of what to do next. We want Ruby Datum to be the simple answer to the complexity, which is why we constantly reviewed the platform throughout 2022.

Therefore, maybe the present could be as simple as a new pen or a whole new platform for your employee to work on. Either way, you’ll soon find out what they’ll appreciate this Christmas if you just master how to listen.