Observation at work is not about seeing something passively and randomly, it's a process by which you pay attention and follow up to gain insight, gather detailed information to give evaluation.
Observational skills are essential in all aspects of life and all work. These skills help people remember, think, and link related events to solve problems quickly and effectively. What are observation skills? What role do these skills play at work? How to practice and improve observation skills? Let's discover all the handy information related to this topic with Navigos Search!
1. What are observation skills?
Observation skills are ways of looking at things, phenomena, and events in detail with analysis to serve a specific purpose. Observational skills require you to purposefully observe, memorize, and link relevant things for optimal problem solving.
Fields of research, medicine, science, technology, and service require you to have observational skills. These skills help you to recognize the nature of the problem and give the most appropriate method and idea. Observation is not only dependent on sight but it is also practiced to develop better. The training of soft skills, including observation skills, will be helpful for the improvement of yourself and your career path.
Find out about the concept of observation skills
2. Why are observation skills important?
Observation is one of the critical job skills since it:
- Help you get accurate data and information.
- Detect problems well, which helps you have an advantage over others by spotting small details and information that people don't pay attention to.`
- Find the cause to solve the problem arising most skillfully and reasonably to increase work productivity.
- Contribute to improving communication skills by knowing the characteristics, personality, and interests of people through observation.
- Positive influence on decision-making skills, easy to be assessed as having leadership qualities, giving good orientation to people around, and being trusted..
- Easily recognize trends and changes in the surrounding environment, which allows you to update, adjust your behavior and improve your skills to adapt to that change.
- Build better relationships through the ability to understand the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of others through observation.
- Create advancement opportunities.
In general, observation skills give you many advantages to work more efficiently and win the heart, gain support and trust from people around you.
The critical role of observation skills at work
3. Do you have great observation skills?
Those with observation skills will feature:
Listening in communication
With listening skills, you can focus on the other person, observe how they speak, understand the message being conveyed, and respond appropriately and thoughtfully. When listening in communication, you should pay attention to the other's non-verbal communication such as facial expressions, voice, and gestures. When observing well, you will communicate effectively.
Critical thinking
Only with good observation can you handily gather detailed and accurate information, analyze all aspects of the problem, and draw well-founded conclusions. If you master critical thinking, you can evaluate, analyze, and draw accurate conclusions from that information effectively.
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, adjust emotions, and understand others’ ones. This ability will help you make good connections and is also a tool for efficient observation. By identifying the emotional state of others, you will learn how to react and behave accordingly.
Attention to small details
Attention to small details is also crucial in communication. This helps to reach and complete the task thoroughly and accurately. By paying attention to the small details, you will uncover the underlying problem or the message behind it.
Observation skills require many factors
4. How do you usually observe?
There are many ways of observing that you can apply such as:
Observing sight line
From the eyes, you will know if the other person is happy, friendly, or uncomfortable with you. However, to get it right, you need to use your concentration and observation. You can easily identify the other person's mood through the following ways:
- The other person frowns, rolls their eyes, or closes their eyelids means they are angry about something.
- When you see the other person's eyes naturally widening, their eyebrows furrow, then they may be afraid of something.
- The upper eyelash is relaxed or the eyebrows are lowered means that you are receiving contempt from the opponent.
Observing facial expressions
Emotions are clearly expressed on the face, so you will know they are happy if you see them smiling or they are sad if they cry. This is an easy way to help you recognize others’ feelings and get affection from them.
Observing ways others breathe
Observing the breath is also a way that helps you guess the other person's mood. If others breathe fast, they are surprised about something. We often can't dictate our breath, so this way of observing will help you come to relatively accurate conclusions.
Observing body gestures
Body gestures are non-verbal communication. Observing body gestures will help you handily recognize the feelings, thoughts, and problems of the other person. Each person will have different body signals. Therefore, having good observation skills will help you understand others' gestures.
Observing from different aspects
5. Tips to improve observation skills
Like other soft skills, observation skills can be learned and practiced every day for better development. By regularly practicing, you can make observation a habit and upgrade your ability to observe. Here are some tips to help you improve your observation skills:
Observe with purpose
You also need to observe purposefully and know your goals. For instance, if you want to become a more professional salesperson, you need to observe things that help you to achieve your goal and mistakes to avoid. If you have a specific purpose in your observations, you'll focus more on that and improve your chances of finding useful information.
Concentrate and analyze
Practicing concentration is not as simple as many may think as many problems around us make it easy to surrender our eyes, emotions, and thoughts.
You will not be able to recognize anything if you keep looking or thinking elsewhere without focusing on the other person or the problem happening. Focus is not just staring at the point but you have to put your whole mind in it. Furthermore, you must also train your analytical mind to assess things, phenomena, and people to have appropriate solutions.
Use multiple senses, understand emotions
People with observation skills will know how to use all 5 senses to recognize, analyze, hear, feel the other one, and understand the problem better. Besides, understanding emotions is a critical key to effectively practicing observation skills as the highest goal in all communication is to understand and accurately grasp the problem. Therefore, using multiple senses and understanding emotions will help you improve your observation skills.
Be patient
It's necessary to be patient when entering a new environment or communicating with strangers. If you are in a hurry, you may miss out on many small but important details. Therefore, try to patiently observe the other's gestures and actions and discover new things from them.
Be friendly and open-minded
Mood and spirit are significant factors for you to evaluate things. If you are happy and accept everything around you in a friendly and respectful way, you will have a more positive outlook. Openness will show you that the world around you still has a lot of good things for you to absorb and learn more.
Form an opinion, don't judge
To be a good observer, you must have a standpoint. Do not give personal feelings or judgment while observing as these will create unfairness. When your observation is affected by personal feelings or prejudices, you will no longer objectively feel what is happening. At this point, you only see things distorted according to your perception. A person with good observation skills will ignore personal feelings and look at things from multiple perspectives.
The secret to improving observation skills
Hopefully, the information that Navigos Search shared above has helped you have more great tips to develop and improve your observation skills. When your mind is in observation mode, you will be surprised to discover more details and new things.
With meticulous observation, you will easily achieve more success in your work or fields such as Sales, Finance/Investment, Human Resource Management, Insurance, Business Consulting, or Pharmaceuticals. You can find these positions right in the job directory on Navigossearch.com. Don't hesitate to visit our website to select and apply for a position that matches your professional capacity and work experience. You can also send us your CV for a chance to become a potential candidate in our candidate database.
Our consultants are all very experienced recruitment experts who are knowledgeable about each industry and the labor market. Based on a scientific recruitment process, our recruitment experts will actively contact and advise you on recruitment requirements and reveal how to negotiate attractive salaries and bonuses to help you shine brighter before recruiters.
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