Listening Actively:

1

Listening Actively The Receivers Challenge
"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of
listening when you'd have preferred to talk." -
Doug Larson
2
Works Cited

• Brownell, Judi. 1987. Listening The toughest
  management skill. The Cornell H.R.A. Quarterly,
  February 1987 65-71.
• Decker, Bert. 1992. Youve got to be believed
  to be heard Reach the first brain to communicate
  in business and life. New York, NY St. Martins
  Press.
• Decker, Bert. 1996. The art of communicating
  Achieving interpersonal impact in business.
  Revised edition. Menlo Park, CA Crisp Learning.
• www.Quotegarden.com Listening. Accessed
  10/31/03.

3
Verbal Non-VerbalCommunication

• Concepts
• Rapport
• Non-Verbal Messages
• Asking Good Questions
• Sincere Paraphrasing
• Active Listening

4
Rapport

• Being in sync with other people,
• verbally and non-verbally,
• so they are comfortable
• and have trust and confidence in you

5
Non-Verbal Messages

• What you do speaks so loud
• I cant hear what you say.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson

6
Non-Verbal Messages

• Bert Deckers book is titled Youve got to be
  believed to be heard for a reason!
• He discusses two factors
• The Eye Factor
• The Energy Factor
• What people see

7
Non-Verbal Messages

• Eye Factor What Others See
• Eye Communication
• Posture and Movement
• Dress and Appearance
• Gestures and Smile

8
Non-Verbal Messages

• Energy Factor What Others Perceive
• Voice and Vocal Clarity
• Words and Non-Words
• Listener Involvement
• Humor

9
Asking Good Questions

• Show sincere interest
• Deliver questions with life
• Types of questions
• Positive questions (The way you ask)
• Behavioral questions (How would you)
• Situational questions (In this situation)
• Probing questions (Elaborate/clarify)

10
Sincere Paraphrasing

• This is NOT What I hear you saying is
• State in your own words your understanding of
  what another person says or feels
• You feel that
• You mean that
• You think that
• As I understand it
• Your Goal I hear, I understand, I care

11
Active Listening

• Be engaged
• Truly hear and process the message
• Avoid distractions

12
Listening in General

• The most challenging of all communication skills
• Requires focus
• Requires practice
• Different degrees
• Passive at one end of the scale
• Deeply involved Active Listening at the
  other
• Different Ways
• Fact (Discussion or Debate)
• Feeling (Debate or Dialogue)

13
Maslows Four Stages of Learning

• Unconscious Incompetence
• We dont know what we dont know
• Conscious Incompetence
• We know what we dont know
• Conscious Competence
• We work at what we dont know
• Unconscious Competence
• We dont have to think about knowing it

14
The Typical Executive

• Spends 80 of his or her time communicating
• Of that time
• Listening 45
• Speaking 30
• Reading 16
• Writing 9

15
Listening Capacity

• We use only about ¼ of our listening capacity
• Listening capacity is difficult to measure
• Even without using quantifiable measures, what if
  each of us doubled our individual listening
  capacity?

16
Brownells Model

• HURIED
• Hearing
• Understanding
• Remembering
• Interpreting
• Evaluating

17
Hearing

• Essential Actions
• Concentrate on what the speaker is saying
• Allow the entire message to be delivered without
  interruption
• Be comfortable with silence
• Avoid Distractions
• Its about them, not you!

18
Something to ponder

• Speaking 130-160 words per minute
• We can process aural information at a rate of up
  to 700 words per minute
• On average, we listen three times faster than
  most people talk
• What can we do with that unused mental time?
• Listening The Toughest Management Skill, pg.
  66-67

19
In Closing

• The most important thing
• in communication
• is to hear what isn't being said.
• Peter F. Drucker