Download Listening Actively

Listening Actively:
The Receiver’s Challenge
"Wisdom is the reward
you get for a lifetime of
listening when you'd
have preferred to talk."
- Doug Larson
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Works Cited
 Brownell, Judi. 1987. Listening: The toughest management
skill. The Cornell H.R.A. Quarterly, February 1987: 65-71.
 Decker, Bert. 1992. You’ve got to be believed to be heard:
Reach the first brain to communicate in business and life.
New York, NY: St. Martin’s 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.
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Verbal & Non-Verbal
Communication
 Concepts:
Rapport
 Non-Verbal Messages
 Asking Good Questions
 Sincere Paraphrasing
 Active Listening

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Rapport
Being in sync with other people,
verbally and non-verbally,
so they are comfortable
and have trust and confidence in you
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Non-Verbal Messages
“What you do speaks so loud
I can’t hear what you say.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Non-Verbal Messages
 Bert Decker’s book is titled “You’ve got
to be believed to be heard” for a reason!
 He discusses two factors
The Eye Factor
 The Energy Factor

 What people see
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Non-Verbal Messages
 Eye Factor – What Others See
Eye Communication
 Posture and Movement
 Dress and Appearance
 Gestures and Smile

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Non-Verbal Messages
 Energy Factor – What Others Perceive
Voice and Vocal Clarity
 Words and Non-Words
 Listener Involvement
 Humor

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Asking Good Questions
 Show sincere interest
 Deliver questions with “life”
 Types of questions:




Positive questions
Behavioral questions
Situational questions
Probing questions
(The way you ask)
(How would you…)
(In this situation…)
(Elaborate/clarify)
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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”
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Active Listening
 Be engaged
 Truly hear and process the message
 Avoid distractions
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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)
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Maslow’s Four Stages of Learning
 Unconscious Incompetence
We don’t know what we don’t know
 Conscious Incompetence
We know what we don’t know
 Conscious Competence
We work at what we don’t know
 Unconscious Competence
We don’t have to think about knowing it
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The Typical Executive
 Spends 80% of his or her time
communicating
 Of that time:
Listening
 Speaking
 Reading
 Writing

45%
30%
16%
9%
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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?
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Brownell’s Model
HURIED
Hearing
 Understanding
 Remembering
 Interpreting
 Evaluating

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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
 “It’s about them, not you!”
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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
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In Closing…
“The most important thing
in communication
is to hear what isn't being said.”
Peter F. Drucker
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