Mastering Active Listening: The Key to Effective Communication

1. 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

2. 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.

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 can’t hear what you say.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

6. 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

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. 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

14. The Typical Executive • Spends 80% of his or her time communicating • Of that time: • Listening45% • 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. Brownell’s 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 • “It’s 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