Wednesday, October 25, 2006
The Truth Behind Your Good and Bad Listening Habits!
“Half the conversational skill is listening - and it is the neglected half” says keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers, who regularly addresses blue-chip corporate business on self-development and the formula for sustainable success.
It’s true. All the famous tips on dialogue management seem to be about speaking. The supposedly passive listening role is seldom touched-on.
Yet listening is far from passive. It can be performed in many different ways and has a rich vocabulary of its own. By actively steering conversations (including key interviews for example), good listening is a major engine of persuasion and change, and should occupy an important place in any management skills portfolio.
As a motivational speaker, Carole Spiers has introduced many management groups to the subject of good and bad listening for the first time, drawing attention to three main factors:
Unfocused listening - through divided attentionYou need to identify certain common obstacles that inhibit good listening, and try to manage them. One is the clash of rhythms. We listen four times faster than we speak, so we may irritate the other person by trying to finish their sentences for them. Or if we’re bored, we may slip into the cocktail-party “Mmm…”, while thinking of something else. Or if the subject is going over our head, we may ‘parrot’ some of the statements, to give a false impression of understanding. Naturally any outside hubbub will also compete for our attention (and theirs), affecting comprehension and upsetting the atmosphere.
Active listening - guiding with minimal interventions
Professional counsellors often have to draw out reluctant interviewees - perhaps trauma victims or people who won’t accept that they need help. At these times, it is necessary to adopt a special ‘active listening’ mode that stimulates a continuing momentum of dialogue from the other person, through minimal interruption. Discreet hand-signals and invitations like “And then…?” can get over awkward silences. Periodically give brief reassurances that prove you have not only heard but interpreted the dialogue, however obliquely coded, sometimes via their body-language.
The Empathy factor - essential catalyst of rapport
Nothing gives more impetus to an interview than a feeling that the other person warmly empathises with you. By being genuinely yourself, you encourage them to respond in kind, and the dialogue will be far more revealing and productive. Obviously, exploit everything you have in common. But if your differences are greater than your similarities, you must try hard to visualise the other person’s emotional landscape, as though you were writing a novel about them. By sharing their experiences rather than judging them, you gain important access to the world they live in.
The difference between good and bad listening is one of many original insights into the field of Empowerment and Personal Development by professional keynote speaker Carole Spiers.
See Carole live at London Ecademy – lst November 2006http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=12163
Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.
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