Listening Skills

Seema Arif 3-06-06

Listening & Hearing

Hearing is one of the body's five senses. But listening is an art.

-Frank Tyger

Strategies and Skills for Listening

Develop a simple model for conversation intended at achieving more control over conversational style. Emphasizing the importance of knowing

your conversation goals,

Breaking all of listening down into 3 choices:

talk or listen; focus or clarify; listen attentively or not.

How to Listen-I
Get Over Yourself, Give Them A Solo
By asserting your points at every opportunity in a conversation you will eliminate many of the potential benefits of listening. In particular, people you are talking with will not feel respected by you, their thinking and brainstorming will be inhibited, and they may even withhold important information out of caution--or out of anger.

Things to avoid
- making critical or judgmental faces or sounds; - trying to "fix" their problem with a quick suggestion; - interrogating them to make them answer a question you have about their situation; - trying to cheer them up or tell them things aren't so bad; - criticizing them for getting into their situation; - telling them what you would do or have done in the past.

Stop Multi-tasking
Don't multi-task if you are supposed to be listening. You wind up listening to only part of what someone says, or pretending to listen while you think about something else. You also sacrifice important non-verbal cues and

information about their intent, their confidence level, and their commitment level.

Even if you think that you can get enough of what people say while multi-tasking to serve your immediate purposes, you should assume as a general rule that people notice when you don't listen to them attentively.

Effective Check on Listening

If you are tempted to split your attention between listening and something else, ask yourself whether you can risk appearing disinterested and the negative impression that is likely to make on them. Avoid allowing interruptions that cause you to lose concentration or split your attention. Eliminate background noise, ringing telephones, and people dropping in. Don't read email, use a computer, or read something while someone else is talking to you. If you find your attention wandering, use this trick. Decide why you don't want to listen. Think about what you might get out of listening. Then choose whether to listen or not.

Recap regularly
In longer conversations you should concisely recap what you hear every so often. Very briefly repeat the point they are making to show that you understand and to let them clarify if they think they need to. Very skilled listeners practice and become good at recapping both the facts and the level of importance (the emotional drift of the speaker) in a few brief words.

Using Metaphors
Metaphors can make a compelling way to sum up what someone has been saying. If you don't understand or aren't sure about a point they are trying to make, repeat a very brief portion of the part you didn't understand and ask them to tell you more about it to help you understand better.

Dont hesitate to ask for further explanations

If you don't understand or aren't sure about a point they are trying to make, repeat a very brief portion of the part you didn't understand and ask them to tell you more about it to help you understand better.

Use Supportive Words

Where it helps, use supportive words such as "uh huh", "OK", or "I get it".

Use Body Language.

Use positive body language, such as making frequent eye contact and facing them squarely. Avoid negative body language like frowning and looking away.

Stephen Covey's seven habits

be proactive; begin with the end in mind; put first things first; think win/win; seek first to understand, then to be understood; synergize; sharpen the saw.

Stephen Covey's Emphasis on Listening

regularly seeking to improve

listening to others listen to yourself

The Role of Listening in Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (habits 1-3) This step makes it possible for you to behave exactly as you believe the person you wish to be would behave, because it allows you to consult your own values and goals before acting. Thus you act only in ways that are consistent with those values and goals. This step should be repeated regularly as time passes and circumstances change.

The Role of Listening in Stephen Covey's The

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Second, Covey recommends listening to others (habits 4-6) in order to become aware of the values and goals of others. This enables you to find common ground and thus maintain productive relationships with them. Third, (habit 7) Covey recommends regularly seeking to improve and reinforce yourself in ways that are important to you.

Empathic Listening is essential to effective communication.

opening oneself to the talker to the point where one can actually feel what they are feeling. Covey, as others, believes that the only way to establish communication in some professional and personal situations is by becoming, in small part, the person you are listening to. He uses the words "sensing" (others call it "intuition") to describe the information a listener can perceive through deep, empathic listening.

Empathic Listening is essential to effective communication.

The experience Covey describes, standing for a moment in another's shoes and seeing the world through their eyes, is something everyone is capable of, but most of us rarely (if ever) deliberately do. Covey notes that it takes time to listen empathically and practice to become adept at it, but the reward is a whole new level of communication and problem solving because a person acquires the ability to see a situation simultaneously from multiple points of view.

Listening is essential to effectiveness as a speaker Covey also points out that to be an effective speaker one has to take feedback (listen) to one's audience and adjust one's presentations according to what works most effectively for them.

When its obvious were not being heard, its time to listen.
When we listen with total engagement, communication is not just saying something; it is being heard. And since communication is being heard, the leader consciously asks, "Am I getting through, is my message being heard? The leader was talking yet not being heard, was not communicating. When this happens, when its obvious were not being heard, its time to listen, time to deliver the message a different way. Listening is the essential element of effective leadership.

Gateway to Wisdom
: "If

wisdoms ways you would wisely seek, these five things observe with care: of whom you speak, to whom you speak, how, when, and where."

Gateway to Wisdom

Its called respect, its called

appreciation, its called anticipation -- and its called leadership.