Active Listening, Does This Work For You?

I’m just as guilty as the next person in my communication. I walk around totally in my head and when someone asks me a question like, “How are you?”, well I’m off to the races! Next thing I notice is that poor person who was kind enough to ask me how I was, was now a victim of my regurgitation of the mouth.

So I came up with an exercise challenge for myself and for our communication/leadership workshop attendees. Focus on what we call “active listening” for one day and see what you learn from it. Now if one day seems too long for some of you, chunk it down to a time that works for you. A couple of hours, fifteen minutes, just start where ever you feel comfortable and track what happens during your “active listening” exercise.

So this is how it works:

Commit to talking almost always in questions. Like, “What do you think…”
Restrain yourself in over-talking and while the other person is speaking, respond with words like, “I see”, “That makes sense”, “Yes”, or “Go on”. Some people suggest repeating back phrases of what you’ve just heard like “repeating back phrases, I see”.
Focus your eyes on their face, eyes and/or mouth. Don’t let yourself be easily distracted from what’s going on around you, give them the gift of you being present.
Always thank them for sharing and mean it!

Prepare and expect something wonderful to happen. I don’t know what it will be, but something always happens when it becomes about them and not about you.

After practicing active listening on a few people, let us know what did you experience?

“It’s Like Talking to the Wall!”

Friday’s emails always brings me one of my favorite newsletters call “Speakernet News”.  As you probably guessed, it’s a newsletter devoted to helping professional speakers in any way it can. 

In fact, most of the content (not counting the advertisements ) is from the readership so you know it’s been speaker specific tested.

Today, one such article was referring to “Busting the Mehrabian Myth” and if you’d like to enjoy the video that comes with it, go to:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dboA8cag1M

In essence, the Mehrabian theory refers to how we as humans take in new information. So as the theory goes, words represent only 7% of what we understand, the tonality and volume of how we say it represents 38% and the way we use our bodies and facial expressions make up the remainder of the 55% of what we understand and comprehend.

How this has been understood in the speaker/presentation community is “don’t worry about your content because they won’t hear it anyway!”

WRONG!

Can words make a mess of your message if you let it, sure thing! But you control the key to how the words are used, within what content they are used and how clearly they are presented.

As a leader (yes, you are all leaders who are reading this right now), your communication skills are always tested every time time a syllable leaves your mouth. What I’ve learned through countless training courses and years of presentation experience (yes, and some of the best learnings came from those “failed presentations”) is that the best way to teach, pass on information or just generally instruct an individual or group is to do the following:

1.  Be very clear in your head what needs to be heard.
2. Keep your message or instructions grouped in threes
3. Give clear examples, stories or metaphors that relate not to you, but to the listener.
4. Highlight important points and learnings with your tonality, volume and body language with once again remembering the circumstance and environment that you are talking in.

(Opps, I just broke my second rule!)

 

What other techniques or tricks do you use to help your listeners understand your conversation, point or presentation?