| Being a world-class listener |
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| Written by Douglas Pittman | |
There are two parts to any communication, giving and receiving or simply, speaking and listening. The quality of our communication is in direct proportion to our ability to do both effectively.
You must be as good at inhaling as you are at exhaling. You must also excel in listening to be effective in your communication. This article focuses on our ability to receive or generously listen, to inhale in the experience of communication. This will result in an increase of depth or effectiveness of communication. The quality in any given communication is in direct proportion to our listening skills. Listening generously includes hearing the words, as well as feelings, intuition, attitudes, past experiences, beliefs, paradigms, and what isn't being said. With practice you will begin to be aware of the communication that isn't verbally expressed as well. Listening generously means to listen with: No opinion If there was one commodity we will never run out of, it is opinions. There is no shortage of opinions. Listening with no opinion does not mean that you are entirely without opinion. It means you realize that affirming or creating an opinion is not the purpose of listening. You are not listening to reinforce your opinions or beliefs. Notice you always have an opinion and leave it at that. Go back to listening. No judgment What you like or dislike about what you are hearing is irrelevant to the process. The point with this practice is to increase the fullness and depth of communication. You have complete control over that. Constantly judging what you hear only serves to create defensiveness in the communication. It isn't so much that you do judge, but rather you don't have your judgment be so important. When you are listening generously there is no 'good news' or 'bad news', just the news. You practice listening without attachment to your judgments. No need Watch out for listening to satisfy your needs of approval, attention, being right, looking good, being liked, doing it right, or any other background noise of being 'needy'. No agenda This means to listen without unspoken motives on your part other than the desire to really hear what someone has to say. Listening to get them to like you or do something for you is not the point. Nor is listening to wait for your turn to talk is not. No expectations Don't listen with any expectations of what you will hear or what you want to hear. Listen with a clean slate. Listen just because you can not because you expect a particular quantity or quality of experience. Listening generously is a skill that will take more practice to master than you would expect. When you practice listening generously, you will begin to hear you hearing. You’ll also hear you speaking- to yourself in your head- judging and accessing everything you hear. You may have to give up listening from a place of being right or agreement and take on listening just for the sake of listening. Fundamentally humans want to have their voices heard, and when you grant people in your life with generous listening, you may be pleasantly surprised at the resulting conversation.                Trackback(0)
Comments (1)
  written by Raven Dimitrowa , June 28, 2008 I certainly have been practicing this a lot lately. Our minds are so full of opinions, it is really hard to hear others without injecting our opinions. Thanks Raven Write comment
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