Comma Associates The Art of Listening

24 January 2008

What we will explore….

●When have you really been listened to?

●What are the benefits of listening?

●What gets in the way of listening?

●The listening continuum

●Tips / techniques to improve our listening

●Listening as a consultant – are we too good?

●Summary – food for further thought

Benefits of listening

●Other people listen to you if you listen to them

●People feel valued and so help build valuable and deeper relationships

●You will understand others

●You open up to different ideas

●Repair damaged relationships

●New skills are learned faster

Barriers to listening

●The pressure is on

●We are caught up in ourselves

●We can’t hear

●We don’t think it is important to listen

●Emotionally charged words

●We want to solve the problem

●We want to get our point across

●We imagine what is going to be said so we switch off

●The cost outweighs the benefits

Our brains and the filtering process

●The cocktail party effect (Cherry 1953) – filters sift through for important nuggets of information. The Reticular Activating System is responsible for picking up info consistent with our agenda

●An inbox: information is selected to fit with our own agenda, priorities and interests.

●The filtering process consists of cleaning and clarifying what we hear. This characteristic is responsible for some of our listening difficulties. If new information does not fit easily with our past experiences and existing knowledge we are less likely to retain it.

The Listening Continuum

Not listening light listening dialogue listening empathic listening

e.g. daydreaming e.g. radio all the signswords at face value

Tips / Techniques

●Keep it real (but read between the lines)

●Spot the central idea

●Reserve judgement

●Question and summarise

●Listening Shifts

●Note it

●Look out for shadow meanings

The Listening Consultant - can you be too good?

Acceptant Catalytic

Confrontational Prescriptive

Cockman, Evans and Reynolds 1999