Wonderful awareness, Darlene. It can be difficult not to jump to assumptions when you listen for a living. Many times it might seem like you're hearing the same story over and over again. Knowing that you have the tendency to jump ahead when you feel impatient is great awareness to help you know when to take a step back and listen to what your student has to say.
Stop interupting and assuming that I know what the speaker is trying to say.
The action I need to take to improve my listening skills would be to not try to multi-task sometimes when others are speaking to me, and to give my full attention to them.
Stop interupting and assuming that I know what someone is going to say when I get impatient.
Excellent awareness, Ruth. This is something that we see with many individuals, especially when you want to help and know that your school can assist your student! What might you do moving forward to ensure you let the person you're talking to finish what they have to say?
Personally, I need to learn to wait for the person to finish speaking before I begin to form an answer/rebuttle.
Reminding yourself to focus is important for sure, Zulma. You mention building trust as an important component to improving your listening. How do you believe trust will assist you in improving your listening?
It sounds like you want to do a better job of listening to identify the student's agenda rather than just the facts to fit into your agenda, do I have that right? As you begin to get to know your students' in a different way, my guess is that you will notice the subtle nuances that add to what they're telling you. Good luck!
The actions I need to improve my listening skills would be to care more about my listener. I do a good job of building trust. I must not go just to listening for facts but careing more about the listener. When you care about the listener you will notice the change in tones and every other little detail.
This is a great observation, Doreen. What do you believe you can do to ensure you are fully engaged with each person you interact with?
I now realize that I need to be TRULY in the moment and fully engaged with each person.
Great, Renee! Sounds like you really work to focus on your students. What do you find helps you to eliminate distractions?
I try to put all my attention on the student and not have anything distract me.
Thanks for sharing, Antonio! It sounds like you do your best to continuously add new tools to your toolbox to increase your resourcefulness for your students. What a great practice - keep up the great work!
There is a motivational speaker named Jerry clark who has a set of CD's called "The Magic of Colors." The colors describe peoples individual personalities and how to deal with them. I have studied these CD's when I was in the network marketing field and it was a great tool. Learning why certain people act the way they do allowed me to put myself in their shoes and see things from that persons perspective. I still today listen and use the information in those cd's when dealing with people in life. Great tool.
Very interesting point, Antonio. Seeing things from another persons perspective is a wonderful way to truly understand their position. I'm curious, what techniques do you use to help you understand another persons perspective?
Wonderful awareness of what you need to do to improve your listening, Maria. There's no doubt that as you work to eliminate these, you'll find your communication with others improve. I'm curious, how do you plan to eliminate your specific distractions and biases?
I think this can be done by really trying to see things from the other person point of view. What this does is allow you to take position in the conversation from both perspectives. If a person feels as if you see and understand things from their perspective they are more willing to engage in conversation with you.
Interesting insight, Antonio. It sounds like you really want to do more to focus your listening and allow the other person to share his/her thoughts and ideas. How do you plan on allowing for more "flow" in your conversations?
