genuine listening is hard work...

genuine listening is hard work. you’ve got to involve all of yourself in it. it’s just plain hard work.

the chinese character for listening incorporates the symbols for eyes, ears, undivided attention in that one character. it’s a pretty good picture of what listening is all about. it involves all of me. so in the interest of all of us wanting to be better listeners, improving our skills in this area, let me give you an acrostic based on the word “listen”. six simple things we can do to improve our skills in listening.

let’s start with l – look at people. listen not just with your ears but with your eyes. that’s one of the keys to listening well – simply looking at the person you’re listening to.

i – invest in people. the attitude when you invest in somebody when you’re listing is, “this person is important.” to be an effective listener means to accept people for who they are and not who i want them to be. effective listening means you stop labeling people and start listening to people.

s – stop whatever else you’re doing. good listening is like tuning in a radio station. you can only tune in one station at a time. i know you can hear two things at a time. i can do that too. i can repeat what was said, but i wasn’t listening. i didn’t focus in and hear what that person said. stop whatever else you’re doing and listen to the person.

t – think about what they are saying. when we’re listening, what do we usually think about? not what they’re saying. we usually are thinking “what am i going to say next?” we have a habit of doing that.

e – empathize with them. empathize with what they’re feeling and going through. the greatest test between a good listener and a bad listener: a bad listener listens to what you’ve said, then at the end of your story, they tell a story to top your story. that’s a bad listener. a good listener, when you get to the end of what you’ve said, asks a question to draw out more of your story. that’s the difference.

you empathize with what that person is saying. you acknowledge their feelings – they may be wrong feelings but they do feel that way. you acknowledge that they feel that way. it’s ok to feel that way and then it’s ok to be changed.

n – notice body language. that’s a key to good listening. a lot of what we say is in our body language.

one university study has shown that 55% of a speaker’s impact is not in what they say. that’s 7%, the words. fifty-five percent is your body language. the other is in your tone of voice.

just a thought from the front porch…