Effective Communication: The Power of Listening!

Regardless of how brilliant our ideas are and regardless of how smart we think that we are, our ability to get those ideas across to others is at the heart of good communication. Just look around you: those, who are successful achieve their success more because of their ability to communicate better than those who are equally capable, but are not as effective in communicating what they have on their minds. Learning to communicate effectively is life’s work and one must constantly work at it to improve their overall communication effectiveness.

There are two parts to effective communication: Outbound—our ability to package our message that we intend to convey; and Inbound—our ability to listen to what others, including we ourselves, are saying to us. I plan to write a separate blog about our Outbound communication and how to improve it. But, for the purpose of this blog, when it comes to listening, the TED talk by Julian Treasure is a great way to understand an effective listening process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSohjlYQI2A

This video is worth watching to understand how one can improve our listening abilities.

I am summarizing below the prescription Julian provides in his excellent talk: The five ways to improve your listening. I am also providing one more element that is not in his list of five; an element that is perhaps the most important.

The reason I am adding this sixth element is because of what I have learned from coaching thousands of clients, one-on-one. In my career and life coaching practice the guidance I provide my clients rarely comes from something insightful that I provide my clients; it often comes from their own listening to themselves during our dialog. I merely provide them an enabling environment for them to listen to themselves. So, here is my list of six factors based on Julian’s original prescription of five:

1. Silence: Learn how to be completely silent three minutes each day to understand the power of silence and the power of sounds!
2. Mixer: Isolate sounds from the ambient noise and learn to focus on what is important to the exchange that is taking place between you and the source that matters to you.
3. Savoring: Find meaning in mundane sounds and find ways to sharpen your overall listening.
4. Listening positioning: This factor has to do with what filters you apply in your listening process: Active/Passive; Reductive/Expansive; and Critical/Empathic
5. RASA: Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, Ask. This is an effective way to engage with others and get the most out of a dialog. It benefits both parties equally.
6. Listening to Self: Many people often forget that we have the innate ability to find answers to our own complex problems. Yes, we cannot always have the expertise we need to analyze some of our problems, for which we need to seek an expert, but we are accountable to ourselves for taking a course of action resulting from that discovery. So, my guidance to everyone reading this blog is to learn to listen to yourself, once you have figured out what the problem may be after what an expert has to say. Do not blindly follow the expert’s advice, just because they are the expert.

In today’s increasingly noisy and conflict-ridden environment we are losing our ability to listen to the right signals, including our own. So, to counter this wave we must learn how to sharpen our abilities to listen, to act decisively to move forward, and to succeed.

Good luck!