Communication Skills Tip: Listening. What?

Actors spend a lot of time building their cast through improvisation and play. This might sound like all fun and games (can’t say it’s not fun), but the truth is that both improvisation and play strengthen listening skills. As you can imagine, when in a scene with another actor, it is extremely important to have keen listening abilities; especially, for stage acting. By paying very close attention to what is being said, an actor can be on cue and, more importantly, be prepared to improvise if a fellow partner misses a line. I am aware that we don’t have scripted dialogues in our daily communication, but I also know through years of acting training that having strong listening skills prepares me for critical and impromptu communication in my life.

In Lanartco’s tip of the week April 8, 2009, I mentioned Judi Brownell’s six steps to listening: hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating and responding. I highly recommend her book, Listening: Attitudes, Principles and Skills to help you understand listening more deeply and to identify where your greatest opportunities lie for increasing your communication skills. Through her assessment, I learned that hearing was one of my weakest listening links. Hearing is all about our ability to discriminate amongst sounds, and for me I get very distracted when the smallest of sounds intrude on my work. So, it wasn’t a surprise that this is an area I need to focus on. The good news is that I genuinely love to listen. Being an adept listener makes me feel valuable to my friends, my employees and my clients. With all we are going through in the early months of 2009, it seems to me that listening closely to each other will help us thread our ideas together to establish best practices, lead effective teams for stronger results, and secure trust amongst our customers for when the economy turns around. As with everything we want to learn, developing listening skills first requires a real desire. Once you have a heightened awareness about your listening potential, I believe you will naturally begin to improve your ability. Then, it takes practice and attention. Your efforts will make you a more appreciated boss, a kinder, better friend, and a unique contributor in all situations. And if you are anything like me, it will give you a greater sense of satisfaction in your life. To be added to Lanartco's Communication Performance Tip of the Week, please connect to this link or send your email address to info@lanartco.com