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Improving Your Listening Quotient Part 2
Improve Your Personal Listening Quotient
Part 2
from Monica Oakley
In Part 1, you were asked to assess your listening skills by thinking about your strengths as well as your typical listening blocks….how did you rate? Did you check out your assessment with others? That evaluation in itself is an eye-opener since most of us rate ourselves much higher than others rate us!
Researchers at Inscape Publishing who produce the DiSC™ series also have developed a Personal Listening Profile® which identifies 5 distinct Listening Approaches. Each of us utilizes these 5 approaches to a greater or lesser degree.
These approaches are categorized as 1) Appreciative 2) Empathic, which are Feeling-Oriented. Fact-oriented Approaches include: 3) Comprehensive 4) Discerning and 5) Evaluative.
Identification of the approaches that you utilize the most assists in determining what type of information you seek, synthesize, and store while listening.
- For example, Feeling-oriented listeners look for the message behind the words, seek to support the listener and respond to the positive, interpersonal dynamics of the interaction.
- Fact-oriented listeners seek key facts, clarify details, organize and summarize information and think in terms of results or consequences of the interaction.
Ask yourself: Am I more Feeling or Fact oriented? (Consider assessing your personal listening approaches by taking the in-depth profile**)
To improve your Listening Quotient you must develop and balance both Fact and Feeling dimensions.
Top 3 Tips
As a communication consultant I have provided Listening Skills Training for over 20 years—and here are my top three tips.
1. Avoid even thinking about how you will respond until the person stops speaking— sounds easy, but is difficult to achieve, since we all need to become comfortable with silence when listening
2. Avoid trying to problem-solve— Remember most of us need a sounding board to determine our own solutions vs. accepting the solutions of others
3. Always clarify the information presented with true open-ended questions: "Tell me more", "Go on…", "Would you give me an example", that encourage the speaker to provide more information that leads to greater understanding.
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The following Checklist is a way to evaluate your Listening Skill Development
LISTENING SKILL CHECKLIST
______ Project Attentive Body Language (sustained eye contact essential)
______ Give Non-verbal Encouragement
______ Focus, Focus, Focus on Speaker
______ Use Open-Ended Questions
______ Clarify Facts
______ Use Silence
______ Clarify Feelings
______ Control Your Emotional Hot Buttons
______ Summarize Conversation
Remember: "The Road to the Heart is the Ear" - Voltaire
Give Someone 10 minutes of your Best Listening Skills Today!
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** Monica Oakley is an Authorized Inscape Publishing Distributor. Personal Listening Profiles may be purchased by contacting her at Properf@earthlink.net or visiting her website @ www.ProPerformtraining.com
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