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"Connections and Why They Matter"
Most of what happens in our life will spark a connection. Life connects with what has been found in books. Books connect with what happens in life. Use the connections to help you see more clearly. A love of reading and writing is what motivated the creation of this blog. Thank you for coming to the blog.
Active listening and giving feedback can be challenging. People perceive the best listeners to sit quietly and occasionally ask questions that tell them all they need to know. Sitting there silently nodding does not prove that a person is listening. Good listening is much more than being silent while the other person talks.
Listening Skills are the quiet soft skills “sauce” that can make or break a career. Have you ever had a client, customer, boss, or colleague have to repeat things to you several times or look at you as if they needed clarification on whether you were understanding them or even paying attention?
When you read, you are listening, but when you are reading, you sometimes are not thinking about what the words mean. Understanding what the words you read are intended to convey is listening also.
“Be a good listener,” Dale Carnegie advised in his 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. “Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.”
Rather than pushing your point of view when it is very different, the other person uses a curious approach to communication. An example would be meeting the other end of view with a question like: “I never thought of that point of view. What is it that leads you to that conclusion.”
Six things needed to be a good listener
#1 Your thoughts have not drifted, and you are in the here & now.
#2 Distractions don't get in the way of what the person is saying
#3 You're excited and curious to hear what is said
#4 You're sincere and open-minded about the questions and haven’t prejudged the anticipated answers
#5 Your hearing, sight, and other senses are working
