Monday, July 5, 2010

The Lost Art of Listening - Part 3



Today, let us continue to talk about how you can improve your listening skills, thus making you a powerful communicator.

Ask a question and then keep your mouth shut. This sound so simple, but in practice, it is one of the hardest thing about being a good listener. You will feel the desire to butt into the conversations at many points, but don't. However, if there are parts of the messages, that you don't understand, ask for clarification. Think of yourself as an interviewer.

Here are some of the tips for asking effective questions, being with the cardinal rules.

Ask open ended questions. Questions that cannot be answered with a simple "Yes or No". Such as How can we do this or What do you think? Your objective is to get the other party talk as much as possible.

You might think "Why" is a good question to ask.It certainly open ended, and probes for reason and motivation. But why can be intimating. It put people on the defensive. So don't ask why, ask "How come"

Very often, a lot of useful information can be gleaned from imaginary scenarios. Ask what if. Start with plausible scenarios, then as you get better at questioning, try slightly more incredible ones. If you are skillful enough, seeming preposterous scenarios can elicit the most truthful response, or give you a deeper insight into the person's psyche.

Make the other person feel comfortable by demonstrating that you care about their feeling and understand where they are coming from. Offer alternative, which way do you prefer?, How do you feel about this..and so on. Repeat what they say. This is a great technique to prevent misunderstanding and convince to the person that you are really listening.

Listening sounds like a simple thing, but it takes a lot of work and effort to do it very well. Effective listening and negotiation involves suppressing your reflexes and response and creating an environment which allow another person to express himself without having feeling threatened.

Try out these listening tips. You'll begin to realize how important listening is in effective communication.


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Sunday, July 4, 2010

Song of the Day: From this Moment

Song Sharing Sharing Badge



I like her songs. She is one of my favorite singer, Shania Twain..We must to enjoy every moment we are in be it the place, environment, the state we are in and the people around. Enjoy this song.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Quit Complaining

We all know that life wasn’t meant to go your way all the time. This state of flux is designed to help us grow into the kind of human beings we can be, to help us understand how we fit into the larger scheme of things, and to prevent our minds and bodies from declining in a state of inertia.

So, in many ways, disappointment is an essential part of life. Without it, we would become complacent and slothful, success and love wouldn’t fill our hearts with as much joy, and there would be no push towards improving ourselves.

However, when circumstances take twists and turns we can't predict, we often feel discouraged. And we feel an urge to complain. Some people feel it’s a right. The so-called logic is “If the world is treating me unkindly, why shouldn’t I make some noise about it?”

Well, the “noise” may release some tension initially, but complaining doesn’t solve anything. Besides, it produces a negative mindset. It forces us to unwittingly dwell on what's wrong in our lives instead of focusing on what we can change or do to make things right. When complaining becomes a part of you, you’re inviting a lot of negative energy into your life.

When something goes differently than we had planned or when something that's difficult pops up unexpectedly, we should allow ourselves to feel the confusion, anger, or whatever other emotion comes along as a result.

But once you have vented, prevent yourself from dwelling on the thing that caused the negative emotion. Quit complaining. When you complain, you tell several people over and over about what went wrong. Your mind is focused on the horrible thing. You bring others down by your complaining. You bring yourself down. You become stuck in your own whiny, nagging slime.

So, after venting, allow yourself to pick up the pieces and see where you can go from where you are. What can you do to make things better? How can you respond so that meeting your main priority is still your focus? Think about things that have gone right in your life. Appreciate what you have been able to achieve so far.

By asking yourself questions and remembering past positive moments, your mind accepts what has just happened and moves on to what will happen next. It uses the lessons you just learned as corrective feedback to help you stay on track with your goal or to help you determine a new one.

So go ahead and vent, but quit complaining. You will be in a much better position to handle things when they don't go your way.

To me, I used to complain but the more I complain...more negative things attracted to me, even the people that I am with. It is not that to leave our "negative" friends. Sometimes, we can expect others to change, we can only control our mind, ourselves, so we have to change first..to inspire others to change. When they see a change in us and they will be influenced by us, they might change one day, who know..Like one of the book that I read " secrets of millionaire mind, our outer world reflect our inner world..So we have to get rid of this bad habit of complaining.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Seven Public Speaking Tips

I went for my company course last monday, these are some of the tips that the presenters sharing with me. I find them quite useful.

Preparation


When you prepare for your speech or presentation, always have an introduction, body and a
solid conclusion. Get yourself prepared for the unexpected. Sincerity is the key as there is no foolproof formula.

Be relevant to the topic you are presenting

Find out as much as possible about the audience that you are going to present so that you are
able to address to their needs and acknowledge them in your introduction. Able to relate to
them, never alienate.

Project your voice correctly

You must be clear with your objective or aim, so that you can vary your pitch, tone or volume,resonance and speed to suit your task. Do a self assessment on your voice by recording your voice. If you are not convinced, no one will be.

Be Composed, Not to be tense

Your audience will know by your shallow breathing when you are nervous. Take a few deep
breathe to calm yourself down. Massage with specific exercises if you find some tensions in
your face, throat, necks, shoulders and back. If you don’t have time, try yawning. It works.

DON’T READ FROM SLIDES OR NOTES, TALK TO THE AUDIENCE

Avoid reading from note. Maintain eye contacts and make pause long enough to make a
connection with a few people in the audience. Visualize talking to one person instead of many
people.

ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE

Maintain eye contact regularly with your audience. Ask thought-provoking questions. Address to their needs and aim to inspire them to action. As long as you get their attention, the length of the presentation is not that important.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Facial Time: Reduce Eye Wrinkles




HI gals, it facial exercise time..this time i got something i want to prevent eye wrinkles..I believe is something most of us are trying hard to get rid of it. The best method is the prevent it to happen on our face, rite..just two times per week...so simple and can do it anytime..but first need a mirror in front of us to get the step correct otherwise do wrongly it will make it worse. We don't want to add more wrinkle rite. Haha
Download:
FLVMP43GP
Download:
FLVMP43GP

Monday, June 28, 2010

The Lost Art of Listening - Part 2

Effective communication requires effective listening. In fact, often times, listening is more important in speaking in order to negotiate well with others. Many salespersons learn this the hard way - they make flowery presentation, only to be blown off without so much as a second thought. But if they had only let their customers tell them what their problems were, they would probably be able to sell them anything.

Listening is really quite simple, yet most of us haven't mastered it. Why? I think is probably because of the connotation of keeping silent. To many people, it implies impassivity, being lost for words and so on. Also, it hard keeping your mouth shut. Everyone wants to be heard. So in the cacophony of voices, nobody does. But what were if you are one of the few who listened closely to what others had to say? What valuable information would you earn?

So where do you start if you truly want to develop your listening skills?

Firstly, cultivate the desire to listen. Accept the fact that listening skill is your strongest weapon. Given the opportunity, the other person will tell you everything you need to know. Try this out, very soon,you find yourself hanging on every words that flies out of other people's mouth.

Always let the other people do the talking. This is simple matter of mathematics. Try listening about 70% of the time and talking 30% of the time.

Now the theory is simple enough, but in practice. you will find that in many points, during the other people's speech, you'll feel the desire to interrupt.There will be points that you disagree with and you think that you should speak then you forever hold your peace. That not always true. In fact, most of the time, we regret saying the things we say. So always resist the temptation to interrupt. When you give in, all you do is to cut off the free flowing info.

Learn to listen actively. Now is crucial, since hearing someone is vastly different from listening to someone. And people can tell. Most people spend so much time regaling others with their stories that they keenly aware when the audience is sleeping with their eyes open. And if there is something worse than not listening, its pretending to listen. Then you lost your prospect forever.

The art of listening is a very fine one. It takes expert communicator to do it well and convincingly too. Look out for my next blog on tips to improve your effective listening.