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.

The Lost Art of Listening - Part 1

I once hear a story of a man who was having lunch at bistro in St Paul de Vence, a picturesque hilltown in the south of France. In his fractured French, he tried to order a bottle of beer.

Je voudrals one bouteille de biere, sil vous plait. He intoned to the waitress.

In a can? She asked.

Non, he said. En bouteille, NO..not in a can, as she said , in a bottle, he reiterated.

With her hands on her hips and a sneer on her face, the waitress repeated, "In a can!"

Now the customer was really getting mad, Not in a can, he insisted. In a bottle. En bouteille, En bouteille.

She threw her hands in a despair. Monsieur, In a Can!

All right, finally, the man said. " Have it your way, Give it to me in a can, anything. Just give me a beer.

She stormed off and returned with a bottle of Heineken. It was at that point that the customer realised that what had happened and laughed so hard he nearly fell off his chair.

You see when you say Heineken and loose the h sound and it sounds like "In a Can"

These days effective listening is almost a lost art. We hear mostly what we want to hear, not what the person is trying to communicate to us. Many conflicts can be resolved easily if we learn how to listen.

The problem is that we have forgotten how to listen. We are so busy making sure that people hear what we have to say that we forget to listen. But the key to communication, negotiation, to selling, is to keep your mouth shut and truly listen to what people have to say. Your prospects will tell you everything you need to know in order to make a sale. People love talking about themselves. The hard part for you is to keep your mouth shut long enough for you to get the required information.

Recently, I got a misunderstanding from my friend maybe because I might have heard him wrongly, nearly let our relationship turned sour. Sometimes it is better to seek for clarification or rephrase what the person have said to us to make sure we heard or listen correctly. This is something I learn from my recent incident.

Remember what we got two ears and only one mouth,is to listen more and talk less. *Laugh*