Oh oh, sorry, I wasn't listening.
How often does that happen?
Today at Live On Purpose TV, how to improve our listening skills.
It occurred to me that in a lot
of these videos, I'm suggesting that you become a better listener. Yeah, I don't
know how many of the videos you've seen already but if you're helping someone's
depression, if you're talking to someone who's suicidal, how about in a marriage,
how about between parents and children and I'm finding that I'm commonly asking
you to work on or improve your listening skills to be in a position to really
help those folks but we haven't talked about how we do that. So that's what this
video is about, listening and how to improve those listening skills.
Let's put this in the context of communication in general and then it will make more
sense where we're going to go with the with the actual listening part of it.
In a communication model, a basic communication model, you have a sender,
that's where the message originates and you have a receiver, that's where the
message is headed. This is true in radio and television, it's true in YouTube and
podcasting, it's true in a marriage and it's true in a business.
The communication goes in this direction, from the sender to the receiver.
Now let's say that the sender has message a in mind, I'll just symbolize it
with the letter A, that's what they really want to communicate, that's what
they want to get across to the receiver. So what needs to happen? First that
message needs to be encoded. Encoding, it's where we take the message and we
turn it into some kind of a code. Usually language. In this particular video, we are
speaking English. English is a code okay and it's not the only code that we could use.
**speaks Finnish**
Oh, I just kicked into a different coat that one's called Finnish.
And for those of my Finnish friends out there, hope you enjoyed that.
Encoding is where we turned the message into a code and it could be a digital code or any
other kind of a code but that's when it gets encoded, then we send it
over to the receiver. Obviously, the receiver has to decode the
message, that decoding is what has to happen before it gets into their own
mind and a lot of times, like when I was speaking Finnish just now, you probably
don't have a good decoder for Finnish, right? Maybe you do, if you did then you
got the message, if you didn't then it went right over your head and it comes
out as something very different from what was intended. So instead of A,
the receiver picks up B. Now that's not the only problem that we're dealing with,
encoding and decoding are only part of the picture. I'm going to add a big cloud
here in the middle and we'll label the cloud noise. Noise is anything that
interferes with the signal and it could be physical noise like a jackhammer or a
loud train rolling by or an airplane coming down overhead. Those are all forms
of physical noise but what about the mental noise? What about all those
thoughts that start jumbling around in our mind and distract us from what the
real message is. Have you ever been listening to someone or having a
conversation with someone and you can tell the lights are on but nobody's home?
Because there's some kind of noise going on in their mind, they're not even
getting what you're saying. Happens all the time.
So the noise that can get in light, you know what it's amazing that we can even
communicate in the first place, so what does this have to do with
listening? There are two basic goals of communication. Actually, there's only one goal.
There are two strategies to get there, the one goal of communication,
The only goal of communication is for A to equal A. Got it? For this to
be exactly the same as that. When A equals A, we have effectively
communicated, okay? Now because of encoding problems, because of all the
noise, because of decoding problems, problems with the sender, problems with
the receiver, there's all kinds of things that can go wrong and a lot of times,
A ends up turning into B. That's what we want to avoid. So the two strategies that
we can apply to that one goal of A equals A, strategy number one, listen to understand.
Listen to understand, there's two words here, let's talk about both of
them real quick. Listen has the same letters as the word silent.
That's probably a coincidence but it's interesting because you've got to kind
of quiet the noise to do some effective listening. Now some people are silent
while they're supposedly listening but really their mind is going somewhere
else. So it has more to do with instead of
just being silent, it has to do with making a real effort to do this part of
the goal which is to understand. You want to make sure that A equals A.
That's your whole goal is a listener, make sure A equals A.
Now the second goal that we're going to do is express.
This has to do with the encoding when you're a sender.
Express to be understood. We got two strategies for making the communication happen.
So this is the context around which we can build our listening skills.
First of all, your only goal is to understand. I don't care if you agree.
When I'm doing marriage counseling for example, people are hesitant to express
understanding because they're afraid that means they agree, no it doesn't,
it simply means that A equals A. I get it, I understand where you're coming from.
See, that's what we're going for. Agreement gets in the way, agreement has
a say, "But I don't agree with it" No, we're not going there, on the listening part.
So you quiet the noise, your only goal is to listen to understand.
What I would suggest while you're listening, is finding some ways to give indicators
that you do understand. Here's what I mean, sometimes we call this reflective
listening. Reflective meaning you're holding up a mirror and saying,
here's what this looks like to me, does this look right to you? So it might sound
something like, "Okay so you're saying..." and then you repeat back in your own words
what you understood them to say . You'll know that you've met your goal if you
see the lights go on, if you see them do something like this, "Yeah, yes, that's what
yeah, nailed it." If you get any hesitation, if you say, 'So what you're saying is this.."
and they go, "Well..." then you didn't get it. You're not there yet because A obviously
was innate, they're hesitating to give you feedback that that's what they
really meant. So connect with where they're coming from, it doesn't
matter what you think and feel at this point, I know that sounds cold but just
roll with me on this because we're going with listening skills.
You're an effective listener when A equals A okay? So give some reflection of
what it is that you're understanding so that you can get there. You know, I heard
once, you've got two ears and one mouth okay? Maybe there's a reason for that.
What if we use them in that proportion in our communications so that our real
goal is to make sure that we understand what's going on whether we agree or not
is a whole different issue and in my experience, most people don't disagree as
much as they think they do. They just don't understand yet
where that person is coming from and will misinterpret and misalign
whatever it is that they're saying according to a flawed understanding.
Well maybe if we really understood, we wouldn't disagree as much as we think.
So give some reflective statements that allow people to see that you're
understanding them and do that at least twice as much as you try to do this one.
To express, to be understood is an important part of sending a message.
I think the more valuable skill at this point is to become an effective listener
so that you can make sure A equals A and that people know that they're understood.
There's a little more to it than you might have thought, listening is a skill
set, you can improve it.
Thanks for being here today at Live On Purpose TV,
I'm Dr. Paul.