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Active Listening
As a "Corporate Olympian", you are a member of an elite team. How you interact with your team members is paramount to your success and the success of the essential projects upon which you are working.
One of the most important success tools in both business and in life is Active Listening. This concept was first promoted by Dr. Thomas Gordon in his Effectives Training communication systems. Active Listening assists you in focusing on the other person's message, helps the other person to feel heard, and reduces misunderstandings.
People speak at 100 to 175 words per minute (WPM), but they can listen intelligently at up to 300 words per minute. Since only a part of our mind is paying attention, it is easy to go into mind drift - thinking about what you are going to say, while listening to someone.
If you're finding it particularly difficult to concentrate on what someone is saying, try repeating their words mentally as they say it - this will reinforce their message and help you control mind drift.
Active Listening also helps you to give feedback. Remember that what someone says and what we hear can be amazingly different! Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort what we hear. Repeat back or summarize to ensure that you understand. Restate what you think you heard and ask, "Have I understood you correctly?"
Feedback is verbal communications means used to clearly demonstrate you are actively listening and to confirm the communications between you and others. Obviously, this serves to further ensure the communications are understood and is a great tool to use to verify everything you heard while actively listening.
Examples and further discussion: