Here are 14 guidelines to sharpen your listening skills, increase your productivity, reduce errors, gain customer satisfaction, and help you become more successful…
- Don’t interrupt. (But…but…but…)
- Ask questions. Then be quiet. Concentrate on really listening
- Prejudice will distort what you hear. Listen without prejudging
- Use eye contact and listening noise (um, gee, I see, oh) to show the other person you’re listening
- Don’t jump to an answer before you hear the ENTIRE situation
- Listen for purpose, details, and conclusions
- Active listening involves interpreting. Interpret quietly
- Listen to what is not said. Implied is often more important than spoken.
- Think between sentences
- Digest what is said (and not said) before engaging your mouth
- Ask questions to be sure you understood what was said or meant
- Ask questions to be sure the speaker said all he/she wanted to say
- Demonstrate you are listening by taking action
- If you’re thinking during speaking, think solution. Don’t embellish the problem
I’m not sure where I got this list, I think it is a subset of a longer list. Forgive my lack of reference as this is just a document I created and had to share with my direct reports at one time. All of that said, it is a great list to improve your listening skills.
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Make a committment today to serve someone. Try and make it someone below yourself in the orginization chart. Are you at the bottom? Pick someone in a different department. Keep it simple, keep it selfless.
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I Do Not Choose to Be a Common Man
It is my right to be uncommon—if I can.
I seek opportunity—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.
I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat.
It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, “This I have done.”
By Dean Alfange
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*Originally published in This Week Magazine.
Later printed in The Reader’s Digest, October 1952 and January 1954.
The Honorable Dean Alfange was an American statesman born December 2, 1899, in Constantinople (now Istanbul). He was raised in upstate New York. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I and attended Hamilton College, graduating in the class of 1922.
Let’s get America back.
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