Learning Objectives

The most important Leadership skill is Communication.

The most important Communication skill is Listening.

  • Have you ever been in a situation where people weren’t listening?
  • Or you thought they were, but they misunderstood?
  • Or perhaps you misunderstood?
  • Or perhaps you understood what they said, but you didn’t fully appreciate the importance to them?
  • Do you know how to listen effectively?

Effective listening is key to many of the other leadership skills, so it is the first one taught in Wood Badge.Upon completion of this presentation you will be able to:

  • Become aware of how we listen.
  • Explore good listening as a communication skill.
  • Practice the skills of active and empathetic listening.
  • Examine the relationship between listening skills and the receiving and giving of feedback.


Role Play

Let’s talk about a recent trip or vacation!

Instructions:

  • Group into pairs, one speaker/one listener
  • Listener is given behavior card to follow. Behaviors are:
  • “Interrupt the speaker”
  • “Give advice before speaker is done”
  • “Give blank look”
  • “Be bored”
  • Speaker talks to listener for 1-2 minutes about a recent trip or vacation

Ask the speakers: What did you just experience?How did the reactions of the listeners affect you?

Ask the listeners: How did the speakers respond to your behavior?

Ask the group:What islistening?Why is listening such an important part of learning?


Listening is…

  • An essential part of communication…yet we take it for granted.
  • Not taught in school. There are courses on writing and public speaking, but seldom does a course focus on the skill of listening.
  • A skill that can be learned.

This Wood Badge session is designed to change that.

By making ourselves aware of the importance of listening and the ways in which we do it, all of us can more effectively use listening as a tool for learning and for leadership.


Why is Listening a Key Skill of Leadership?

Listening is a primary means for connecting with other people.

  • Sharing ideas and experiences with one another creates a pool of familiarity among us. From that grows trust, understanding, an awareness of strengths and skills - the building blocks of friendships and teamwork.
  • Listening can be powerful when young people are involved. For many of Scouting age, it is unusual to have adults truly pay attention to them. Listening to them with care and understanding can be very meaningful for young people and also for the adults.
  • Listening provides the means to make decisions and solve problems. Listening is the glue that holds a team together. It is the doorway through which ideas pass. It is the window in which solutions appear.
  • Not all people are good at conveying their thoughts. Not everyone is gifted with the ability to effectively express thoughts and feelings. Misunderstandings and misinterpretations are often rooted from lack of clear and open communication. Some would rather opt to stay silent instead of spitting out whatever they wish to say to a person; others may beat around the bush and mention unnecessary details before spilling out the main point.


“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Stephen Covey, author of “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”

Seeking to understand someone first involves a deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first for people to understand us. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They are either speaking or preparing to speak. They are filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their own autobiography into other people’s lives.

You filter everything you hear through your life experiences, your frame of reference. You check what you hear against your autobiography and see how it measures up. And consequently, you decide prematurely what the other person means before he/she finishes communicating. Do any of the following sound familiar?

  • "Oh, I know just how you feel. I felt the same way."
  • "I had that same thing happen to me."
  • "Let me tell you what I did in a similar situation."


Effective Listening

Have you ever experienced this?

You’re watching TV(remote in hand, oblivious to the world).Yourspouse is headed out to run an errandand asks you to do something at a designated time.You respond, “OK.” The designated time arrives and, if you even remember the request being made,you have no idea what it was. You’ve demonstrated passive listening, poor understanding, and given poor performance.

Contrast this scenario:

[use rock climbing belay commands or military submarine commands example]

The [climber/commander] designates the person being spoken to, to ensure his attentionbefore giving the command. The command is acknowledgedand repeated back to ensure proper understanding before it is executed.

There are two types of effective listening: active and empathetic.

The American Heritage dictionary defines active as “capable of functioning” or “engaged in activity; contributing; participating.”

What do you think active listening means?


Active Listening

  • Reflects back what a person is saying to confirm comprehension; “What I understand you to be saying is…”, “So what you’re saying is…”, “Let me see if I heard you correctly…”, “So what you mean is…”, “In other words…”
  • Rephrasesthe information and bouncing it back to the speaker, the listener confirms that the message has been correctly received.
  • Listeners doing this are not making value judgments.
  • Strives to hear the message: They are simply making sure they are hearingwhat the speakers have to say and they are letting the speakers know that their messages are getting through.
  • Questions you NEVERask
  • “Why?”
  • Questions that assume
  • Leading questions: You will destroy the trust built because they’ll feel you’re ramming something down their throat
  • Avoid phrases like:
  • “Wouldn’t you agree…”
  • “Don’t you want…”
  • “Isn’t it true that…”

Now we know what Active Listening is…Let’s move on to Empathetic Listening.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines Empathy as “Understanding so intimate that the feelings, thoughts, and motives of one are readily comprehended by another.”

What do you think empathetic listening means?

Empathetic Listening

  • Is a sincere attempton the part of a listener to understandin depth what a speaker is saying.
  • Empathetic listeners pay attention to more than just the words they hear. They consider the message packagethe speaker is sending by taking care to notice a speaker’s:
  • body language
  • tone of voice
  • emotional sense

Empathetic listening requires listeners to:

  • Put themselves in the speaker’s place
  • Imagine things from the speaker’s point of view
  • Try to understand how the speaker feels

Effectivelistening is activeANDempathetic.


Exercise in Effective Listening

Participants form pairs – one speaker, one listener

For several minutes, the speaker will talk about something they enjoy (hobby, sport, or family activity).

Assign listeners different listening styles:

  1. Pay close attention and acknowledge a speaker’s message simply by saying,“I got it.” Offer no further feedback or judgment.
  2. Pay close attention and respond by rephrasingthe message.
  3. Rephrase the message, and also share any deeper understanding of the speakers’ feelings. Listeners should take into consideration the speakers’ body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and other spoken and silent signals that will help enhance understanding.

Listeners and speakers trade roles and repeat the exercise.

Now ask- Which style was the most effective?


Keys to Effective Listening

  • How do we respond when we are hearing something we don’t want to hear?
  • When a speaker is angry?
  • When we are tired or hungry?

One key to effective listeningis being aware of our current situation, energy level, and interest. If we are upset about something, it may affect how we listen. Being drowsy will definitely affect our attention span. Are you chilly, too hot, late for another appointment? <Distractions>

The second key is monitoring our own state of hearing awareness to help us adjustto better grasp the message of a speaker. It may be a matter of focusing more on what is being said. Often, though, it may require calling a time out to:

  • put on a sweater
  • have a bite to eat
  • take care of distracting matters
  • let your emotions cool

Then you can get back together with the speaker under conditions that are more conducive to good listening.

Of course, we cannot tailor every listening situation to be ideal. We often find ourselves in situations with others that make communication difficult. However, good listening skills are powerful toolsfor calming adversarial situations and finding solutions to problems.


Role Play—Listening in Adversarial
Situations

Ask a volunteer to play the role of a Scout who is angry
about the way others in his unit are treating him.

The troop guide plays the part of a Scout leader.

As the “Scout” expresses his complaints and frustrations, the “Scout leader” uses the skills of good listening to acknowledge that the message is being received.

“I got it,” is an appropriate response. So is, “This is what I hear you saying...” Encourage the Scout to keep talking, but offer no judgment or feedback.

It is very likely that the Scout will focus on the negative, complaining about what he or she doesn’t like. That’s fine, it is often the way people who are upset express themselves.

The Scout leader says, “I hear what you don’t want. Now tell me what you dowhat.”

Encourage the Scout to keep talking, but focus now on positive aspects of the situation rather than negative ones.


Discussion: Listening in Adversarial
Situations

  1. What did you observe?
  2. How did the scout react to the leader listening?
  3. How did the leader show the scout that he was listening?

•Speakers respond to how others listen to them. Acknowledge but don’t immediately judge their complaints (“I got it…”). If there is no enabling by the listener, complaints will seem smaller and ultimately more manageable.

•By taking a negative and flipping it around to a positive, a listener can also structure a more productive frameworkfor finding solutions. (“I hear what you don’t want; now tell me what you do want.”)

•A conversation cast in a positive light naturally involves more empathy and support. Body language of listeners and speakers becomes more open, and chances for resolution are greatly enhanced.


Listeners should always strive to create a positive present as opposed to a negative past.


Giving and Receiving Feedback

•Have you ever had someone give you advice about something? How did it feel to be receiving feedback?

•Have you ever been in a position to tell people how they can do something better or how they might make a positive change in their behavior? How did it feel to be offering feedback?

From time to time, all of us find ourselves giving and receiving feedback. It is a basic part of team development, of leadership, and of friendships.Feedback can sometimes be difficult. However, by using effective listening skills, a feedback situation may be turned into a positive experience.

For feedback to be helpful, both parties must use the skills of effective listening.


Tips on Giving Feedback

  1. Be helpful.Consider your motives. Feedback should always be helpful; otherwise, there is no reason to offer it.
  2. Is the recipient open to feedback? Find out if the other people involved are open to receiving feedback. Listen carefully, then rephrase what they say to be sure you understand them.
  3. Deal only with behavior that can be changed.
  4. Deal with specifics, not generalities.
  5. Describe the behavior; do not evaluate it.
  6. Describe the impact to you. Let the other person know the impact the behavior has on you.
  7. Accept your responsibility. Use an “I” statement to accept responsibility for your own perceptions and emotions.
  8. Check for understanding. To make sure the recipients of feedback have understood your message in the way you intended it, ask them to rephrase what they heard you say.


You can give caring feedback without a good technique, but the slickest technique in the world will not hide a lack of caring.


Tips on Receiving Feedback

  1. Seek out feedback. It will nearly always provide you with information that will in some way help you improve your performance.
  2. Listen carefully. Receiving feedback requires a heightened awareness of yourself and the person offering the feedback.
  3. Listen actively. Restate the feedback in your own words so that the speaker knows that the message you are receiving is the same as the one the speaker intended to send.
  4. Listen empathetically. Put feedback in its proper context by observing the speaker’s body language, tone of voice, and emotions. Consider the speaker’s reasons for offering feedback.
  5. Monitor your emotions. Notice how you are feeling when someone offers you feedback. Becoming angry or defensive can cloud your ability to listen effectively.


Consider feedback to be a gift.
It truly is.


Summary

Effective listening…

•Is a learned skill:Effective listening is a skill that each of us can learn and can constantly improve upon.

•Plays a vital role in relationships and problem solving:Listening plays a vital role in forming relationships, developing teams, and finding solutions.

•Is active and empathetic:The best listening is both active and empathetic.

•Can turn a negative situation into a positive one.

•Is key to giving and receiving feedback:Listening well is an important part of both receiving and giving feedback.

Tomorrow we will talk about communication. When we do, remember that receiving a message (listening) is an important part of communication.

To prepare you for our next session, “Living the Values”, I will now present you each with an acorn.

L2L TG Notes 20141