Active listeners are mind readers
How well you listen has a significant impact on your job effectiveness and the quality of your relationships with others.
Listening is far from just gathering information; that’s hearing!
However, the senses gather some 11 million bits per second from the environment. One hundred thousand of them came from ears, and research suggests that we only remember between 25 and 50 percent of what we hear, as described by Edgar Dale’s Cone of experience.
So in a conversation with your colleague or beloved ones, you’ll probably only remember half of it.
Now clearly, listening is a skill, as well as critical thinking and problem-solving. This makes active listeners mind readers.
They can acknowledge, understand, and absorb what they hear. They listen with all their senses, which leads them to interpret body language, sign language, and elaborate conclusions about what a person will or is trying to say.
In a 2011 study, it was mentioned that active listening was primarily associated with verbal social skills rather than nonverbal skills, suggesting that being an active listener has more to do with being an effective conversational partner rather than an ability to regulate nonverbal and emotional communication.
Have you ever caught yourself drifting away from a conversation and thinking about what a person is about to say? The reasons for this may suggest that you understand the other quite well so that you can already guess what they’re about to say, or simply you were too focused.
Try to empty your mind from all shapes and kinds of assumptions and judgment, shut down your internal dialogue, forget about what’s turning around you, Fix someone and enjoy the pleasure of extended eye contact, pick up hidden meaning, facial expression, watch verbal but more the nonverbal behaviors, and be an active listener.
Be a mind reader!
19/09/2021
