Listening is good for the listener
When you really listen, you become present, focused and calm (yes, you), aware of your thoughts and words, and how they interfere with another person feeling heard by you. You will know how to be comfortable in social situations with strangers, your partner and children, coworkers, clients, customers-even with that difficult person you avoid. You will learn how to diffuse someone's anger.
Listening benefits the person listening as much as it does the listener.
Listening is at the core of every relationship we have, both work and personal. Problems in these relationships can usually be easily deduced to one person's inability (or refusal) to listen to the other. In fact, this is the #1 reason marriages and businesses fail! (citation)
And yet, only 2% of the American population has ever studied the act and art of listening (citation)(do not have statistics for other countries at this juncture).
How does deep, compassionate listening help you as both a listener and a speaker?
Benefits for the speaker:
Emotions are calmed
Confusion is sorted out
Feeling of being understood
Conflict's and decisions resolved more easily
Personal wisdom is rediscovered
"Aha!" moments are increased
Great ideas are expressed and potentially manifested
Respect for the listener is enhanced
Benefits to the Listener:
Calmness in the face of strong emotion or confusion
Ability to help create order out of chaos.
Conflicts resolved more easily
Increased understanding and appreciation of others
Improved intimacy and all round understanding in relationships
Greater peace through controlling of the mind
Spiritual deepening
Increased heart health and stress reduction
Increased popularity |
Learning to listen improves your love life!
From those first three decisive minutes when you meet, through all the challenges of learning to love one another, listening is the primary act that determines your success as a couple. In polls taken by online dating services, "someone who listens" is the number one attribute people are searching want in a potential mate. Failure to listen on a first date usually assures that you will not get a second.
If you are in a committed relationship, you already know how important it is to communicate effectively, to be understood, and to understand. John Gottman, a marriage counselor and researcher, who has about a 90% accuracy rate in determining couples who will and will not stay together, says that the "ability to heed one another" is one of the three determinants of relationship success. Heeding one another can only happen we know how to listen deeply to another person's concerns and needs, and care enough to adapt ourselves, within reason, to meeting those needs. Listening this way contradicts the "me first" attitude prevalent in many modern relationships.
"The first duty of love is to listen."
- Paul Tillich
Listening is good for business
Good listening is an integral part of sales, customer service, employee relations, product development and manufacturing. Costly mistakes result from mis-listening. Customers invariably choose a business based on its ability to listen to its needs. The largest reason employees are absent chronically or leave prematurely is they do not feel valued; listening is an immediate value indicator. Creative teams whether in marketing or design often block the one idea that could make a million because they weren't properly listening. Workforces that have a climate of listening, where everyone is trained, not just in active listening, but deep listening like we teach here, have happier more productive workplaces.
Schools More Peaceful when everyone is taught to listen to one another
When students, staff and teachers at schools are trained in listening, absenteeism, tardies, altercations, suspensions and expulsions go down. We did this in a number of schools, one over the course of three years. In just 6 months, all of the above indicators of stress and conflict in the school reduced overall by 63%!! Teachers feel heard, students feel valued, administrators have another tool besides punishment and shaming. One kindergarten student in a classroom said after 15 minutes of a lesson in listening, "Wow! This is really important!" Another high school student said that instead of the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, students should turn to each other and listen to each other for just one minute, telling whatever is going on for them, releasing the stress of holding it in. Great idea, heh?
Listening makes everybody calmer. |
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All this sounds rather touchy feely;
what are the statistics on listening?
Statistics on Listening:
measures on how good listening
is for business
Number of business studies that
indicate that listening is a top
skill needed for success in business? (HighGain, Inc.)
35
Numerical order among the reasons
that marriages fail that not really
listening is? (Gottman)
#1
Amount of time we spend listening? (Robinson)
45%
Percentage of what we know that
we have learned by listening
85%
Amount of the time we are distracted, preoccupied or forgetful when
listening? (Hunsaker)
75%
How much we usually recall
immediately after we listen to
someone talk? (Robinson)
50%
How much we remember of what we
hear 2-5 days later? (Shorpe)
20%
Reduction in office visits by
chronically ill patients after they
have been listened to for
15-30 min. (Kaiser)
30%
Percentage of Americans who have
had any formal education in
listening (ILA)
2%
Let’s change this last statistic!!! |
