Archive for August, 2012
Educational and Entertaining Listening Skills Research
There’s always new research being done on listening. I only report to you what’s documented, even the outré ones. Following are three pieces that I found fascinating.
1. According to the research results reported on Science Daily, children who participate in music lessons for as few as 1 to 5 years show improved neural processing of sounds as they near adulthood. This may translate to enhanced listening and learning for a lifetime.
“Based on what we already know about the ways that music helps shape the brain the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning.” says Nina Kraus, the Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology, Physiology and Communication Sciences at Northwestern.
2. This one requires a bit of a stretch to see how the research relates to listening—it’s really about voice, which is definitely an aspect of listening.
Sucking in helium from a balloon gives humans a squeaky, high-pitch-sounding voice, because the gas, which is less dense than air, pushes the resonance frequencies of the vocal tract upwards, but doesn’t change the sound at its source. An analysis of the gibbon’s squeaky songs suggested that the same is true for these apes. Like humans, the origin of the sound of a gibbon’s call, which occurs in the larynx, is separate from the vocal tools used to modify it, the research showed. [Listen to Gibbon Calls]
What’s more, the analysis demonstrated gibbons have expert control over the tuning of their vocal cords and tract when singing — an ability that is important to the subtleties of human speech and is mastered by soprano singers.
“This is the first evidence that gibbons always sing using soprano techniques, a difficult [vocalization] ability for humans which is only mastered by professional opera singers,” Nishimura said. “This gives us a new appreciation of the evolution of speech in gibbons while revealing that the physiological foundation in human speech is not so unique.”
The study was published this week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
3. Do you hate it when people complain? It turns out there’s a good reason: Listening to too much complaining is bad for your brain in multiple ways, according to Trevor Blake, a serial entrepreneur and author of Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life. In the book, he describes how neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session.
“The brain works more like a muscle than we thought,” Blake says. “So if you’re pinned in a corner for too long listening to someone being negative, you’re more likely to behave that way as well.”
Even worse, being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity–including viewing such material on TV–actually peels away neurons in the brain’s hippocampus. “That’s the part of your brain you need for problem solving,” he says. “Basically, it turns your brain to mush.”
Share any research you come upon, straight and kooky.
Words that Indicate You’re not Listening: Fine Tuning Your Listening Skills
Recently I was in a restaurant and really looking forward to eating some of the highly touted vegetarian fare. The perky wait-person quickly came over to find out if we wanted drinks before dinner. We said we wanted to wait until we decided what we were going to eat. But, I took advantage of her presence to ask if the soup was veg-base or made with chicken or meat stock. “No problem,” said she as she headed off to the next table.
When she reappeared, I inquired again about the soup. She stared blankly and it was clear she hadn’t actually listened to my original request. Her “no problem” was an automatic response, unattached to attention. The second time I asked she said, “Let me go check.” That time I was confident she heard.
That incident made me wonder how many times in a day we get responses that are tip-offs to non-listening. The following are just a few:
- “No problem” is often dismissive—a way to end a meaningless interaction
- “Whatever” concludes an interaction, generally when someone is disinterested or doesn’t want conflict
- “You bet” is false agreement that leads someone to believe expectations will be met
- “OK” is universally used to indicate one has been heard. I’ve been “OK’d” all over the world with little coming afterward
- “Got it” is used to sign off and show the listener is ready to act, often without complete understanding
What’s most important about this list is for you to be hyper-vigilant about using any of those words, or others on your list. Do you toss off one when you are impatient with a person or situation? Do you de-focus and go on automatic pilot and allow those words to be fillers? Do you avoid true communication and substitute those superficial ones for more thoughtful ones?
If you want to be considered and heard yourself, practice deleting theses phrases from your listening vocabulary. Show that you are paying attention by the words you consciously choose.
Marian Presents “Using Blended Learning Strategies to Develop Listening Capacity”
Marian Thier is getting the word out about Listening Skills at the SALT Conference
Notes from the Field: Ineffective Team
You might recognize this team meeting because it’s not unusual.
- Eleven people: seven men, four women; three Asian, one black, one Hispanic, six white
- Context: weekly meeting with department manager
- I was there to observe in preparation to facilitate an off site for the group
- Meeting lasted almost two hours
Everyone seemed to have a tacit agreement about seating. The manager sat at the head of the table and no one sat until she did. The second most influential person sat at the other end of the table to balance out the power.
The manager handed out an agenda to everyone and that kicked off the meeting. The first item on the agenda took almost the entire meeting time. Following are the highlights that I shared with the team afterwards:
1. No apparent process or agreement on meeting ground rules.
The effect:
- people interrupted with impunity
- no acknowledgement of one another’s opinions, facts, feelings
- speaker didn’t check for understanding about what s/he said
- little attention paid to agenda timing or content
2. Lack of support for key actions
The effect:
- little agreement about any possible solution(s)
- went off in different directions several times
- attendees often seem confused and lost
- no attempt to follow any decision-making process
3. Advocated individual ideas with very little inquiry
The effect:
- constant revisiting of the same ideas and topics—tried to wear one another down to accept a point-of-view
- promoted opinions with few facts
- incomplete understanding of a position/theory because no one asked for clarification or more information
- power determined results instead of knowledge
If you were coaching this team, what would be the first few things you’d do with them?
Is Listening a Sixth Sense? Defining Your Listening Skills
Have you ever gone into a room in which there were a lot of people, many talking at once, and you home in on one person or one conversation ignoring all the rest? Or have you ever found yourself communicating with someone at such a deep level that you seem to have some sort of otherworldly connection? Or have you ever felt someone looking at you trying to make a connection?
I’ve experienced both and often wondered how that happens. While I was in the waiting room of my massage therapist, I picked up the latest issue of Psychology Today (July/August, 20012). The feature article was “Sixth Sense.” On the first page (p 52) the author said that visceral change may give the impression of a transfer of energy. That finding would coincide with the situations outlined above.
The author goes on to say that when you bend/lean/turn towards the other person your movement draws that person’s attention, thus confirming your suspicion that you and the other person have some sort of psychic connection.
In the first scenario above, the person who draws me in may have a loud voice, unusual speech pattern, engaging gestures, intriguing accent, reminiscent phrasing, or is talking about something I’m interested in. Something stimulated my Reticular Activation System (RAT) that caused me to isolate other conversation and focus attention to one interaction, even though I might not have had any awareness that was happening.
When we’ve administered Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio to a group, I watch people as they enter a room, self-select work groups, choose a seat, and chat informally. It doesn’t take long for people to sort into listening styles. People migrate to others like them. It’s so much easier to converse with someone who listens for the same things as you do and who asks the very questions that are on your tongue than to try to talk to someone with whom you don’t jive.
That’s not a sixth sense, it’s a well developed habit honed in our brains, bodies and emotions that guide us towards who/what’s most comfortable to listen to. So, in the second scenario, it’s much more likely that two simpatico listeners will have deep conversations than two people who hear very different things from one another. Listening opposites usually don’t attract.
Listening isn’t woo-woo, it’s a conscious, hard won skill.