Listening Impact

The end of the year often brings with it a request for our thoughts about the year that is waning, and predictions for what’s on the horizon.

This blog is about Listening, and that’s what I choose to reflect on and share with you:

1. There’s more and more awareness that listening is a learned skill and art.
2. Technology is not the enemy of listening, but it is its challenger.
3. The global nature of business expects people to speak and listen with a high degree of mutual understanding, regardless of language or location.
4. Neuroscience is providing us with information about the brain that was unknown to us until recently.
5. The catchword of listening is flexibility or agility—one size does not fit all and we have to learn how to adapt to the listening styles and needs of others.
6. The term “Active Listening” is fortunately fading into the past from whence it came. There is no formula for good listening as suggested in that term.
7. Context definitely influences the way we listen and what we listen to/for.
8. Other strong influences—life experiences, education, language patterns, family dynamics, introversion/extraversion—in other words, everything.

I’m so delighted that people read the blog posts, that more people ask to be contributors, that more than 500 people have taken Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio®, and that the conversation grows.

What are your Reflections on the state of Listening as well as thoughts about what we’ll see next?