Never correct others in social conversation. That they’re wrong doesn’t matter, and correcting them only puts them on the defensive, effectively shutting down the conversation.

Not sure where I learned this. Maybe Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People?

Update: This principle isn’t from Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. At least, I couldn’t find it in there—either by skimming the book or searching on Amazon’s “Search Inside”. Maybe the idea is my own or comes from some other book.

John Mayer had some good advice for travellers in the latest issue (May 2005) of Esquire:

On the road and lost a cellphone or PDA charger? Ask the front desk if you can rifle through the gargantuan box of chargers they keep in the lost and found.

So, you’re at the office. You’ve just finished your lunch, and you still have half a salad that would make an excellent supper—if only there was a way you could remember to pull the salad out of the refridgerator before you left work. If only.

A clever person would put his car keys in the refridgerator with the salad. That way, he can’t leave the office without his leftovers. That’s what a clever person at the office did yesterday. Of course, he had to answer: “Do you know whose keys these are in the fridge?” several times. But his salad did make it home with him.

If you do use this technique, just make sure you don’t get locked out of the building before remembering that your keys are in the fridge with the salad.

Attending skills are the body language skills of listening. It’s said that 85% of communication is done non-verbally. If true, that means that 85% of our communication relies on our attending skills. Fortunately, most people already have an inuitive understanding of how to apply attending skills—they just rarely apply them.

Attending skills include:

• A posture of involvement. Relaxed alertness. Being relaxed communicates acceptance of what the speaker says and being alert communicates that you are paying attention. A posture of involvement can involve any of these activities:
  • Incline your body toward the speaker. When you are really interested in a topic, you’ll actually sit forward.
  • Face the speaker squarely. Don’t sit or stand at an angle. Face them head on.
  • Maintain an open position. Keep your arms and legs unfolded. Closed arms and/or legs can communicate defensiveness and distance.
  • Give the speaker her personal space. Crowding the speaker only makes her feel uncomfortable, but too much distance means that you are not interested in what she is saying. For Americans, an appropriate distance is three feet. Closeness beyond that communicates an intimacy that is reserved for close friends and loved ones.
• Appropriate Body Motion. Avoid distracting motions and gestures. Fidgeting communicates boredom, but so does complete stillness. Your movements should be in response to the speaker’s movements.
• Eye Contact. Of the attending skills, this is probably the biggest no brainer as well as the most important. Good eye contact communicates interest in what the speaker is saying as well as confidence from the listener. Eye contact also carries with it a level of intimacy that some people may not be comfortable with, so, at times, it will be difficult to use effectively.
• Nondistracting Environment. Another no-brainer. If you’re going to talk with someone, make sure your environment has as few distractions as possible. Turn off the television. Close your office door. Shut down email. Do whatever you need to do to cut down on distractions. (The television kills me every time—something about those pretty pictures and magical sounds draws me to them. When someone is talking to me, and a television is on, I turn it off. If I can’t turn it off, I make sure I can’t see it.)

Attending skills are the building blocks of good listening. The sad part is that even though most of us know how to use these attending skills, we don’t.

Make a conscious effort at some point during the next few days to actively practice your attending skills. It will seem artificial at first. And by “at first”, I mean the first few minutes of a conversation because actively attending to what the other person is saying stirs your interest in the conversation. It won’t turn a dreadful conversation into an interesting one, but it will make those marginally interesting topics even more bearable. And you might even learn something from the interaction—at the very least, you’ll hone your attending skills.

I’ve talked a bit about the power of reflecting listening and why we listen, but have not talked much about how to listen. Let me remedy that.

First, though, the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is the physical act of listening; hearing begins the moment the auditory signal enters the ear and ends when the brain receives the notification that a sound has been heard.

Listening involves “interpreting and understanding the significance” of what you heard.

Listening involves twelve skills:

• Attending Skills
  • A posture of involvement
  • Appropriate Body Motion
  • Eye Contact
  • Non-distracting environment
• Following Skills
  • Door openers
  • Minimal encourages
  • Infrequent Questions
  • Attentive Silence
• Reflecting Skills
  • Paraphrasing
  • Relfecting Feelings
  • Reflecting Meanings
  • Summative Reflections

Seems daunting. Fortunately, you already know most of the skills—at least, you know about most of the skills. If you’re like most people, you’re not actively nurturing them. Most of us spent much of our childhood learning how to speak and not much time learning how to listen. (The most I got from my parents and teachers was “Pay attention!” But what does it mean to “pay attention”?)

Over the next few days, I’ll review each of the listening skills. If you’re really anxious to learn about listening, you can purchase People Skills by Robert Bolton, which is where I learned my listening techniques, and where much (if not all) of this information comes from.

So, I’m really grooving on this book Everyday Speech: How to say what you mean by Bess Sondel. She has an amazing grasp on human interaction. What most amazes me about it: the first edition was published in 1950. All the experts that have come since then are, in many cases, just rehashing ideas found in her book.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve read three great books[1] from the first half of the twentieth century, and now I’m really wondering what other gems are out there.

Those great books were:

1. Everyday Speech: How to say what you mean by Bess Sondel
2. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
3. How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett

I picked up a gem of a book this weekend called Everyday Speech: How to say what you mean by Bess Sondel. It was published in 1950 and has some interesting insights into the art of speaking (both public and one-to-one) and listening.

I haven’t finished reading the book, but wanted to share some of its insights on listening.

Listening is active and involves three operations.

1. We listen to understand. If we don’t understand, we cannot proceed intelligently to the next two operations. When do we understand? Only when we can sum up in ONE sentence (or less) what the other fellow is driving at…

I would add that to fully understand the speaker’s meaning, you must not only understand what he says, but also the emotions behind the words. And you do this through reflective listening; once you have accurately reflected the speaker’s meaning, you can then move on to the second and third parts of listening, which are

2. We listen in order to judge.

3. We listen to make use of the material.

My favorite quote from his discussion on listening:

Listen for controlling ideas, but remember ideas are conveyed by words. Don’t slide over words—even familiar words. The meaning of a word must be found in its context.

And, again, reflective listening comes into play here. By paraphrasing the speaker’s words, you ensure that your understanding of the words and the speaker’s understanding of their words are in-line.

Pick up the book. It’s well worth the $1.00 cost.

1. Do less. “Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own.” Take your time. There are a lot of things to do, so choose one or two things you want to do and focus on those. You’re much more likely to accomplish your goals if you focus on one or two things than if you were to spread your energy over four or five. (How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett)
2. Sleep. It’s a blessing and a curse. As humans, we spend so much of our lives sleeping. Imagine what we could do if we didn’t have to sleep. On the flip side, letting your head fall back into your pillow after a long day (or several long days, as the case may be) feels so damned good. Staying awake for long periods of time exhausts your body and mind. You lose focus and perspective, your goals become pipe dreams, and your stamina fades. A good night’s sleep provides not only a much needed perspective, but the strength to continue.
3. Keep trying. Don’t give up when you fail. Look at every failure as a pre-requisite to success, and keep going. Life is a test of endurance. The more you apply what you’ve learned from your failures, the more likely you are to succeed. (Summarized from a recent post by Jason Womack.)
4. Curb your optimism.Be Realistic. Play to win every day, but remember the Stockdale Paradox: “…maintain unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” (As summarized in Good to Great by Jim Collins)

There’s been a lot of talk on the blogosphere about Getting Things Done, a book by David Allen that describes a process for, well, getting things done. Now, I’m still working to integrate GTD into my daily life, but one tool that has made this whole process easier has been reflective listening.

Reflective listening is the act of paraphrasing a speaker’s emotions and words. It’s a tool you can use to make sure you have understood the speaker’s meaning, and gives the speaker an opportunity to clarify any misunderstandings.

So, why is this useful for GTD? When done well, you mirror the speaker’s meaning, giving them a chance to hear what they just said—and by hearing it, they’ll think about it and make sure what they said was correct. If it’s not exactly what they meant, they clarify. The process continues until you are both on the same page. Once you start reflectively listening, you’ll find that the work you’re getting done is more accurate because it is based on the actual requirements instead of on mistaken assumptions.

The best book that I’ve read on the topic is People Skills by Robert Bolton.

Reflective listening is not a panacea, but using it gives you a better chance at getting the real requirements. I’ve used reflective listening to clarify client and coworker assumptions. Without it, my suggested solution to their problem would not have addressed the real problem.

What’s more, when you reflectively listen to others, you communicate that you have heard them and are actively engaged in the conversation—even if you initially misunderstand their meaning.

One caveat here, though, I have met a few people who were just annoyed by the whole act of reflective listening. It’s usually because I’m doing it poorly. If done well, reflective listening should be a natural part of the conversation, and, well, I’m still learning how to do that.

More often than not, though, I’ve found reflective listening to be a vital tool in my GTD toolbox—even when I’m doing it poorly.r! If they had only heard what they had asked for, they would have realized that what they thought they wanted wasn’t actually what they wanted.

I’ve only been at this whole blogging thing a few days, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a few years: I’ve created several different visual designs; I’ve toyed with ways to categorize the content; and I’ve researched ways to make money off the whole process.

After putting all that thought and work into creating my blog, I never started blogging because I forgot one of the core lessons my college creative writing professor drilled into our heads: Writers write.[1] It’s not about a cool design, it’s not about making money, it’s not even about being read. It’s just about writing, and I want to write.

On April 1st, I started writing, and I haven’t stopped since—it’s like I struck oil.

At this point, I should say something like: “Read or not read, it doesn’t matter.” But that’s not true. I do want to be read; I’m just not writing to be read. I’m writing to write.

[1] To be fair, I’ve been out of college for 10 years it’s been nearly ten years since my writing class.