Now we’re down to the most difficult group of listening skills: Reflecting skills. Reflecting skills are the key skills required to be a master listener. With Following Skills and Attending Skills alone, you’ll be good, but you may still misunderstand or misinterpret the speaker. Bolton offers these thoughts on reflective listening:

In a reflective response, the listener restates the feelings and/or content of what the speaker has communicated and does so in a way that demonstrates understanding and acceptance.

There are four reflecting skills:

• A paraphrase is “a concise response to the speaker which states the essence of the other’s content in the listener’s own words.” When I talk to folks about the virtues of reflective listening, this is often what they think about, but it doesn’t stop here.

• Reflecting feelings “involves mirroring back to the speaker, in a succinct statement, the emotions which she is communicating.” You can deduce the speaker’s feelings by

  • observing body language
  • listening to their tone
  • listening to the type of feeling words they use
  • putting yourself in their shoes

  By non-judgmentally reflecting the speaker’s feelings, you encourage them to talk more freely and openly, which helps create an instant intimacy with the person. Further, in order to fully understand the content, we must understand the emotions surrounding the content.

• Reflecting meaning is simply reflecting both the speakers content and emotion.

  When we respond to the speaker’s meanings—the feelings that paralyze or motivate and the content to which the feelings are associated—our listening is often most effective.

  When first learning how to reflect meaning, try using the formula: “You feel…because…” For example: “You feel angry because that jerk cut you off in traffic.” You might think that saying something like: “You feel…because…” would come across as silly or condescending, but it doesn’t. People focus on the fact that you actually understood them rather than the actual words you used to communicate that understanding.

• Summative reflections are restatements of the over-all themes and feelings of a conversation.

  Summaries are useful in any number of situations, and are most effective “when the listener (1) gathers together points that the speaker brought up, and (2) selects relevant data—that which will help the speaker more clearly understand key elements of her situation.” A good summary, then, empowers the speaker to “speak in more depth” about the topic.

  Bolton gives a great example of how helpful summative reflections can be:

  Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychotherapist, told a colleague about his first visit with Sigmund Freud in the year 1907. Jung had much that he wanted to talk about with Freud, and he spoke with intense animation for three whole hours. Finally Freud interrupted him and, to Jung’s astonishment, proceeded to group the content of Jung’s monologue into several precise categories that enabled them to spend their remaining hours together in a more profitable give and take.

So, there you have it. A summary of the three sets of skills needed to become an effective listener. I’ve only scratched the surface here, and would strongly recommend that you pickup Bolton’s excellent book People Skills to learn more about effective listening.

Other posts on How to listen:

• How to listen: Following skills
• How to listen: Attending Skills
• How to listen

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I’m certainly no expert on listening. Most of the ideas and all of the quotes come from an amazing book by Robert Bolton: People Skills. IMO, it is the greatest book on how to apply listening skills in your everyday life.

So, the 19 minute daily cleanup Merlin talked about yesterday sounds good and all, but it’s still 19 minutes. If that sounds like a lot of time to spend cleaning—and it does to me—try cleaning just for 30 seconds. That is, take 30 seconds to clean or straighten before you leave for work, head to lunch, or head home.

Any time you’re walking out a door, stop, look around, and take something that’s out of place and put it in its place. Shelve that book. File that folder. Put that cup in the sink. All little things that add up over time.

Now, if you can’t even find thirty seconds, there’s probably not much help for you at all.

Lesson learned from a Time Management seminar given by Mike Collins. Will probably be seeing more from the seminar posted here in the coming weeks.

I read Think like a Billionaire by Donald Trump over the weekend.

I have always enjoyed Trump’s books—their short reads with short chapters, and while they lack depth, they (usually) have plenty of little morsels (not quite enough to call food) for thought. Besides, it’s always interesting to hear a billionaire’s perspective—after all, he did something right.

This book, though, just fell flat. I guess I was expecting more interesting insight into the billionaire mind, and there wasn’t much in there that I hadn’t already heard elsewhere. In fact, the ideas in the book were so redundant with other books about success, I found only two take-aways—and they were both given in the same chapter:

• “Expect the shit to hit the fan everday” and you’ll always be ready.
• “Always pretend that you’re working for yourself.”

The two hours I spent reading the book weren’t completely wasted, though. After all, it’s encouraging to think that, before even reading the book, I had all the knowledge needed to become a billionaire. Now, I just need to get off my ass and put that knowledge to work.

Was thinking more about Pressfield’s Virtues of War. Specifically: why did Alexander die at 32? And what does the book’s title mean? In ferreting out the answers, I found a key life lessons.

First, let me review two important passages that will help answer both questions. The first passage details an encounter with a group of gymnosophists.

One of my pages, a bright lad named Agathon, was striding ahead to clear the lane, when he came upon a troupe of gymnosophists taking the sun in the public way. These declined to vacate for my passage. An altercation broke out between the boy and several vendors, who took up the cudgels on the renunciants’ behalf. A crowd fathered. By the time I arrived, a full-blown incident was in prgress. The nut of the quarrel was this: Who was the more worthy to possess the right-of-way—Alexander or the gymnosophists? As I reined-in, Agathon stood in spirited exhange with the eldest of the wise men. Indicating me, the lad declared,”This man has conquered the world! What have you done?” The philosopher replied without an instant’s hesitation, “I have conquered the need to conquer the world.”

And the second passage is from Hephaestion, a close friend of Alexander’s, ranting at Alexander to give up conquest and return home—this comes after several years of war that has led the army thousands of miles away from home—farther than any Greek army had traveled.

“Till Persepolis I stood with you, Alexander. Wrongs done to Greece must be avenged. But we have slain Persia’s king. We have burned her capital; we have made ourselves masters over all her lands. Now what?” He gestures east, across the river. “Shall we conquer these honest yeomen next? Why? How have they harmed us? By what right do we bring war against them? Pursuit of glory? This army stopped being glorious a long time ago. Or shall we cite Achilles and say we emulate the ‘virtues of war’? Rubbish! Any virtue carried to its extreme becomes a vice. Conquest? No man can rule another. The most devoted subject will trade in an instant his wealth, earned beneath your rule, for poverty he can call his own. We had a cause. We have none now.”

I don’t think Alexander wanted to conquer the world. Rather, he had a burning need to prove himself to be the greatest warrior and general on earth, which could only be proven by defeating all other armies and their commanders. And in the end, he was never able to conquer this need to prove himself. He pushed his generals and his army too hard—to the point that they became afraid of their own success and eventually refused to continue.

Shortly after his return to Babylon, he died—died because he could not stop. His obsession with the virtues of war became his vice, and eventually destroyed him. At least, that’s my supposition.

If taken in this light, the book’s title, then, describes war (or any other undertaking of genius) as a double-edged sword: it’s virtues, if not controlled, are it’s most dangerous vices. That is, if you let the virtue of your genius define who you are, it will destroy you.

Rosa’s at it again. And, as usual, she’s hitting the nail on the head.

She’s posting more about the Daily Five Minutes. This time it’s a two part series. Today’s part focuses on the D5M from the employee’s perspective; the second part will focus on the boss’s perspective.

Now I’ve been remiss in actually telling you why I think the Daily Five is such a good idea. There are two reasons:

The first has to do with the core purpose of the Daily Five:

When your boss Takes 5 with you, the basic coaching they get from me is that the agenda for the D5M is yours, not theirs (hence Lucy’s question). They are supposed to come to you with nothing but an eagerness to talk to you, ready for some practice on being a better listener when you talk to them — about whatever you want to talk to them about.

That the employee has the opportunity to be heard and, more importantly, be understood is the key part of the Daily Five Minutes. Being understood is key, because it’s what we, as humans, really want. If your boss shows up for a Daily Five and doesn’t actively listen to you, she’s doing more damage than if she had just ignored you all day long.

Keith Ferrazzi writes a little about this in his column in inc magazine. Master Networkers, he says, can quickly create an intimacy with other folks by “allowing people to go deep into themselves”—that is, we can intimately connect with others by engaging them in an open conversation about the things that they are passionate. What’s more, this openness and intimacy are rewarded.

In this same way, a boss that takes the time to talk to her employees in a non-judgemental fashion about things the employee is passionate will be rewarded with hard-work and loyalty.

The second is a bit more practical in nature: it allows the employee and boss to connect without taking a lot of time, which gives the employee (and boss, for that matter) more time to get work done.

Anyway, quit reading my words and go read some of Rosa’s. Great stuff.

Some great posts from April. Read ‘em if you missed ‘em. Worth re-reading if you caught ‘em the first time around.

• Jason Womack’s lessons from Martin Luther King’s Where do we Go from here?

• Jason learns the secret to success

• Solve problems better with help from this series by Fred Gatzon

• Guy’s 10 (really 11) rules for Evangelism as summarized by Johnnie Moore

• Lisa Haneberg says you should read How to Win Friends and Influence People. I agree.

• Attention versus Intention. Another one from Jason Womack.

• Jack Welch on managing for the longterm as summarized by Dan Blohowiak.

• Managers Matter so says Rosa Say.

• Christopher Holman has some ways to improve your trust and likability.

• Walk at a brisk pace at the office to keep your energy up.

• Improve your communication skills.

• Four factors of personal development.

• 17 mistakes entrepreneurs make.

• Optimism increases sales producivity

• Six Ways to jump start your day.

• Start your day the night before.

• Take better notes.

• Ten laws of the natural world from Forbes.

• Read people like books by reading their body language.

• Get new and better ideas at meetings.

I just finished Virtues of War. A brilliant book. Whether Pressfield captured the spirit of Alexander, I am not sure, but he did capture the spirit of a great leader—not just a military leader, but a man who understood how to drive people to excel beyond their wildest dreams.

There are so many great passages in this book—so many great lessons. One of my favorites is:

We as officers debate our routes and strategies. What we forget is that the men do the same. They are not stupid. They see the country change; they know what they are marching into. In their tents and around their cook fires, they chew over every fresh piece of intelligence. We in the command post have our source; the corporals and private soldiers have theirs too. Daylong they interrogate the natives tracking the column, the rabble in the towns we pass through, the whores and sutlers of the general crowd, and, of course, one another. A racehorse cannot gallop the column’s length faster than the newest rumor or the freshest fear.

Alexander understood that the only way to combat these rumors was to build trust with your soldiers. You won’t stop the rumors, but if your people trust you, they are less likely to fear the changing landscape.

What’s really interesting about this passage is its applicability to the modern world. With Internet technologies, such as blogs, we can provide greater transparency to our employees, co-workers, and customers. With so many shady business practices, transparency is even more vital to building trusting relationships.