Month: May 2022

What you Need to Know About Effective Listening

Tiona Snowden May 11, 2022

Effective listening. It is the key communicator when formulating relationships with your loved ones, friends, and peers. If you ask someone, they may hesitate at the thought of if they are an effective listener or not. Unfortunately, not everyone will listen at all times, but luckily there are a few tips when it comes to effective listening that will allow anyone to gather information.

The Importance of Effective Listening

Becoming an effective listener can create bonds with others without you realizing it. Trust, a better understanding of the information, and the reduction of conflict are a few situations that can arise as an effective listener. People enjoy talking so it is best to gather their trust by attending to them and listening thoroughly. Effective listening makes you a better communicator overall because now you understand how to speak with various individuals.

How to Become an Effective listener

Distractions

Put away anything that may distract you from the conversation. Electronic devices, books, and even other people can distract you from the person you are speaking with. Getting these distractions away from you will force you to pay attention to the speaker and increase attentiveness.

Make Eye Contact

Looking at the individual will let them know that you are focused on them. You do not need to stare at them the entire time, however. Slight eye contact will show interest and confidence while listening.

Interrupting

Interrupting someone can make them feel like you are not listening. To avoid this, wait for the right time to speak. Possibly when there is a short pause, or if the person asks for your input can allow the conversation to flow smoothly without conflict.

Use of Nonverbal Gestures

A few nonverbal gestures include; head nodding, facial expressions, body language, and touch. This is an effective form of listening becuase you can express yourself without interrupting the individual. Nonverbal expressions allow the speaker to visualize what you are thinking just by doing these nonverbal gestures.

Important Keys to Remember

Pay attention to the speaker, and try to get distracted. Making eye contact will express a sense of attentiveness and that you are following what the individual is saying. Remember to hold your input until the speaker asks or if there is a pause while communicating. Interrupting is disrespectful and selfish. Using nonverbal gestures can allow you to speak until spoken and will show the speaker that you are paying attention. If you follow along with some of the tips provided you will create a trusted bond through your effective listening skill. Remember to provide the same respect you would want from others.

Become A Better Communicator With Effective Listening

How to Determine If You Have Effective Listening Skills:

Have you ever found yourself becoming distracted, defensive, or confrontational during a conversation? 

Have you ever felt like you rushed to conclusions too fast or judged someone harshly before fully comprehending the circumstances when conversing with someone?

If you’ve ever found yourself in circumstances similar to the ones described above and wondered why, ineffective listening skills, also known as poor listening skills that are hurdles to effective listening, are the source of these issues you’ve undoubtedly encountered. Don’t feel bad if you have poor listening skills; it doesn’t mean you’ll never learn to listen effectively; it just means you’ll have to practice and train like the rest of us to improve your communication skills.

Communication skills are not born or given to us at birth; rather, they are developed through our commitment to practice and training every day to master one or more communication skills.

I, for one, have shared a few instances in my life where I engaged in inefficient listening practices such as pseudo-listening and multitasking at times in my life. By asking my family and friends what they thought about my listening skills when I converse with any one of them, I was able to become aware that I had ineffective listening behaviors like these. I discovered I needed to enhance my communication abilities, I learned the many sorts of ineffective listening skills, and how to overcome these unpleasant habits based on my family and friends’ honest comments about my effective listening skills.

If you’re not familiar with the terms, pseudo-listening is when a person appears to be attentive in a conversation but is only partially or not listening to understand or interpret the information, giving the impression that the person is pretending to listen to the speaker. And multitasking is a talent that many individuals have, which involves listening without paying full attention and attempting to accomplish many tasks at the same time.

How to Improve Your Listening Skills and Overcome Ineffective Listening:

When I decided to research how to overcome these two hurdles to effective listening, I understood the first step was to comprehend what effective listening was and how to learn it. I was able to grasp and learn about effective listening through my study, and I was able to use ways to improve my listening skills.

Effective Listening – My Basic Understanding:

When it comes to people interacting and conversing with one another, effective listening is a crucial major listening skill to have because it requires a person to show they are listening and interested by actively absorbing the information given to them by a speaker to provide feedback so the speaker can be sure their message was received by the listener.

Effective listening helps people not have misinterpretations that lead to misunderstanding and missed opportunities when it comes to building remarkable connections and relationships.

How to Develop an Effective Listening Skill:

These are the five approaches I utilized to help me improve my listening abilities and create effective listening skills. I’ve broken down each of these techniques in depth below so you can understand and use them.

The 5 Proven Techniques For Improving Your Listening Skills:

1) Fight Against All Distractions

2) Allow The Speaker to Fully Express Their Emotions

3) Always Maintain Eye Contact

4) Ask Questions That Can Help You Understand Their Nonverbal Communication

5) Take Mental or Physical Notes On Their Details

Each of The Five Proven Techniques In Full Details:

1 – Fight Against All Distractions: When you’re in a conversation with a speaker, don’t let things like your own thoughts, emotions, phone, noises, or waiting for your turn to speak distract you. Instead, actively support them by giving them your full attention so real connection and understanding can begin to happen. 

2 – Allow The Speaker to Fully Express Their Emotions: By establishing a place where you may ask the speaker, “What’s on your mind?” after they’ve finished discussing their situation or presenting their story, to demonstrate interest, participate in the discussion more helps with that and with establishing a connection.

3 – Always Maintain Eye Contact: To attach meaning to the message the speaker is delivering and to obtain a deeper grasp of the discussion, pay attention to the speaker’s nonverbal communication, such as facial expressions and body language.

4 – Ask Questions That Can Help You Understand Their Nonverbal Communication: Instead of a full-fledged conflict, ask questions that might assist the speaker to understand the meaning behind their personal experiences to result in more collaborative discourse. Asking questions regarding their message demonstrates that you are paying attention and may elicit empathy from the speaker by encouraging and allowing them to understand their situation or story from a different perspective.

5 – Take Mental or Physical Notes On Their Details: As a listener, there are times when you are conversing with the speaker, such as a friend or advisor in a conversation where they are giving you advice and there are many details, or when you are listening to the speaker, such as your professor or orator, where you will need to take detailed notes to remember the message.

If you find yourself in either of these circumstances, make mental or physical notes on the details. You can use mnemonics or phrases to assist you in remembering and retaining specifics from the speaker’s message when taking mental notes. If mental notes aren’t working for you, ask the speaker if you may take physical notes. This shows the speaker that you’re paying attention and that their words are important to you.

If you feel like you’ve already established a strong foundation in terms of your focus and concentration span, you can always take notes afterward in which you document the top three most powerful things someone says to you, which, if you ever bring it up or remind the speaker of that situation or story they shared with you, will leave them speechless and demonstrate how their words or message impacted you during your conversation with them.

Conclusion:

I hope you found my blog post helpful and that the 5 proven ways for enhancing your listening skills will help you become a better communicator. If you want to learn more about these 5 tried-and-true approaches, watch this video:

The struggles of anxiety

Speaking with confidence is vital. This becomes challenging when you endure anxiety in these situations. I myself used to severely struggle with being able to present or speak or have a smooth outcome. I was never able to maintain eye contact, not use words such as um/like, or stand still. My anxiety took over me and it translated to the way I was viewed and the grades I received. I had to make a change and devoted myself to inhabiting new skills.

Symptoms of Anxiety

  • Shaking
  • Sweating
  • Dry mouth
  • Rapid Heartbeat
  • Squeaky voice/ Voice cracks

The affects of anxiety on an individual can easily be resolved with practice. Learning the right skills will enhance your speech and reduce the anxiousness that you typically come into contact with. It may take time and patience, but works in your favor in the end.

Resolving Anxiety

  • Be organized
  • Know your topic
  • Record yourself and look over it
  • Practice over and over
  • Visualize the success you desire
  • Take deep breaths/ Relax
  • Focus on your speech, not the audience
  • Don’t be afraid of silence or mistakes

It may be difficult to adapt new tips and tricks, although it is worth it. Anxiety can be seen right through you otherwise. When trying to convey a topic or stance it is important to be professional. The way you present yourself is the way others will view you and your words. Being aware of these tips will allow you to reshape your tendencies when speaking. Practicing your topic/ what you want to say is an important step. Familiarality of the subject allows for a smoother speech. You can get all your friends together and practice with them. It may be tedious to do so, but practice creates better results.

Commonality of Anxiety

Everyone has anxiety to a certain extent. Do not feel singled out! You have the power to improve and progress your skills

Public Speaking 101

Public speaking tends to be everyone’s worst enemy. However, it doesn’t have to be. Setting yourself up for success with a few simple steps, and public speaking can be a breeze.

Step 1:

Make sure you know your information. Being confident in what you know can make the speech go much easier and reduce anxiety. Having a prewritten speech can be helpful, but it can also increase stress. Make sure you know your message but don’t read word for word. The message is the most important part, as long as you are able to affectively convey that message, that it all that matters.

Step 2:

Make sure to practice. Practice in front of a mirror, in front of pets, or in front of friends or family. Imagine yourself in front of a crowd of people when practicing to reduce anxiety for the true speech. The more times you run through what you are going to say, the less likely you are to forget it the day of. Practicing can also help you revise your speech as hearing it out loud can help to identify where there is any awkward language. So, Practice, Practice, Practice.

Step 3:

Make sure to breathe. Taking a few deep breaths before public speaking can reduce anxiety and aid focus. Breathing will also help you to slow down your speaking and allow for your speech to be more concise. So make sure to breathe before and during your speech.

Follow these simple steps and public speaking can become easy. Take as many opportunities as you can to participate in public speaking. The more times you do it the easier it gets. Make sure to follow the steps and public speaking will become your best friend.

Knocking Down Walls Between Anxiety and Public Speaking

CC BY Serena Hutchison

May 5th, 2022

Overcoming Public Speaking Anxiety

For some, public speaking comes very natural and easily based on confidence or experience. For these speakers, their voice is audible, there is comfortable eye contact being made with the crowd, and there is little to no swaying back and forth while presenting to the audience. For many though, public speaking does not come as easy. Whether you are very social around your friends and are confident outside of the classroom, when put in front of a crowd, you are in a different ball game. For these speakers, they may tend to tremble their words, refrain from keeping eye contact with the crowd, and or sway back and forth. So how do we overcome this anxiety behind public speaking, so we can fully portray who we are to the crowd and knock down the stigma of anxiety connected to public speaking. 

In myself, I notice that when I know I am the only one speaking in the room and eyes are on me is when I start to tremble and sway back and forth. For me, being able to acknowledge what gives me anxiety was crucial. Furthermore, I was able to decrease my anxious tendencies while presenting. Another factor of anxious public speaking I saw myself portraying was trying to maintain eye contact but then going off track and stumbling my words. Like many, I am very social outside of the classroom but when I am in front of a group of people I may not know or am not comfortable with, this is when I become anxious.

So what are my tips to fix this?

I have a few tips on how to overcome public speaking anxiety. In my own experience, understanding that everybody else in the room is worried about their own presentations that they present helps me understand that I am not the only one going through the anxiety of presenting. Furthermore, understanding that your topic could be very interesting to the audience as it may be an informative presentation that the audience may enjoy or may have never heard of is something else that takes anxiousness off my shoulders. Another tip I have for overcoming presentation anxiety correlates to if you are in a group presentation. Getting to know the presentation group is a key factor for me and installs comfort while presenting. To add, when you are comfortable with your presentation group, this could be a gateway to meeting up outside of class to practice the presentation. 

There is nothing wrong about getting nervous to present. It is okay to be anxious to stand up confidently and present to a group of people you may not know. In the end, the idea of a presentation is to share your findings on a topic. After your hard work making a presentation, you deserve to share a beautiful presentation and reward yourself on all the new information you learned!

A Great Leader is a Great Listener

Effective Listening

Imagine you are having a conversation with someone, the only thing wrong is that you can not understand or comprehend what they are saying. Well, this happens to me alot. In the classroom, at home, or even at work I struggle understanding the context someone is trying to get across to me.

Reasons that can effect the way we comprehend something

There are 3 reaons

  1. Message Overload
  2. Environemnt distractions
  3. Incomprehensibility

Now you may ask, what do these mean?

Environmental distractions is anything that is getting your attention away from listening to the person talking to you, it could be people walking, seeing something, or even hearing a noise that is distracting to you. Message ovddrload is that the person talking is providing you too much information at once, and Incomprehensibility is not understanding clearly

Well, How can you fix this?

  1. Be mindful
  2. Control your distractions
  3. Manage your feedback
  4. Recognize the value of silence

Yes, these are very broad ways to fix your listening skills but there are many factors that contribute to these. Being mindful would be to be open to receiving new information from others. Controling your distractions would be taking yourself away from a loud environment to a quiet environemtn where you can focus on the conversation you are having. Managing your feedback is you need to maintain good eye contact wih the speaker, and good posture. Also responding with good information and questions that are appropriate to the information being talked about.

Being a great listener

A Guide to Effective Listening

Let’s talk about Effective Listening! Are you ever stuck in a conversation where you can’t comprehend what the other person is saying? Or perhaps you don’t remember what they said and don’t know how to respond?

There are times where the person speaking is sharing too much information, and the person listening is only focusing on certain things, or the things that they find to be important, rather than catching all of what is being said.

Different types of obstacles occur when it comes to effective listening whether it be an internal or external obstacle. Examples of internal obstacles could include selective listening, pseudo listening, and aggressive listening. And external obstacles could include incomprehensibility, too much information, and distraction.

There are six steps in the listening process:

  1. Hearing
  2. Understanding
  3. Interpreting
  4. Evaluating
  5. Remembering
  6. Responding

Each step in the listening process is self explanatory but very important for effective listening. Hearing is when the message is received or processed, understanding is when you recognize and understand what you are hearing, interpreting is when you fully understand the message, evaluating is when you internalize the information and relate it to prior knowledge, remembering is retaining the information which leads to responding to the message through feedback.

When listening, you should always be present in the moment and focus on the person speaking and what they are saying. Being mindful is important for effective listening because you don’t want to be thinking about something else and distract yourself from the conversation. If something does wind up distracting you, try to get back into the moment and focus on what you are being told by the other person. If your phone vibrates with a notification or someone calls you, don’t look at it. Try to control the distraction until the conversation is over.

Another part of effective listening is making sure that the person speaking knows that you are listening to them and that you want to be listening to what they are telling you. Eye contact, body language such as nodding your head, asking questions and repeating feedback is all encouraged and will help in letting them know that you are actually paying attention to them. When they are done speaking and it is time for your feedback, it is necessary to take a moment of silence to gather everything that they said and your thoughts on it before you respond. This way you are able to fully listen to the speaker and not think of what you are going to say while they are talking to you, because that can distract you from giving your full attention.

For more information on Effective listening, watch this video:

Overcoming the anxiety that comes with public speaking

The second I stand up in front of a classroom with a full audience, I realize that my anxiety tends to kick in and make me weak in the knees. The only thing holding me back from having a great performance is my anxiety. How did I overcome this? Well, I am glad you asked, lets dive in.

First things first… BREATHE. I have found that having proper posture while taking a breath can create confidence. Deep breathing before a speech of any sort can help you feel more confident and strong. This breathing can decrease the tension and will help you to focus intellectually. Focused breathing will help you deliver better speeches and presentations.

Next up, I recommend to speak slowly. Rushing with your words is a sign of high anxiety, and your audience will catch into that quickly. What they won’t understand is what you are saying though by speaking fast. When speaking, take small 1-2 second pauses between sentences. Catch your breathe, breathe for a moment.. then you can begin the next sentence. Without speaking slower and taking a break between sentences, your presentation can seem scrambled or too fast. This will not be pleasant for your audience.

Speak confidently. If you seem confident while speaking, then your audience is more likely to believe what you are saying. Before presenting, have a chat with yourself. Tell yourself that everything will be fine, and that everything is in your control. You could call this technique, “faking it til you make it.” This will literally help you trick your brain into thinking whatever you want. I can guarantee that many artists and performers speak to themselves in the mirror minutes before performing. With a positive mindset comes a positive outcome.

I am positive that if you take my tricks into consideration, your public speaking skills will improve greatly. Remember, being anxious before a presentation is normal, but you cannot let it control you. If you want to succeed, you need to grab your anxiety by the horns.