Influential Listening: Increase your capacity to affect actions, opinions and behavior of others.
How effective would you say you are at influencing others at work? What impact is your current approach to listening having on your capacity to influence others?
Most of us can process language at 300 to 500 words per minute. Most of us speak around 100 words per minute. The gap between the speed of your processing and another’s speaking opens up extra brain capacity.
Think back to a time when you entered into a challenging conversation; and your brain was already busy processing several other pressing problems. What if your brain capacity already maxed, wasn’t able to effectively process what your conversation partner was saying to you? What was the outcome of that conversation?
Unless you consciously choose a specific approach to listening prior to entering a conversation, you will listen to prove: Your existing theories about your conversation partner(s); and, that you are right about what you expect to see, hear and feel from them.
Being an influential listener means that more often than not people leave a conversation with you feeling as though their opinions and beliefs are understood and respected.
Workplace communication consultant and trainer, Jean Bonifas of Springboard Northwest, presents an instructional, interactive 90 minute session that enables participants to:
- Understand and appreciate the value of influence-based listening;
- Identify their default approaches to listening, and the degree to which these approaches limit or expand their capacity to influence others;
- Select and practice several specific approaches to listening and responding that can increase their capacity to be more influential at work.
