You Hear Me, But Are You Listening

You Hear Me, But Are You Listening?

Effective communication through listening skills

You Hear Me, But are you Listening Copyright © 2015 by William Briscoe.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

For information contact; [email protected]

Book and Cover design by William Briscoe

ISBN: 978-1-329-62476-4

Second Edition: Sept 2015

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Listen more. Talk less. View others as valuable, and their words as treasure.

-William Briscoe

Preface

The average life span is 78 years. You will spend one third of your life asleep.  You spend 45% of your waking hours listening. Think about that for a moment. If you are asleep for one third of your life, then you spend 25-30 years of your life with your eyes closed, leaving you with 48-53 years awake. You will spend 35 of those years listening.

What does it mean to be a good listener? What makes a good listener, a good listener? Why are most people bad listeners? How do you solve recurring problems in personal and professional relationships? Why does the earth revolve around the sun? The answers to these questions are the reason you are reading this right now. (Everyone except for the earth and sun question, sorry to disappoint you).

I became intrigued (borderline obsessed) with the answers to these questions. The passion drove me to search out the answers. Why is it that the people that should be great listeners, given their status in the community, are bad listeners? There was another question I needed to answer.  Why was it so easy to listen at work, and so hard to listen to my wife?

Each day, I teach people to be great communicators on the phone, and amongst their peers. My goal is for the training to leave the walls of the workplace, and invade homes and relationships. The best way to improve relationships is to become a better listener. You will learn why great communication is not about what you say, but it is about how well you listen.

Married couples wanting better relationship and more effective communication should read this book. If you are leader -in any capacity- then the words in this book are for you. Salespeople that want to know the best way to achieve high quality sales keep reading. This is for anyone who wants to learn to be a better parent, or friend.  When you close the book, you will know why you are not listening well, and what you need to do to listen well.

Prologue

Your relationships suffer and your co-workers do not like to talk to you. You misunderstand your boss and you miss deadlines. Your significant other is frustrated, and you are frustrated. Why is all of this happening? What could cause all the problems you are having? What could be the answer to this question? Perhaps one day you decided that talking was more important than listening. On that day all of your problems started. Do you ever get the feeling that nobody is listening to you? Maybe you feel like everyone else is just clueless and you have all the answers. You can fix the planet if everyone would just listen to you. You always feel like the smartest person in the room, but everyone finds something else to do when you start talking. Maybe they do not understand your super sophisticated lingo.

These are the signs of a poor listener. You have a problem. When it is most important, you do not listen. You want people to listen to you despite what they are saying. Maybe you start going to seminars to find out how to go after your dreams, or a quarterly company meetings to get the motivation to go back and recruit people into the business. Maybe you want to go into real estate. There is a seminar for that too! All of your energy is focused on what you are saying, how to say it, and who to say it to. To be influential, you believe you have to be masterful in the delivery of the words you speak.

What is missing? Why aren’t you seeing the reactions you expected? Maybe you have put too much emphasis on talking and have forgotten how to listen. I want to talk about how to listen again. You learned how to be a bad listener, so you can learn how to be a great listener. If you want to be great a communicator, then you need to be a great listener. If you want to be an influential person, you need to be a great listener. To excel in relationships—business or personal—whether intimate, social, or with family members, improving listening skills will accelerate your progress.

Listening is not just hearing what is said. During his Ted Talk, sound expert, Julian Treasure (2011) defines listening as Making meaning out of sound (Treasure, 2011, 00:30). Hearing is the perception of sound, and listening requires an understanding of communication. Listening to what is being said is an outward act that requires a moment of selflessness, however the rewards of listening are amazing. I will discuss the culprits that create bad listening habits, and what to do about them. By the time you read the last page, you will have discovered your own patterns of listening. You will have uncovered the filters you have in place that stops messages dead in their tracks. The blocks you have set up in your own mind will be clear as day.

If you are ready for better relationships and more influence in life, get in a quiet place and turn the page.

A Lost Art

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I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen

-Ernest Hemingway

There was a time in history where listening was important to civilization. It was such an important skill, it brought tribes and clans together. Before the Television, before the movie theater, even before the black and white films, there was the Oral Tradition.  Oral tradition was established before the written word. There are societies to this day that continue to practice the art of Oral Tradition. Oral tradition is define as The spoken relation and preservation, from one generation to the next, of a people's cultural history and ancestry, often by means of storytelling.

The Story of Mulan

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there lived a girl in ancient China named Mulan. Mulan's father