There are only two communication states: actively listening, and not really listening. Active listening requires us to understand, interpret, and evaluate what we're being told.
Our attention should be on the speaker and when we get the urge to say something, we stop this urge and instead concentrate on what's being said.

Active Listening

Active listening is the key to empathy and relationship building but the authors explain that by actively listening — we:<ul><li>encourage people to open up</li><li>reduce the chances for misunderstanding</li><li>are more able to resolve problems and conflicts</li><li>build trust further</li></ul>

The Importance of Active Listening

"Speaking is one person reaching out, and listening is another person accepting and taking hold. Together, they form communication, and this is the basis of all human relationships."

<ol><li>Ignorance and delusion</li><li>Reluctance</li><li>Bias and prejudice</li><li>Lack of interest</li><li>Opinion of the speaker</li><li>Own feelings</li><li>Wrong time and wrong place</li></ol>

The 7 Common Barriers to Active Listening

<ol><li>Acceptance - means trying to avoid expressing agreement or disagreement, at least initially. </li><li>Honesty - means that you're down to being open about your reactions, similar to acceptance — honest reactions given too soon can stifle further explanation on the part of the speaker</li><li>Empathy - is your ability to understand their situation on an emotional level </li><li>Specifics - refers to the need to deal in details rather than generalities</li></ol>

The 4 Components of Active Listening

<ol><li>Minimize external distractions</li><li>Face the speaker</li><li>Maintain eye contact</li><li>Focus on the speaker</li><li>Be open-minded</li><li>Be sincerely interested</li><li>Have sympathy, feel empathy</li><li>Assess the emotion, not just the words</li><li>Respond appropriately</li><li>Minimize internal distractions</li><li>Avoid "me" stories</li><li>Don't be afraid of silence</li><li>Take notes</li><li>Practice emotional intelligence</li><li>Check your understanding</li></ol>

How To Improve Your Active Listening Skills

Reflective listening is concerned with how you process what you've heard. All four components of active listening are put into work towards creating reflective responses. The main principles of active listening are:<ul><li>Listen more than you talk</li><li>Deal with personal specifics, not impersonal generalities</li><li>Decipher the feelings behind the words to create a better understanding of the issues</li><li>restate and clarify what you've heard</li><li>Understand the speaker's point of view and avoid responding from your own viewpoint</li><li>Respond with acceptance and empathy, not coldly or with fake concern</li></ul>

The Main Principles of Reflective Listening

Understanding more about the common barriers to active listening – and how to best overcome these – are the biggest lessons you'll learn from this book.

This updated and expanded second edition of the The Art of Active Listening: How to Double Your Communication Skills in 30 Days provides a user-friendly introduction to the subject Taking a clear structural framework, it guides the reader through the subject's core elements. A flowing writing style combines with the use of illustrations and diagrams throughout the text to ensure the reader understands even the most complex of concepts. This succinct and enlightening overview is a required reading for all those interested in the subject . We hope you find this book useful in shaping your future career & Business.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

communication

Communication

books

Books

Lewis Lyons

The Art of Active Listening

Earlier this week, I had a feedback experience that shook me up a bit. I was halfway through my course preparation task for my boss’ <a href="http://buzzedison.co/">business coaching </a>brand when I decided to get feedback on what I had done. To be honest, I was really proud of what I had done so far and I was convinced my boss was going to like it too. Sike! I was wrong.My boss took one good look at the work and said it wasn’t good enough and that I had veered off the task. I was heartbroken, to say the least. The time I had invested, the research I thought I had done so well, all gone down the drain.

Experience Is The Best Teacher They Say

I refused to accept it. I tried to defend my work, tried to get him to see some good in what I was presenting. But he knew what he wanted in that course and I was nowhere near what was required.Eventually, I gave up my defending and listened to his corrections and suggestions. Honestly, at that moment, I lost hope for the task and started taking his feedback with a pinch of salt.

Later in the day (after I had taken a much-needed power nap to calm my boiling nerves) I sat down to analyze the feedback my boss had given me and realized he was right after all. I had veered off the work and I would have wasted more time on it if I hadn’t asked for his candid feedback. I started the task all over again, this time with a clearer mind, and when I went back for his feedback a second time, he found the work satisfactory.

The After Nap Realisation

As human beings, we never like to be in the wrong. We are more receptive to positive feedback and praise. In the world of work, however, things are not always dandy.In order to do work that matters and get results, you need to be good at accepting and giving feedback to and from your teammates, your managers, and even yourself.

We All Need To Suck It Up Sometimes

Yes, feedback is sometimes a form of criticism, but the goal is different from actual criticism.Criticism just highlights how someone or something is at fault, without giving ways it can be made better. Feedback is meant to do the exact opposite. While criticism focuses on weaknesses, feedback is meant to build strengths. Criticism deflates morale, feedback inspires. While criticism points to you as the problem, feedback finds ways to make things better.

Let’s get this clear: Feedback and criticism Are Different

I read a quote in an article on Medium that said “The value of feedback is measured at the other person’s ear, not at your mouth”. This just means that you should always be mindful of how you frame your feedback because it is meant for the receiving party, not you. And if the understanding of your feedback is muddled, it will defeat its purpose.

Giving Feedback

To give feedback that matters, you can apply the Radical Candor framework by Kim Scott. According to this framework, good feedback needs to be “care personally” but “challenge directly”. It needs to take a person’s feelings into consideration, but be straight to the point and incite the needed change. He calls this radical candor. By doing this, you can get the message across without hurting feelings or making people feel incapable.

The Radical Candor Framework

<ol><li class="ql-align-justify">Don’t act nice, be kind</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Give relevant feedback before jumping into solving the problem</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Do not use the “sandwich” feedback method</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Make your feedback concrete</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Never make it about being right or wrong</li></ol>

How To Give Feedback Like A Pro

After you’ve given feedback, keep giving it and reinforcing it. Do not believe that just because you’ve told someone once that your task is complete. Your responsibility is to make sure the other party hears and understands the feedback. You must reinforce your comments and acknowledge any adjustments they make as a result of your feedback.

Being on the receiving end is twice as uncomfortable as being the giver. As I stated earlier, no one likes being told they are wrong about something. However, you need to come to terms with the fact that no one is perfect and learning is a never-ending process.Receiving feedback is just as important as giving it, if not more. It helps you to improve and get better at what you do if you are able to accept corrections and act on them.

Receiving Feedback 

<ol><li>Acknowledge the good elements</li><li>Pay attention to recurring feedback and work on correcting them</li><li>Ask questions and seek clarity</li><li>Don’t forget to say thank you</li><li>Always follow up </li></ol>

How To Receive Feedback Like A Pro

Always remember that feedback is there to correct and improve, not to highlight mistakes. Be graceful about how you give and receive feedback and remember to apply what you receive as early as possible and follow up as often as you can, Always remember that offering feedback sometimes says something about the one taking it, but it always says something about the person giving it. First, take a look at yourself, and then give criticism.

Wrapping Up

This article is based on my most recent feedback experience and what I learnt from it!

Giving and receiving constructive feedback in any situation can be an uncomfortable experience, depending on how intense the feedback is.

career

Career

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

“Suck It Up”: A Guide To Giving And Receiving Feedback Like A Pro

If you’re not telling a compelling story, then you’re losing your audience before you’ve even started. Numbers and other data will make your audience believe but stories will make them engaged listeners.
There’s a big misnomer whereby people perceive storytelling as telling a little ice breaker or making some jokes. This isn’t the case. Storytelling actually dates back thousands of years in the form of artifacts and literature. It’s the way information was conveyed when language first originated in the cave days and that’s how our brains and communication developed.

The Importance Of Storytelling

One of the biggest mistakes that many people make is putting together disjointed pitch decks that are very heavy on numbers but don’t have a story element. Presentations have an overload of information with endless bullet points while still failing to highlight critical aspects such as the customer experience.Instead, go easy on the data. Don’t just add everything with the hope that something will stick. You should be giving a distilled, clear, concise view because you come across looking much smarter that way — and then let them ask you questions.

Too Much Information

The best way to highlight the problem is with a story. “You can weave the storytelling into the storytelling framework. Talk about your origin story. Where did you come up with the idea? What was the pain you identified in your lives or in the life of someone that you cared about?  Think about how your journey began and your inspiration to start. You can then expand it from your micro to the macro by introducing the bigger problem supported by relevant numbers to drive the point home.

The Best Approach To Create A Pitch Deck: The Problem and the Genesis

Ensure you can explain your product or solution simply in a solution statement. For example, “we do X for Y by Z.” It’s important that your solution statement is easy for anyone to understand. You can then show your audience a demo. Take them on the user journey and showcase your product through a user story because it’s a lot more impactful. “It could be a video. It could be screenshots. Use a real client if you can because it’s much more powerful.

Your Hero: The Product Or The Solution

You need to give a bit more insight into the business element by clearly explaining your business model, the market, the facts and figures, the competitive landscape, and the go-to-market strategy. People often start off with the hero’s plan as the first act, which isn’t the best route to take. While you absolutely want to highlight that there’s a big market among other factors that show the viability of your product or solution early on, you don’t have to get so deep into it at the very beginning.

The Hero’s Plan: The Business

This step details what the future looks like and the direction your business will take moving forward. “Where are you going? What’s your big vision? What will the company have shifted in the market when you are successful in three, five, or eight years from now?” Establish the different milestones that will get you to your destination, including the additional markets you’ll look to penetrate and everything you’ll need along the way to turn your vision into reality.

The Future: The Direction Of The Business

When it comes to numbers, you want to include things like growth metrics, engagement, and revenue. Stay away from meaningless vanity metrics that add little to no value. Instead, go for the measurable statistics like monthly active users that’ll truly make an impact.

The Data In The Deck

If you’re not telling a compelling story, then you’re losing your audience before you’ve even started. Learn how to create the perfect sales pitch deck!

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

business

Business

startup

Startups

How To Create The Perfect Pitch Deck ⎪Predictable Revenue

Nearly two years into a global pandemic, uncertainty has profoundly unsettled both our personal and political lives. Some of its sources are epistemic: How long will vaccine immunity last? Do rising prices threaten economic recovery? Others are sharply existential: How will I pay rent next month? Will I see my loved one again? At no other moment in the twenty-first century has there been such widespread unease about what the future holds. Uncertainty is perhaps never more consequential than where it intersects with political power.

What's in a Word

Leading this issue’s forum, Sheila Jasanoff, pioneering scholar of science and technology studies, argues that public policy could benefit from a much more serious acknowledgment of uncertainty. In place of the hubris of technocratic expertise, Jasanoff calls for “technologies of humility”—institutional mechanisms, including greater citizen participation, for incorporating a wider range of experience and views in our schemes of democratic governance.Respondents to Jasanoff consider other causes of pandemic mismanagement and ask whether humility is the best response.

Uncertainty

Other contributors extend the discussion of uncertainty beyond COVID-19, from philosophy to anthropology. Together they make clear that uncertainty need not be paralyzing. As Simon Torracinta observes, the late social scientist Albert O. Hirschman saw it as an opportunity. Perfect planning is impossible, he thought, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to build a more just world.CONTRIBUTORS: Sheila Jasanoff, Jana Bacevic, Caley Horan, Annie Howard, Lily Hu, Michael D. Jackson, Jay S. Kaufman, Oded Na'aman, Zeynep Pamuk, Simon Torracinta, Alexandre White

From Philosophy to Anthropology. 

How philosophical thinking can make truthfulness possible even when the truth can barely be fathomed.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

teamwork

Teamwork

Imagine the Worst - Boston Review

As individuals, we struggle to be seen, to be loved, to be heard, to be confident, to be truthful, to get what we want, to get others to do what we want. The list of things we struggle for , about  and with  seem almost endless. No matter what your struggle is about – fear, anger, death, need for status and money, constant desire for love and acceptance, the pain of addiction and shame – the path to personal change <a href="https://www.positivelypositive.com/2021/04/17/the-things-i-want-to-change-about-me-anger/">begins with conscious effort </a> . Conscious effort goes beyond knowing the source of personal struggle and the knowledge of how to overcome it. Conscious effort is persistence.

Intelligent Effort To Win Over Struggle And Be Happy

Self effort with deliberate and conscious application is marked at success.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

Overcoming the Struggles in My Life

Every time we express gratitude, we invoke a social world. Often, we invoke a world without realizing its full force. For instance, when we use a language of gratitude characterized by economic metaphors, it can shape our view of the world and our social relationships, encouraging us to see life itself as a series of transactions. Being more conscious about our linguistic conventions and the potentials of our choices can empower us to create a world we really desire.

Gratitude, Always Builds Up The Moment

With a fair attitude and approach, one can always expect good results.

Learning from other languages and cultures of gratitude, perhaps Americans can make “thank you” less casual and more heartfelt.

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

A Multi-Cultural Perspective on Gratitude

1. The biggest feature of mentally strong people is that they are ready to face any situation....2. This is the second most common habit of mentally strong people, mentally strong people accept change.....3. You must have heard about Jack Ma, the founder of the e-commerce company alibaba.com. Jack Ma failed 2 times in the 4th class and 4 times in the 8th class. And his net worth is....Want to read the full article?Just click on <a href="https://www.targetpedia.com/five-habits-to-be-mentally-strong/">this link</a>.If you liked our article, than please like, stash, react and follow. Also please click on three dots to send this article to editor for featuring.

Who says there can’t be a hole in the sky, hit a stone with confidence, man!
If you want to be successful, make your dreams true, want to leave the heights of the sky, then apply these habits in your life which will make you mentally strong.

habits

Habits

5 Habits to be Mentally Strong

We’ve all seen what I like to call <a href="https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/arrogance-vs-confidence-the-difference-can-make-or-break-your-leadership/">self-centered confidence</a> or just straight cockiness. This level of self-praise is a bit nauseating for everyone around that person. It’s a result of self-obsession. Basically, the world revolves around this person, so when things are going well, they are cocky and when things are not going their way, they are secretly insecure. This type of confidence is unwarranted because it assumes “I’m better than you” for no reason.

1. Self-Centered Confidence

all heard it before, confidence is everything. Those that seem to have it, have it all. They, themselves, are not necessarily perfect human beings, but they seemingly have the charisma to attract whatever they want in life.I remember way back in middle school during those awkward years looking at some of the popular kids questioning what they had that I didn’t.But, what about those times when you’re stuck in a job you don’t like? Can you still label yourself as an independent, powerful woman then? How does that affect your identity?

2. Perfection-Seeking Confidence

This brings me to the last and ultimate kind of confidence. Faith-filled confidence, which is not dependent on outside circumstances, but an underlying faith that tomorrow can be better than today through hard work and grit. This is the type of confidence that brings you peace in understanding that you might not have it all together today, but you trust that you have the values to get you there.This is the type that might say, “Hey I might currently suck at this particular skill, but I know I’ll get there eventually.” It brings you peace.

3. Faith-filled Confidence

We've all heard it before, confidence is everything. Those that seem to have it, have it all. They, themselves, are not necessarily perfect human beings, but they seemingly have the charisma to attract whatever they want in life.

The 3 Types of Confidence You Need to Know and Understand

My co-authors and I then did a similar experiment requesting online donations to the American Red Cross. Some people were asked for contributions directly, while others were asked to donate by voting for whether they liked chocolate or vanilla best. Again, people might have found this odd or even frivolous for a charity focused on providing relief in dire circumstances. But the strategy worked: People given a choice donated 28% more than those who weren’t.

Voting System While Donating

Similar results have been found in a host of domains. Asking people “<a href="https://sparq.stanford.edu/solutions/dont-just-vote-be-voter">to be a voter </a>” instead of asking them “to vote” significantly increased turnout. Students told <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-29450-001">“please don’t be a cheater” </a>rather than “please don’t cheat” were half as likely to engage in unethical behavior.

Use Nouns Instead Of Verbs

Popular content often has a particular word in common: You. Whether it’s on the news (e.g., “Is there a dangerous chemical in your water? Learn more after the break”) or online (e.g., “5 Tips You Can Use to Land Any Interview”) the most read or watched stuff often uses second-person pronouns.So instead of saying “we need help” or “every dollar helps,” nonprofits seeking donations might instead opt for “we need your help” or “every dollar you give helps.” If you can, try using names as well. This makes it feel like more than a generic or boilerplate request, but one targeted directly at them.

Use "You"

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

How Nonprofits Can Encourage Donors to Give More

I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.

“I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.” — Seneca quotes from Quotefancy.com

“I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.”

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