Be an Active Listener
How can we listen to build community?
Active listening is a tough thing to do. We have to speak less, eliminate distractions, and get beyond the small talk. We have to avoid giving advice unless asked. We have to repeat to clarify and follow up with someone after a conversation. It’s tough. How often do we interrupt people? How many times are we trying to come up with something to say after someone else is done speaking?
- Let’s listen and not worry about ourselves or think we have something revolutionary to say.
- Let’s be okay with silence after someone finishes speaking; it probably means that we listened to what they said and weren’t just waiting for our turn to speak.
- To avoid interrupting someone, lets write down our thoughts as someone speaks and we can bring it up later.
- Let’s not assume someone is talking to us to get advice, it may be to vent, or to have someone be there for them, or to externally process.
- After someone is speaking, instead of turning the focus back on ourselves, let’s ask clarifying questions and seek to better understand what they were talking about.
- Let’s put down our phones, but not on the table. Leave them in our pockets, our bags, or underneath our chairs. Even better – let’s turn them off and listen. Show people that we care, we hear them, and we want to be there for them.
At A Cup of Common Wealth
There are no phones allowed behind the coffee bar or when someone is working a shift. It makes a statement to our guests that they are the most important people in the room and they are our focus.
In any company meeting, we lay out expectations, and almost always one of the first expectations are no phones except when there are breaks.
Each employee has taken a Learning Style test to find out how they learn and interact, whether it be visually, auditory, or kinesthetically/tactile. With that knowledge the staff better knows how to interact with one another and assists in more fruitful interactions between one another.
The management team seeks to ask questions, seeks to understand, and speaks less. It helps people come up with their own answers and gives people the space to speak, to act, and to learn.
Actively listen.
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