active listening Archives - Successful Blog

A community isn’t built or befriended,
it’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship
that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

When We Listen for Gold

Everyone is hungry to be heard, but we don’t have bandwidth to listen to everyone. So we filter to get to the gold … faster, easier, and more deeply.

What are we missing

Here’s what Robert said . . .

Howdy Liz! I liked that “panning for gold” analogy so I took it a bit farther…

I know folks who are always “skimming” for big ideas and world-shaking nuggets. They may (or may not) find one, but the fact is, those types of things are actually few and far between.

On the other hand, if they’d just “shift their sights” even a little bit, there’s a whole bunch of smaller chunks, just lyin’ around for the taking. Tune your sight to the finest setting and you’ll find there’s a ton o’ dust down there at the bottom of the barrel. All we gotta do is drill down to it.

I guess what I’m sayin’ is, we should learn to listen to whole conversations, not just search for, and key on, certain “triggers”.

There are riches at every level.
Robert Hruzek from a comment on April 21, 2009

A successful and outstanding blogger said that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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The Wisdom of Crowds

Itâ€™s only human nature to want to name things. Names are the first step to a definition. A definition is the first step to knowledge. Knowledge leads to understanding.

Yet the names we choose can limit our thinking as much as they shape it.

Writers, Readers, Teachers, Sales Reps, Users, Customers, Marketer, Bloggers, Vendors, Workers, Managers, Employees . . .

All of those words refer to people. Individuals grouped together as a crowd.

The wisdom crowds is the aggregate of independent decisions by the individuals who form the crowds. To get the whole story when we listen, we need to the group, but we also need to listen one at a time.

Gathering Wisdom One at a Time

To get the rich context and detail, we have to listen to individuals talking â€” not a whole group shouting. Every person has a different story. In those stories are the reasons people care; why tell their friends about us or move on by. Individual views and experiences put the heart in the data.

People share wisdom one at time.

To listen actively, picture the person and the experience, and consider questions like these . . .

What’s the message of this person’s story?
What’s surprising about what this person is saying?
In what ways, is this person like me? In what ways, is this person unique?
What might this person want or need that I never expected?
What might this person want or need that everyone wants?
What can I learn from this person’s story that I didn’t know or always knew but forgot?

You get the idea. If we hear — really hear — individual stories, we can sort to find the universal truths we share.

Would you tell me a listening story that you’re thinking of right now?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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