In the first of what may be a series (I know, I suck at these things), I'm going to try an Idea of the Day posting...


On the Tech Republic 10 Things blog, I came across an article on "10 ways to explain things more effectively".

While writing a response to a snarky comment, I realized that this is really about Active Listening.  As I wrote there (with links added to the site of Gordon Training International, which is where I learned about active listening):

(Previous comment:)
How are you supposed to ask someone ... to explain what you just said in their own words? And to ask them without sounding like their mother or teacher or just a plain jerk?

(My response:)
The answer to this is to turn it on its head - don't ask someone to repeat themselves, try summarizing what you heard, and ask them if you got it right.

The key is to simply state what it is you heard, trying to be clear and non-judgemental (of course that is the hard part - and it takes time to learn to do it well).

This technique is called Active Listening (and a bunch of other things, depending on who's using it and why), and it's been used in many fields, from industrial management and gathering requirements to personal relationships. Once you learn to do it well, it can improve your communication dramatically.

(One book I would highly recommend on this is Leadership Effectiveness Training (LET), I don't recall the author but you should be able to find it via Google.)

Tags: active listening, communication, iotd, learning, training, working with users
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