 Our first section for our course is effective listening skills for requirements definition. The real question you need to ask yourself is, how do I ensure that I'm hearing what my stakeholders are not only saying, but what they really mean? I often like to tell people that the good Lord gave every single one of us two ears in one mouth. That's directly proportional to how we should be using our gifts. Unfortunately, that's not the way it usually works. Most people, when they are listening, listen with intent to respond. They really aren't listening with intent to understand what the other person is saying, and that really needs to be our goal. Stop listening with an intention of, what do you need to say next? And learn to begin to listen to truly understand the deep meaning your compatriots are trying to provide. As we look at listening as a core skill, there's a number of steps that we often need to go through and or a process if you want to look at it. The idea we need to do is really be focusing in on the opportunities that we are being given as listeners. You see, at the end of the day, we begin by doing it right, listening effectively. We're then able to reach some kind of clarity of understanding. It's that what the other person really meant by what they were saying. And only by having our focus solely on that understanding can we effectively move on to the next steps, which include responding appropriately. That begins with empathy, so understanding what the person is saying and meaning, and then being able to put yourself in their position. From there, you will be able to enhance your communication, support cooperation, improve the overall morale of your team, and actually increase the job commitment that other stakeholders have. At the end of the day, it's really about an understanding of the differences between listening and hearing. When we talk about listening versus hearing, they are very different activities. Unfortunately, a lot of people throw those two terms around like they're synonymous. Hearing is a physical ability. It's the process of sound waves going into your ear and vibrating the eardrum and those waves then getting converted into electronic signals that are transmitted into your brain. That is a physical process. It's simply an ability. Most people have the ability to hear. Unfortunately, not everybody is a good listener. You see, listening is the ability to put true meaning to those transmissions, to those electronic signals. When you can't truly effectively listen, all those sound waves simply represent noise. They're static. And how often have you felt in a conversation like the old Snoopy cartoons as the teacher is speaking, wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, is all people hear. That's hearing. It is absolutely not listening. And so the question becomes, how do we become more effective listeners using our ability to hear? Well, it begins really with a common problem. That problem is tuning out. Regularly, most people who are trying to listen struggle. Imagine or put yourself in that last major meeting that you were in with your boss. Your boss is up there talking about what's going on in the organization or some particular topic. And it's an hour, an hour and a half long meeting. And you remember at some point tuning out, suddenly focusing in on something that happened that morning at home or that needed to happen this evening that you needed to do later on in the day, going through the list of all the things that needed to be accomplished. We've all been there. That's tuning out. So what are the likely causes of that occurring? If you look at what's going on, understand that in many cases the first and most likely cause is the fact that the receiver's purpose is really different from the sender's purpose. When that happens, we often tune out. We get distracted easily because we're simply not engaged in the message that we're having to deal with. So as you look at that, we need to make sure as a speaker we're constantly trying to align our purpose with that of the people who are receiving our message. Additionally, you might be understimulated. You've all been part of those presentations where the speaker simply speaks in a monotone hour after hour after hour without any kind of variation in either cadence, i.e. pace or tone. It never goes up or down. It never gets louder or softer in terms of trying to engage you in some different way. All of a sudden, you fall asleep. We also, though, can be overstimulated. It's like that sales guy who's up there at the very top of his game and he is so excited about what he's talking about that he's constantly doing cartwheels and somersaults and it's loud and it's neon and it's in your face and it never seems to stop. Well, all of a sudden, that overstimulation can cause you to simply tune out. It's just too much. What about the pace and delivery of the communication that you're seeing? Is it appropriate for the kind of message that you are trying to deliver? Pace can be a critical aspect of communicating with other people. If we are too quick in our pace, it can be problematic. I have a young daughter and she's just entering her teenage years and she is a brilliant child but sometimes when she's talking to me, my statement to her is, please just breathe. All of a sudden it's as if she can go on for hours and hours on one continuous run-on sentence and after a while, I just need a break. That's all of a sudden me tuning out. And so having that varied pace and changing the way we deliver, it gets us to tone just as well where all of a sudden the tone and the delivery of the communication sounds like the sender is maybe in a different emotional state than I think they should be for that particular communication. Again, using my own personal experience, I'm often told I sound angry when I communicate. When, very rarely, am I in that state? So my wife is constantly reminding me to lighten up a little bit, try to tell some jokes, try to be a little less heavy in my communication style. I notice it far quicker in other people than I see in myself and probably you're the same way. And so delivery becomes a critical aspect and tone of getting people to really engage with the message we're trying to deliver. What about skills development? Are you actually competent as a speaker? One of the most important ways that people get moved up in an organization, get promoted, is by their ability to present. Yet a lot of people don't like to do that. According to one study, it was the second biggest way that senior leaders take notice of their employees. So if you are interested in moving ahead, maybe developing your presentation skills could be a key aspect that you simply have neglected to this point. Spend some time, whether it's taking a course on presentation or developing a relationship with a group like Toastmasters or the National Speakers Association and engage in the art and science of presenting and you will find your career can quickly take off.