 All right, today I'm gonna give it a go without my glasses and I gotta say this Brio camera in this light definitely does a number on a 47 year old man but we'll see how it goes. All right, so first thing that I wanna discuss in order to be a better listener, you have to know what you're listening for. So number one is to understand the difference between relational listening and critical listening. And the way that you can tell these apart is they're both focused on different aspects of the conversation. Critical listening is when you're listening to somebody because you have the intent in helping them solve a problem. You're listening for information that will lead you to a solution to a problem they're having. You have the best intention. And even though you're listening intently and you could repeat everything that they've said, when you went to offer a solution, they maybe yelled at you that you weren't listening only because they were reaching out and having a conversation with you to connect, define commonalities, to be in a situation where they can get some sympathy and empathy from you where you were looking with the best intention to help them out, trying to find the solution to the problem. Therefore you're focused on data point. Relational listening is all about connection. It's about looking for emotional bids, commonalities or shared experiences or relatable emotional experiences that you're able to share with the other person with critical listening. It's listening for information, misinformation or disinformation that would help you lead to a solution. Number two, making sure that you're giving to the person you're speaking to all of your attention. We tend to be in a world now where everything is bothering us. We've got notification bells going off, push notifications, we're looking at our phone, we're putting it down, we're giving our attention to the other person. And the reality is in human nature, our attention span doesn't work the way a computer does. I can't just go to another tab or turn my computer on or go to another platform and it comes right on. As a human being, my attention has to go from one subject to another subject and I have to allow for that transition. This takes five, 10 minutes before our attention can be fully focused to where it needs to be. If I'm speaking to you, I pull out my phone, I respond to a text and I put that phone back in my pocket. My focus, my attention is still in the conversation that I was just having on that phone. It's going to take a few minutes for me to fully transition that focus to the person that I'm speaking to. That takes time. We live in a world where we have this on-demand culture and it is getting us in trouble in our relationships. I can watch whatever movie I want at any time. I can listen to whatever record I want at any time. I can go on YouTube and watch some interview podcast movie because everything in modernity is on-demand. I tend to bring that sort of mindset to my relationships. I go into a conversation, I give the person my attention and I expect them to fully unload and have a comprehensible conversation about whatever the subject may be in an instant, on-demand. Reality is humans don't work that way. It takes time for us to feel comfortable to open up. Number three, your body language. Closed body equals a closed mind and a closed mind is going to equal a closed body. There's a famous experiment that's usually cited to prove this point as an example. They had set up an experiment where they had taken an auditorium and had half that auditorium listen to a lecturer speak with closed-off body language and the other half of the room listened to that lecture with open body language and they quizzed everyone to see what sort of information both sides retained. Well, believe it or not, the side with closed-off body language in general retained 30% less information than those with open body language. It's easy to see that closed-off body language equals a closed mind. So if I'm in a classroom or having a conversation with somebody I care about, I'm gonna make sure that I listen to them with open body language so I'm able to retain and have complete comprehension of the conversation. Your body language goes a long way and not only allowing you to know that you're listening and giving your full attention, but also to understand when other people are giving you their full attention. Think about cells. You wouldn't wanna try to pit somebody who has their arms crossed who isn't listening to you, where somebody with open body language can hear everything that you're saying and they're taking in the full conversation. Keep that in mind the next time you're trying to pit somebody or you're in a room talking to an audience who's actually really listening to you and who's listening to you. And number four, we have context, the emotional tone of the conversation. At the beginning of this video, I talked about two types of listening. I talked about relational listening, which is all about connection and critical listening, which is all about problem solving. Context gives you the emotional tone of the conversation, whether it's joyous, humorous, serious, sad. If certain fragments of that conversation are taken out of the context, it's difficult to understand what is the emotional tone behind it? Why are they telling me the information that they are telling me? We see this problem on social media where we're having asynchronous conversations and we're pulling conversations out of context, out of the full conversation in order to examine it. If you don't have the complete context, it's going to make it difficult for you to actually know the intent that was behind the conversation that was going on. Let me give you an example of this. The other day, I was on Twitter and somebody was giving me an example of a recent conversation that they heard with Joe Rogan on Spotify. Now, I have a listen to Joe in quite a while since he had moved from YouTube to Spotify and I had mentioned that some of the guests that he had seemed rather safe or they were just comedians and they were discussing it. The point that my friend was trying to make is that he had heard some edgy conversation coming from Joe. Well, Joe has always been known for some edgy comedy but edgy humor and edgy discussions are completely different. When I was given an excerpt of a conversation that Joe was having without the context, I couldn't tell whether it was supposed to be humorous or that they were actually having a discussion to work out an idea, whether this was a clipping from a paper or whether it was a conversation that rolled into a humorous one where they were egging each other on for the sake of humor. You can understand where those two conversations are moving in entirely two different directions. So why is this person telling me what they are telling me? What is the context and the communication that is going on? And that gives you a better idea and how you're going to be able to respond. And then lastly, point five, which is summarizing. Summarizing allows you the opportunity to reiterate everything that was just said so that both parties can mutually agree on not only the context, but the emotional tones of the conversation. Summarizing also goes a long way in allowing the other party to know that you care enough to get what was said correct. You can also use summarizing for both parties to mutually agree on what was exactly said and the context that the conversation was taking so that you may proceed to whatever that natural conclusion is, whether it be problem solving, a sales pitch, or just general good nature connection. So guys, these five tips can allow you to not only be a better listener, a better communicator, but also someone who's better at understanding. And if you're better at understanding, you're going to be a better salesman, a better leader, and a better instructor. This is going to put more money in your pocket and it's going to allow your relationships to be more fulfilling. So until next week, I will talk to you guys later. Make sure that if you enjoy this video, hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell, give us a like, give us a share, leave a comment, and we'll see you guys next week.