Does this sound like part of your daily work life?
- customers who expect you to know their business
- direct reports who rely upon you for clarity
- peers you need to collaborate with
- supervisors who judge you on how well you execute plans
- vendors who depend upon you for accuracy
If so, then you better be a good LISTENER. More than half of your time at work is spent listening, everything that you do depends upon how well you gather information from an interaction, and the cost of poor listening translates directly to the bottom line. But, just because you “do” something frequently, it doesn’t mean you are good at it. While you probably spend more time “doing” listening than any other communication skill you might not be effective at it.
“The best leaders share a common secret: They successfully lead because they effectively listen. Good listening, however, seems to be a rare management skill.” — Rick Bommelje, Buzzle.com, 8/27/09
At Expanding Thought, Inc. we’ve channeled a year’s worth of research and more than two decades of experience coaching people on their listening skills, into developing practical tools and techniques to tune up your listening. The suite of offerings includes:
Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio®
Purpose: Enable you to understand your listening habits and their impact on communication
How it works:
- Follow the online link to the assessment
- Take the assessment
- There are 10 questions, each with four forced-choice responses
- Takes 5-10 minutes to complete
- Send your ID number to info@xtho.com. Without the ID# we cannot track an individual’s responses.
Getting the results:
- If the assessment-taker is a client of a certified practitioner, the practitioner interprets the results.
- If the assessment-taker is a client of Expanding Thought, Inc, an ET coach interprets the results.
- If the assessment-taker is enrolled in a webinar or workshop, the results are reviewed during the program.
Most people have no idea how they listen, let alone what they pay attention to or what they ignore, thus some of the value to the assessment-taker is:
- Heighten awareness of your personal listening preferences
- Gain ability to become an observer of yourself and others
- Understand the strengths and challenges of different listening modalities
- Learn how habits are formed and relied upon in relationship patterns
Sample Testimonial:
Your insights give a whole new dimension to the art and discipline of listening. The categorization of people’s listening tendencies provided another level of understanding about what to do and how to do it. You’ve provided a wonderful tool.
Dorothy Yep, Leadership Development Consultant & Executive Coach
For each paid assessment taken, $1.00 will be donated to HealThier Foundations, a non-profit organization that provides opportunities for Life skills learning for San Francisco’s under-served urban youth.
Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio® Practitioner Certification
Purpose: Learn how to administer and interpret the results of Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolioâ for your coaching clients
How it works:
- Practitioner takes the assessment and has results analyzed by an Expanding Thought, Inc. coach
- Practitioner attends two-hour online certification session
- Practitioner adminsters Hear! Hear? to a coaching client and interprets the results with an Expanding Thought, Inc. coach
- Practitioner joins the Linked In Group for Certified Practitioners
Getting the results for clients:
- The Certified Practitioner provides coaching clients with the link to Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolioâ
- Expanding Thought, Inc. sends the results to the Practitioner to interpret and discuss with the coaching client
Benefits of Certification:
- Gain an additional coaching tool to use with clients, with
- Access to new, and validated assessment instrument
- Become certified through a comprehensive and focused process
- Increase knowledge about the field of communication with focus on listening
- Provided with availability of latest research
- Given on-going support from Expanding Thought, Inc. staff
- Participate in a community of Practitioners
Sample Testimonial:
I used the Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio®, along with a 360 assessment, with a group of Sales Managers. The listening profile provided additional valuable insight into their communication skills that the 360 tool didn’t provide.
Brenda Williams, People Development Manager, Aggreko, LLC
The Fluent Listener™ two-part webinar series
Purpose: Develop awareness of your listening habits and their impact on how you communicate at work; and increase skills to be a more focused and flexible listener.
How it works:
- Participants engage in two separate webinars, each 90-minutes long
- Prior to the webinar participants receive the link to the online assessment, Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio® and the results are reviewed in Webinar #1
- There is a one-two week break between webinars with an interim assignment
- The same people remain together in both webinars
- Each webinar is highly interactive, and because of the format, participants cannot share a computer
Benefits of the Webinar:
- Participants are made aware of their listening habits, their strengths and challenges
- Participant learn and practice tactics to enhance their listening skills
- Two sessions are incremental
- Interim assignment provides opportunity to test learning from webinar #1 and become an observer of listening habits in the workplace
- Participants develop and test a listening plan to carry the work forward
- No travel involved
Sample Testimonial:
Tune Up Your Listening has forced me to expand my thoughts about listening…I think the listening instrument and the webinar content presented will “grow” as I reflect on my interactions with others… and here I thought I knew something about listening…this gives me another layer of complexity to think about and apply!!!
I have taken away a new lens to view myself and others in my interpersonal interactions….
Jane Saltonstall, Learning and Development Professional
The Fluent Listener™ Workshop
Purpose: Enhance awareness of and ability to make meaning when you communicate
How it works:
- Participants engage in a six-hour workshop
- Prior to the workshop participants receive the link to the online assessment, Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio® . The results are reviewed during the workshop
- Awareness, skill development, practice, and review of listening assessment are covered in the morning
- Participants engage in an assignment over lunch
- Remaining hours spent developing and testing your listening plan
Benefits of the Workshop:
- Ability to harness listening attention
- Heighten awareness of the strengths and challenges of your listening habits portfolio
- Develop tactics to enhance listening skills
- Become an observer of modes of listening in yourself and others
- Understand that listening is a muscle to be built and exercised
- Practice the art of listening and understand the science behind it
Sample Testimonials:
As soon as we started to talk about our listening habits, a light went off for me, I immediately got it that we listen for ourselves and not for our customers.
It’s rare that we have time to get away from selling and learn how to be better at it. This workshop was very important for both internal and external relationships. This was excellent, best in class, we need it.
Sales Professionals, Fortune 1000 company
Listening is both a science and an art that takes time and effort to master. Every second we put into listening, not just hearing, is a gift to another. Listening is the highest form of respect we can offer.
In all four offerings the premise is:
- The purpose of listening is to create mutual meaning
- Listening is a muscle that can be built
- Brains can be harnessed to pay attention
- Good listeners observe themselves and others
These offerings are derived from an amalgamation of the newest neuroscience research, years of work-place experience, analysis of behavioral and physical patterns, and many hours of coaching people who must be superb listeners in order to succeed.
Which offerings best fit your needs?
For more particulars, contact us here.
