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Listen Up!
Build Your Skills at Our Listening Workshops

“To fully realize your power, you must first take the time to truly listen.  This workshop helps you do just that by introducing you to the power of the talking stick.   This lively and engaging workshop offers participants the chance to take the time to refocus on their listening skills to communicate fully, consciously and openly with others.  Time spent listening well is time well spent!”

CLICK for Workshop Brochure!

 



"The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished."
Daniel W. Davenport


Dear Marilyn,

Wow, are people talking (and Listening). Your workshop was a great success. Thank you so much for helping us with our listening skills. Your information and activities were very enlightening and thought provoking. The skills you shared with us will help all of us serve our clients more effectively. The staff is much more understanding of each other and are communicating better. I have had several requests for a follow-up with just our agency. I know personally I learned so much about myself and how I have been listening to others. I am working on my listening techniques so that I hear with my whole person and not just my ears.

Thank you again fro sharing your talents with us.

Sincerely
Julie R.
Thanks Mentoring Program Coordinator


Listening is an art. It is the art of educating our ears, our minds, and our eyes. Listening is at the heart of communication. While hearing is an involuntary physical act listening is a voluntary act that occurs when an individual uses all of their senses to understand and relate to another. Learning to listen is the essential skill that creates relationships that leads to understanding and mutual respect. Deep heart listening is going beneath the surface, back and forth between what you hear and what you don't hear but sence. What you hear with your ears to what you feel down to your bones. This form of listening unlocks layer and layer of meaning from one individual to another. We interpret what we hear according to the way we listen. Words have no meaning, people have meaning and meaning comes from inside of us. We give words their meaning. According to psychologist Carl Rogers, "Deep Listening is a life long practice". Going into the heart is a life long practice. Therefore, the more you learn how to listen the more you listen.

Because our experiences, knowledge, and attitudes differ we often misinterpret each other while believing that a common understanding has been accomplished.




Listening is the key ingredient to be integrated by organizations and their staff in order to transform the organizational culture into one that fosters acceptance, support and empowerment in order to achieve a shared goal.


According to the International Listening Association, 45% of our time is actually spent listening, while we are distracted, preoccupied, or forgetful 75% of that time.

The adult attention span averages twenty-two seconds and right after listening to someone we usually recall about half of what we've actually heard. Within a few hours we remember about 20%.

- Less than 5% of adults have had actual listening skills training.
- How many of you have been taught to speak? How many of you have been taught to listen?
- When surveyed, organizational and business leaders rated listening as the most important skill for their companies.
- While Listening is [100%] of effective communication, high schools and colleges offer courses in public speaking but nothing is available in "public" listening.


The Art of Listening Workshops have been designed to take a look at how we communicate, how we listen, and how we interpret the information and emotions being expressed from one individual to another. The filters, biases, stereotypes, judgments, and assessments we listen through often cloud true communication and halt effective dialogue, causing confusion and misunderstandings. These Workshops are organized around experiential exercises, discussions and lecture that will teach the tools necessary for effective listening and is suitable for anyone in your organization.

- Do the dynamics of your organization promote effective communication for achieving its goals?
- Are you interested in improving your sales and your bottom line?
- Is "getting everyone on the same page" a concern in your organization?
- Do you feel some people are not giving 100% and you don't know why?
- Do projects typically start well and then bog down in miscommunications and broken agreements?
- Do you want to take your staff to the next level?
- Is your staff becoming diverse and misunderstandings are occurring?


If you are a business, nonprofit or government agency leader and are interested in offering your staff an opportunity to improve their skills, have a cohesive work environment, create communication miracles at work, and make a positive difference in the lives of the people you work with, contact us for further information at (919) 362-7133 or email marilyn@powerofdialogue.com.

If you treat employees as if they make a difference to the organization then they will make a difference to the organization.



If you treat employees as if they make a difference to the organization then they will make a difference to the organization.