About this course

Start date: please check later for next Live Course date

Summary

Listening deeply is a powerful skill. Most people don’t realize they are listening at the surface, so the experience doesn’t seem to shift anything. This course teaches depth. (The classes in this course are each 2.5 hours long.)

Do you know how to get past the surface to listen at depth?

Listening has so many applications: developing relationships, forming rapport, connecting with people, seeing new perspectives. While these may sound too mystical to apply in your org, any hope of improving support for people, teamwork, or leadership is rooted in being able to shape relationships. Listening is the foundation for inclusivity, new market opportunities, and powerful team efficiency. I make sure professionals have the skills to wield the empathetic mindset when they are feeling confronted by someone who has different values. If a professional has the awareness to recognize then they are reacting, judging, or being triggered, they can hit the mental pause button and decide what to do next.

The empathetic mindset does not mean you have to feel warmth for another person. The words “understand” and “comprehend” do not mean “adopt” or “agree with.”

It may seem counter-intuitive to take time to listen when you want to solve, but it’s foundational. In product & service design, listening deeply allows you to learn other people’s thinking and approaches to the purposes your organization intends to support. It is the path to discovering whole new markets and opportunities. To this point, listening deeply is the way to create a mental model diagram or thinking styles. These let you consider how well you are helping people achieve their purpose using an approach matched to them. Listening is the key.

You will learn how to:

• Identify the ways you already listen
• Discern surface from depth when you are listening
• Start a listening session & recognize when it’s over
• Develop rapport & trust with the speaker
• Get past the surface to depth
• Prepare for formal research studies
• Deal with uncooperative or aggressive speakers

Homework:

Expect homework to take about one hour a week. (Some people invest less time or more time, depending on their context.)

• Homework #1: Build your awareness of how you currently listen in real work and life. Practice paying rapt attention.
• Homework #2: Connect a person’s purpose to the reason for listening. Start a listening session based on a purpose.
• Homework #3: Run at least one formal listening session. Develop rapport & trust, get the speaker to go deep, recognize when it goes out of scope, and recognize when the session is “done.”