Improving your listening skills

(upbeat techno music) - So much of corporate life is focused on how to be a better speaker, how to be a better presenter, but oftentimes we miss the other end of the equation, which is how to listen well. I'm Dorie Clark, and I teach a course on improving your listening skills, and if you watch this with your team, there's a way that we can raise the bar for everyone, because if you're listening better, you're connecting with other people, and you're actually able to access more accurate information that leads to better decisions. One of the biggest problems I've seen is people interrupting each other. We see that all the time, in boardrooms, meetings, everywhere. A couple of ways, life acts, if you will that you can improve your listening skills and stop interrupting, number one, train yourself during important meetings to actually notes as people are talking. That can help distract you from the impulse to jump in and interrupt them. Another technique is to actually pretend you're a documentary filmmaker. You certainly wouldn't want to rush in and ruin the footage. And so if you adopt that frame, sometimes it's a mental trick, that can enable you to actually let people finish what they're saying fully, and only then, you can respond. So if you use these techniques, it's a way to really raise the bar and become a better listener. And I hope you'll check out the full course, Improving your Listening Skills, for even more. (mellow techno music)