Squiggly Shortcut: Listen Like You Mean It (5 Ways to Improve)

Hi, my name's Sarah and in this squiggly shortcut I'm going to be talking about how to listen like you mean it. And let's start with a stat. So 90% of us think that we are good listeners, but we retain about 20% of what we listened to. So there is a listening gap that most of us have. It's actually quite rare for us to overestimate our capabilities.

Usually we're our own worst critics, but when it comes to listening, I think we all like to think we are better than we are. So it's probably a skill that most of us could get a bit better at. So I'm going to talk to you about some ways to do that that I'm working on too at the same time, hopefully, as all of you. So the first one is when you are listening, notice what is not being said. So when we're listening, it's not just about the words, it's also sort of looking and noticing like who isn't contributing, who is maybe getting cut off.

Who perhaps starts to speak but then gets spoken over? Or just what do you not hear? So do you not hear any challenge in a conversation? If you're really listening, if you're listening out for challenge and you don't hear any disagreement, maybe that's a prompt to ask a different kind of question. So notice what's not being said.

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