Here we are focusing on what the person is saying and maybe also our thoughts too, maybe we’re thinking about what we might say next. Moving on, conversational listening is probably the most common type of listening that we use. It might also be useful if you needed to just let someone talk and sound off about a subject. This level of listening wouldn’t work that well in a museum programme based on discussion, but it may work in a traditional guided tour – how many of the audience in a lecture-based tour are actually listening after 10 mins or just pretending they’re listening. You might be able to fool the other person that you’re listening when you’re not, but you’re bound to be caught out now and again when the other person asks you a question and you need to ask them to repeat it. You’re making a show of listening, but you’re not really. You hear the words but you’re not making any effort to understand them. This is the lowest level of listening.Ĭosmetic listening is pretend or superficial listening – you might be acting like you’re listening for example, nodding or making appropriate noises or words, but in reality you are only half-listening. Cosmetic or contrived listening is at one end of the scale. It’s good to think about the levels of listening as a scale from one end to another. LEVEL 1 – COSMETIC OR CONTRIVED LISTENING It’s worth exploring the different levels of listening before I share some tips with you to improve your listening skills and thinking about choosing the right level of listening for when we’re communicating with others. It requires a great deal of mental effort, concentration and focus – you are focusing on someone else entirely and putting yourself to one side. The level of listening required to be a good coach is tough. And I can honestly say that it’s been really hard work. One of my goals was to focus on actively improving my listening skills. This is something that I’ve been actively working on all year too since I started my coaching certification. Listening is an essential skill for a VTM Facilitator – without active listening, discussions remain on the surface level without truly engaging all the participants. Interestingly, people with strong questioning skills are often seen as good listeners – because they spend time carefully formulating questions that draw information out from others. And both require time and practise to develop effective skills. Listening and questioning are two skills that are closely linked. I’ve been trying to ascertain just how important listening is to being a VTM facilitator and what that looks like in practice. I’ve been thinking about this all week as I’ve been writing about facilitation all week in my book. Share this one widely – listening is one of the keys to a better society! I’ll first explore the 4 different levels of listening, before I share 7 tips with you to improve your active listening skills and help you to choose the right level of listening for when you’re communicating with others. Today’s episode will help you to work on your listening skills. Listening is an essential skill for us – without active listening, discussions remain on the surface level without truly engaging all the participants. And it’s a challenge – when we’re listening our minds naturally tend to wander and our concentration can come and go. It requires both time and practise to develop effective listening skills. Listening is one of the most important skills in our toolbox. But are we really? What does it mean to be an active listener in an art discussion, guided tour or educational programme in the museum? BITESIZE: 7 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR ACTIVE LISTENING SKILLS
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