Transcripts
1. Introduction: The person who controls
the conversation is not just yapping away. The person who's controlling
the conversation is asking intelligent questions. For you. To ask
intelligent questions, you need to be able to listen. Listen passively. But instead, active listening. More than you can do
active listening. The more debt you improve
your social intelligence. And the more debt you improve
your social intelligence. My friend, you open up a
bunch of opportunities. My name is Armand military, the founder of our money talks, a media company which helps engineers and
entrepreneurs improve their communication skills
so they can articulate their ideas with
clarity and confidence. And one of the skill sets
that they are monotone is brand covers, is social skills. In this beginner's class
into active listening, you're going to understand
what exactly is it, how to practice
active listening? Where to practice
active listening? Along with a final
project at the end, that will help you boost
your social skills if you're ready to level
up your listening skills, I look forward to
seeing you inside.
2. What is Active Listening?: So active listening is what
I call trampoline listening. Before you run away,
let me first explain the two different types
of listening out there. One is known as
sponge listening, and the second is known
as trampoline listening. These are the phrase that I use because I believe
it is more visual. What does a sponge do? A sponge absorbs water. And when you're doing
a sponge listening, what you're engaging in is
known as passive listening. This is the type of listening
you typically want to do when you're a
shoulder to cry on. You want to be passive
and you want to be like not saying much, you're mainly
absorbing the points. Trampoline listening is when you're amplifying the points. Have you ever been on
a trampoline before? Wasn't a fun. You're over here starting
off with a little hops. And then slowly
you're maximizing the hubs more and more and more. This is known as
active listening. And traditionally, at this is the type of
listening that you want to engage in when you're having an interaction
with someone else. So the purpose of this class is to teach you how to
do active listening, where you're turning
small points into bigger and bigger
and bigger points.
3. Biggest Mistake with Active Listening: One of the biggest mistakes
that people make with listening is that they don't know when to be active
and want to be passive. They don't know when to
engage trampoline and went to engage sponge due to not knowing the difference
between when to apply, which there's a lot of poor, socially intelligent moves
that are being made. If you're doing
sponge listening, when you should be active, you want to know what's
going to happen, the other person going
to ramble to you. You ever heard that one
moment where you're in this networking event and
your overhear listening, you're doing your best to absorb what this
person is saying. And you're thinking
that this person eventually is going to be
like, Well, what about you? Tell me more about yourself? But they're not doing that. Instead, they're just over here, yapping away, rambling to you. And eventually you have enough. You're like, You know, I'm going to insert myself
into this conversation. And once you do
this or the person is not showing you the same
respect that you showed them. Now why did this happen? This happened because
whenever someone is rambling, they're feeling a
lot of pleasure. Human beings love to ramble for that reason because the brain releases a lot of
pleasure hormones. So you pretty much priming
this person to feel very good and suddenly you
snap away that energy. Are they going to like that? No. And that's why
they're showing such low energy when
you're trying to speak. Now, this is why from
the very beginning, whenever you are
having an interaction, specifically a conversation, you want to lead with the
trampoline mindset. Don't be so passive. Don't be a sponge because you're pretty much conditioning bad behavior and the other person. And the opposite is also true. When someone is over here, I tried to vent or because
they lost a loved one, let's say they lost a pet. And you're over here asking
follow-up questions. I tried to amplify the points. Why are you sad that
you lost your pet? Once again, poor
social intelligence. So one of the biggest mistakes that people make in regards to the listening skills is that they cannot label appropriately. They are incapable of seeing. This is a sponge situation, and this is an active situation,
a trampoline situation. And at times in interactions, it becomes even more nuanced. At certain topics, you have
to be more sponge-like. And in other topics you need
to be more trampoline like. For the sake of clarity, whenever you're entering
a conversation, lead with the
trampoline mindset. Lead with active listening, and you will make
your presence felt.
4. Maximizing Points: This far you're
understanding that trampoline is all about making yourself more
engaging by getting the points from them and
maximizing these points. Sort of like turning
these tiny little hubs. It's a bigger hubs. And in the next
couple of videos, I'm going to be
sharing how to be a great act of listener
with certain tools. With these tools,
you become powerful. And the more power
that you build, the more that you
are able to deal with all sorts of personalities.
5. Paraphrase: The first way to do active
listening is paraphrasing. Have you ever had
that one moment when someone is telling you a story and you think that you
understood what they said. But later on, they continue
the story some more. And it takes a completely
different route than the one that
you were expecting. Does that ever
happened to you where you feel as though you're
expressing yourself perfectly and then
the other person a completely misunderstands
your shortcut. This happens because in
communication skills, one of the things that we need
to factor n is the noise. The noise is the chatter that their mind is
susceptible to. Anytime that you're dealing
with a human being, assumed that there's chatter that's going on
within their mind. And this immediately allows you to be a little bit
more entertaining. And to the point, whenever you're over here
listening to someone's story, you can paraphrase what they
said from your own words. This does a few things. One, it keeps you more
engaged in the conversation to it implies to the other
person that you're listening. And three, if there was any confusion at the other
person will hopefully clarify. So paraphrasing is
when you take n, whatever they're
saying and then you output it from your own words. You probably do this already, but hopefully now
you're capable of doing this with conscious awareness.
6. Ask Questions: The next way to practice active listening is
through asking questions. To ask questions properly. You need to understand
that there is no such thing as the
perfect question. There's only suitable questions. Whenever you're trying to
ask the perfect question, you're no longer listening. Instead, you're
hearing and fragments. Have you ever had that one
moment when someone is over here at talking
about something, Let's say telling a story. Here, a buzzword that resonates with your
personal experiences. And now you think, by the way, this is not new. This is the ego. It thinks it has the
perfect question. And it's like,
alright man, gone, wrap up your points so I can
ask this perfect question. It's perfect because
this word that you used resonates with my
database of experiences. And I'm using myself as the primary measurement of whether or not this
question is perfect. Then you ask this
perfect question. And this other
person is like what? You're stuck on that
part of the story. What gives this is
not active listening. This is just you're
leading with the ego. But instead, if you look
for a suitable questions, this allows you to listen and streams rather than
fragments of buzzwords. This allows you to be much more sensitive towards the tonality that the other person is using. Often when someone is very
passionate about a topic or topics that are
very important to them is going to spill
out in their voice. If you're looking for
suitable questions, you're much more dynamic. You're like, wait,
this guy just really got enthusiastic with this particular point
within the story. And let me ask a follow-up
question in regards to that. This allows for organic conversation
material to be presented. So if you're one of
those people that's always running out
of things to say. The chances are that you're planning what you're
going to say beforehand. Stop. Look for suitable questions. Bring yourself back in
the present moment. And by doing that, the conversation material
just presents itself. Call it magic.
7. Contribute: Now it wouldn't be active
listening without contributing. This is one of the biggest
differences between a sponge listening and
trampoline listening. With sponge listening, you're
not contributing that much. You're mainly
absorbing the points. But with trampoline listening, you want to speak up as well. Now, at first, this
is going to seem a little counter-intuitive
because typically, whenever we're thinking
about listening, we're just thinking about ears. We're not necessarily
thinking about the mouth. Speaking while active listening are known something about
this just feels off. But it shouldn't. Because the more
debt you contribute appropriately after
absorbing their points, the more that you build
your engagement as well. You ever had that
one moment where you're in this meeting
and you're speaking up, where other people are
speaking up as well. But there's that one
person that's not saying anything. What do you think? Doesn't it feel as though
they're a little disinterested? There were plenty of
moments like that for me. There for a while. I didn't feel
comfortable raising my hand and speaking
up in meetings. So one time, one of the club presidents
that I was a part of, it came to me and he's
like, Hey, everything good. Do you want to be here? I just wanted to double-check. I'm like, What do you mean? I'm doing work
behind the scenes. I'm not speaking up
in the meetings. It's like you have,
but it just seems like you're a little disengaged. And that's when I realized
because I was just absorbing the points and I wasn't saying much presence was
not being felt. I was no longer that trampoline that was amplifying points. So you don't have
to speak up a lot. But throughout the conversation, if you can shoot for a certain percentage of
the conversation where you do speak up at this adds
some clarity into your mind. I don't want you to think to logically
in regards to this. I just go for the flow within the body and
every now and then the body is going to be like you haven't
contributed in awhile. Then contribute a point. Other times at the person
will ask you questions. And then a three layer, as I like to say, where you can once again
contribute points. And other times you
just have to use your judgment where
this person is saying certain stuff that you agree with and sometimes you
disagree with them. And there's respect behind your tone as you
disagree with them. All of this is a part of the
active listening umbrella. So do not think that
active listening is you just nodding
your head like a dummy. Every now and then, you must speak and contribute as well.
8. Where to Practice: Okay, you know all
this knowledge regarding active listening. The next question is,
where do you practice? You can practice anytime you're dealing with another
human being. You could practice
in a phone call. You could practice in a
face-to-face conversation. You could practice in a
interview for your podcast. But just make sure that
you're going in with the intent of
reminding yourself, Hey, I'm doing active
listening right now. Not just sponge listening or I'm not just overhear
a planning what I'm going to say next by
reminding yourself in the initial stages that you are practicing active listening. This allows you to work with a fuel fire and you realize that you're
practicing a skill set. Remember this socially
intelligent people are not always
just yapping away. A lot of them are asking strategic questions in order
to guide the conversation. For them to ask
strategic questions, they must listen properly. So practice active
listening because it's the gift that
keeps on giving.
9. Final Project: For the final
project, I want you to start a
conversation yourself. Where do you want to
host this conversation? Is it going to be on the phone? Is it going to be face-to-face? Is it going to be
in an interview, get as creative as
you possibly can? And once you are starting
up the interaction, your main goal is to
do active listening. You want to, I get the points and you want
to keep amplifying it, uh, through the process
of asking questions, paraphrasing and
contributing, uh, keep the flow going and go
wherever the conversation takes you avoid tried to
plan anything beforehand. Once you are complete
with the interaction, I want you to create
a final project of your experience.
How was it like? Were you comfortable
with active listening? Did you every now and
then I'll fall victim to sponge listening
without trying to. Or did you practice
sponge listening accordingly with the
conversation topic that was presented to you? I'd get as detailed as you
possibly can in regards to your interaction and create the report I posted in the final project
section right below. I look forward to reading it. If you enjoyed this
beginner's class on active listening and you want to learn more about social skills. Be sure to check out
our money talks.com, which has a lot of my blogs, my videos or podcasts, books, and much more. You will learn more
about public speaking, social skills, emotional
intelligence, a much more. Money talks.com, go
on, check it out.
Arman Chowdhury, Confidence thru Communication
