Enhanced Listening Techniques for a Fast Paced High Tech World

This program can be customized for any group such as sales, management, teams or project management:

Today's professionals need to listen more than ever.  That means listen with enhanced focused. This course will show you exactly how to become the kind of listener people open up to, respect and admire. It will help you give and receive the right message and make the most of every conversation you're involved in. A listener, who gets things done, accomplishes their goals quickly and assigns tasks that are completed easily, presents and sells successfully.

Much technical, research, scientific, and product information is specific, difficult to understand.  Whether you are a sales person, trainer, manager, team leader or engineer, you have a responsibility to deliver information (data, research findings, schematics, network information, etc.) and have it received accurately. This full day program delves into the mechanics and technology of listening and communicating complicated messages. This workshop contains coached practice, exercises, team and paired activities that provide participants with the opportunity to maximize learning.

Participants learn:

• To discover the best techniques to use when engaging prospects, employees, customers, clients, managers and peers.
• Identify and heal your bad listening habits.
• Read and understand the hundreds of nonverbal cues that you should be listening to.
• To develop skills that close the gap between what is said and what is heard.
• To relate to the listener's/speaker's communication needs.
• To "Read between the lines."
• Understanding personality, emotion and body language.
• Four techniques to help you listen more open-mindedly.
• To change the number one reason we don't listen well, into the number one reason you are a great listener.
• How to uncover a message's hidden meaning.
• The best ways to coax revealing answers from reluctant speakers.
• Six tips to help you concentrate better even when you are tired, bored, overwhelmed or don’t like the speaker.
• To recognize that even though technological or data driven information is scientifically constant, people interpret it differently.
• Skills to enhance interpretation and perception skills.
• To check for understanding and meaning.
• Right brain/left brain listening differences.

• Focus skills for effective listening.
• Summarizing and paraphrasing as a listening skill.
• Eliminating distractions to increase active listening.
• Build rapport and promote easy listening through empathy skills.
• Understand the value and uses of empathy vs. sympathy and other kinds of listening.
• Learn to script empathy responses.
• The power and push of closed and open ended questions.
• Practice different kinds of questions.
• Learn to know when to use questions.
• Learn to overcome emotion words, biases & prejudging.
• Videotaped practice and coaching throughout the one day or two day programs.

The advanced two day program also includes the following skills (any skill can be customized into your program time lengths).

• Listen in a conflict.
• How to identify personalities through careful listening.
• Tips on handling emotions.
• Practice feedback skills in difficult listening situations.
• How to handle listening in meetings, public audiences, on the phone & conference calls.
• Taking notes.
• Gender differences in listening.
• Cultural differences in listening.
• Effective listening:

1. Review how to make listening skills a vital part of selling and persuading.
2. Devise action plan for improving and implementing individual listening skills.