The Power, Art, and Heart of Listening

 “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”

– George Bernard Shaw

How true this is!

Everyone talks about the importance of communication these days, but everyone thinks communication lives in speaking.

Perhaps not.  Perhaps it doesn’t live there at all.  Perhaps communication lives in the listening, NOT the speaking.

This two-day program, plus a ½ day debrief, is an entrance into communication that works; you could call it “Power and Art of Listening,” for real listening is, indeed, a power, and an art, which comes from the heart.  It sounds easy, and people certainly think they are listening well.  But, then, why is it that we walk away from conversations not quite feeling that we have indeed, been “known” or “heard” or “gotten?”  Why don’t people, simply, communicate to us? How do we communicate to another when we plain know it’s not safe to do so? How come our own baggage about people gets heavier and heavier as time goes on?

How can we trust someone who has broken their word with us again and again? What does it take to manage someone so that they feel enlivened by our management rather than like they had a gun at their head?  How do we create possibility for another person who is, simply, resigned? Why do projects fail?  Why do we walk away from what we thought was a promise made to us, and find out, only later, when it is way, way too late, that they never promised at all? (Only we hadn’t heard it). Why do our deadlines get passed all the time? Why don’t people move into action when we talk to them? How can we course correct, when we know the project is way off course?

These, and other questions which lead to breakdowns in our lives, get addressed in The Power of Listening, and addressed in a way, that you can do something about it, rather than addressing questions that are only answered theoretically.  Through our conversation, you are able to move into action differently in your life in behalf of creating results that are reliable.

Perhaps it all has to do with listening (which is REALLY different from “telling.) What does it take to GENERATE listening, at the level of “Being?”  What does appreciative listening allow for? What does creating mutuality with another or others allow for?  And how do we usually listen?  Because how we usually listen, in our “everyday” way of living, does not necessarily produce the sense for another that they have been empowered.  Indeed, often, they feel dissed, dismissed, interrupted, fixed, or dis-enabled, feeling that the conversation completely got taken into someplace else, or someone else’s agenda – they feel not heard at all.

This two-day program, (plus debrief/completion day) is an impactful introduction to the power of listening such that you come out of it

• Clear when you have been listening and when you have not
• Able to catch yourself in a kind of listening that does not work and return yourself to a listening that does
• Have a sense of what it takes (the kind of listening that it takes) to have others feel “gotten” and empowered around you
• Able to generate listening that creates connection vs. disconnection, empowerment vs. disempowerment, trust, vs. distrust
• Able to listen in such a way that you create collaborative workability with others
• Able to collaborate with others towards the fulfillment of projects as accomplishments in coordination with others around you
• Able to create mutuality and cause the fulfillment of an idea in the world
• Able to shift adversarial relationships to relationships based in partnership

As George Bernard Shaw says, “the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”  In this two-day conversation, you will be able to move out of that illusion into real life, and course-correct.

Without communication, nothing works. With communication, we have a new foundation of connectedness, possibility, workability, and accomplishment.