Have you ever judged a person rather harshly, when you’ve not heard that person’s perspectives?
Tools to hear - Tone to engage
The opposite is also true. To hear well is usually the first step to communicating goodwill across differences.
These two oars – listening skills and tone tools, sail innovation ventures forward, past non-hearing competitors.
Here are 10 brain facts to reboot your listening skills:
- Repeat one key nugget heard. Lack of listening creates a habit operated from the brain’s basal ganglia. Each time you listen well, you rewire brain cell connectors and reshape listening ability. Ready to reshape listening abilities stored in your brain?
- Vary communications – seek out people who differ from you – so that novelty becomes part of what you hear. New research about novelty’s power in the brain shows how original ideas offer positive experiences to those who take advantage by hearing more.
- Invite personal stories to respectfully create curiosity for multiple sides of issues. We often tend to hear only what we already believe, and so we miss dynamic neuro discoveries for improved listening.
- Ask, ask, ask! Question with two feet to draw out unique contributions, that become solutions for stubborn problems.
- Apply one insight heard and brainpower for listening increases as you also expand your multiple intelligences you may not have been aware you possess.
- Laugh at yourself – yet run from cynicism, that brings cortisol – so that you focus more on spreading serotonin chemicals. Serotonin neurotransmitters for well being also aid listening skills.
- Step back from heated situations until you can tame your amygdala enough to hear the situation through another person’s perspective.
- Seek advice from others you admire, and act on advice received. In so doing you are also engaging the plasticity that reshapes your brain to help you listen more accurately.
- Sketch diagrams to link abstract ideas at boring meetings onto something you already know or do. New ideas make more sense to you when you hook these concepts onto familiar or concrete experiences. That way you hear difficult or boring information in ways that make more sense.
- Listen for differences, such as gaps between genders, or differences between an ethical and non-ethical worker, or between different rhythms in background music at work. Let differences help you discover innovative directions for your day.
You’ll likely agree that hearing well is rarely easy at first. In fact many leaders try to change others, so they can speak and feel heard at work.
Yet far fewer are aware of the brainpowered tools required to really hear in ways that raise worker engagement. We know this fact, through Gallop Management Journal that surveyed annual worker engagement and reported 73% of US workforce as disengaged. The cost?
Disengagement costs the US economy $300 billion a year. As we work in many countries with clients from diverse cultures, we observe listening skills and tone tools, are central to building or demolishing workplace well being.
Have you noticed, for instance, how innovation grows with tone at its center, or how poor tone disengages top talents? How so?
- Tone affirms others’ ideas to show you value people, even when you disagree.
- Tone thanks people often for ideas offered, and shows gratitude for differences.
- Tone shares personal stories respectfully and in ways that create curiosity.
- Tone asks 2-footed questions that draw others’ contributions into consensus.
- Tone resists meta-messages which state meanings other than intended.
- Tone avoids swearing in favor of remarks that add no offense or cynicism.
- Tone inspires others by suggesting doable solutions for any problem raised.
- Tone acknowledges and celebrates people’s success.
- Tone models body language and gestures that value others, and laughs at self easily.
- Tone refuses to take offense yet comes with courage to speak up for ethics.
Check yes to any of these ten elements in your tone approaches – and you’re ready to lead innovation in an era that begs for a finer way forward.
Brainpowered tools that facilitates innovation will also help to repair communities that clobbered creativity through silenced voices and poor tone.
It should be noted that the Mita brainpowered tools above – are renewed workplace practices that raise motivation and innovative productivity.
These tools draw upon integrated research from recent neuro and cognitive discoveries, from more than one dozen leading and learning theories listed in the Mita manifesto, from proven practices that earned achievement awards, and doctoral degrees from several cultures in international settings.