STARTING POINT:
- Get people together and just start thinking
- Ask yourselves "what do we stand for?" "what is it we're trying to do?"
- Lets name ourselves
- Create a statement that outlines your group's mission, its values, and its guiding principles.
LISTENING SKILLS:
- Be Present:
- Our 'little voice' is one of the biggest barriers to active listening. Choose to be present.
- Focus on the speaker and the message.
- Learn to want to listen
- We must be willing to focus on the others when they are speaking.
- Learn to develop an interest in either the person and/or the topic.
- Practice concentrating on the speaker-words and feelings.
- Practice shutting distractions out, not allowing them to interfere with your effective listening.
- Become a "whole body" listener
- To be active listeners, we must involve our whole body. Not only our ears tuned in, but so are our eyes, our intellect, our bodies.
- Good listeners give nonverbal and verbal signs that they are listening.
- They sit in an attentive posture; nod in acknowledgement; make good eye contact; convey a positive, encouraging attitude, give feedback.
- Control your emotional "hot buttons"
- Words, issues, situations, prsonalities can be emotional triggers for us.
- When these issues trigger out "hot bottons", we tent to distort, positively or negatively, the message we are hearing. We may tune out or pre-judge the message and/or the speaker.